14. Jack

14

JACK

T echnically, traveling on an international flight with the unhatched egg of a shifter is illegal unless the egg has adoption papers. When Chris called me and told me they were stuck in New Zealand until the egg hatched, I knew they were in trouble. Puffin shifter eggs take an uncommonly long time to hatch. Almost two months.

Fortunately, there are laws in place protecting the traditions of Indigenous People in Canada. One of those traditions is our egg-hatching celebration. I had to fill out a lot of paperwork and have some unpleasant conversations with security personnel who claimed I was abusing the law. But the plan had always been for the egg-hatching to happen in Dow because hatchings are celebrated with such fervor among puffin shifters, so this isn't an abuse at all.

It's tradition. And I can't wait to hold that little egg in my hands.

Jerry and I have been up since the crack of dawn getting everything ready for Chris and his mates. We'll be staying in the education center until the hatching, then I will officially no longer be employed by the city of Dow.

We leave obscenely early for the airport because Jerry and I are both too excited to wait any longer. Jerry insists we get out of the car and go to the baggage claim area. He's been on edge all day. I guide him to a bench across from one of the luggage carousels and tell him to sit down.

He fidgets next to me while we wait, chattering on about the different egg gestation periods of puffin shifters and penguin shifters. I grab his hand and thread my fingers through his, tucking my thumb between our palms.

He stops midsentence as I dig my nail into the flesh of his hand. Even after all this time, that's all it takes for his pupils to dilate and his cock to become half-hard under the fabric of his jeans.

He's such a pain slut. I love it.

"Here's what we're going to do," I whisper in his ear. "We're going to help Chris, Gray, and Revv get settled in their room, then I'm going to chain you to our bed and put you in that cock cage you like so much."

Jerry swallows hard. "Oh… okay."

"Then I'm going to whip you with my favorite riding crop. The one that leaves marks on your pretty skin." I dig my nail in deeper, and Jerry takes in a sharp breath.

"If you're very, very good, I might fuck you with the handle of my crop. But I won't let you come. I'll keep your cock under lock and key until I'm good and ready to release it."

Jerry closes his eyes. "Yes, Sir."

"Do you want to know how you can get me to release your cock tonight?"

He bobs his head up and down.

"You have to beg Chris for his cock."

Jerry's eyes fly open in surprise. We haven't played with Chris together since he and I decided to be mates, even though Chris has driven to Dow a few times to spend time with me. Chris and I needed time alone to rebuild our relationship, but we both agreed it was time to include Jerry again. We've always enjoyed sharing him.

"Tonight, you're going to take our cocks at the same time," I whisper.

Jerry bites his lip, already eager for it. He's taken us together before. I have to prepare him properly for it, but it's wonderfully intimate to feel Chris's cock pressed against mine inside Jerry.

I see a familiar shock of bright blue hair from the corner of my eye and release Jerry's hand. He doesn't need me to distract him anymore. Jerry turns around to see Chris, Revv, and Gray walking toward us. Revv has a harness strapped around his shoulders that's holding a pillow specifically designed to carry a shifter egg. We have another one at home.

"How was your flight?" Jerry asks. Gray gives him a hug, and they start talking about international travel. Jerry has to fly for his job all the time. Revv complains about how small the seats are, and before long, the three of them are deep in conversation.

But Chris only has eyes for me. He wraps his arms around me with a fierceness I wasn't expecting. I can hardly breathe.

"I have something for you," he says, suddenly releasing me and reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a small, brown rock.

Without him needing to say a word, I know immediately what that rock is. I feel drawn to it the way I felt drawn to Jerry's eyes back when we were young. It's such a delicate, perfect little pebble.

"But how did you… I thought they were lost."

"My aunt saved them for me."

He pulls me in for a kiss that's just as fierce as his hug, slipping the pebble between us until it's pressing against my chest. My heart swells as I realize this is what we were missing all along. I had no idea how much we needed this, how much Chris's pebbles were a part of him. It's almost as if he lost a limb twenty years ago and only now he is whole again.

"Oh my God, that is the prettiest egg I've ever seen," Jerry says.

Chris breaks the kiss and glances over at Revv, who has shifted the carrying pillow to display a small egg with beautiful brown spots. Jerry is right. It's the prettiest egg I've ever seen, and puffin shifters are known for showing off their eggs. I feel torn between looking at Chris's pebble and the egg that we're now second parents of.

Gray is standing next to Revv, but he isn't staring at the egg, he's smiling at me. Not long ago, I was giving him advice about dating Chris, and now here he is, happy that I, too, have one of Chris's pebbles. That's almost as beautiful as Revv's new egg.

"Did your aunt have all your lost pebbles?" I ask Chris, worried Revv's pebble might still be lost.

"Yes. All eighteen of them."

I smile. That's a lot of love.

Chris takes my hand and turns my palm up, placing his pebble at its center. A peace washes over me. It makes me wonder what I would have done if he had given me this pebble decades ago. Could I have left him to go to Dow? I'm not sure I could have.

"For our future," Chris says.

That's a good reminder. It doesn't matter what could have been. What matters is the family we have now.

I hold out my other hand to Chris. "Let's go home."

We walk out of the airport with our mates trailing behind us. Revv has transferred the egg carrier to Jerry's shoulders. His smile is so big and beautiful, it takes my breath away. If Chris had his pebbles back when we were in college, and I had stayed with him, I never would have bonded to Jerry. It's hard to be grateful that Chris's alpha father was an asshole, but it makes me wonder if it's not only the things we accomplish in life that make us who we are, but the mistakes we make. Or in this case, the mistakes other people make.

I wish Chris's father could see us now. Five men about to build a life together. Three pebbles kept close to our hearts. One lovely little egg. And a future full of possibility.

Sometimes the best way to prove someone wrong is to be unapologetically, gloriously happy.