Chapter Fifteen

"I'm so sorry. I've been a neglectful mate."

Landyn almost choked on his hot chocolate. They were sitting on Hephaestus's large couch, enjoying the food Landyn had bought. Hephaestus had been really quiet, but Landyn expected that. His mate was truly tired from working so hard all day. As for Landyn, he'd had a dose of peopling, and he was just happy they were home.

So hearing those words out of his mate's mouth was a total shock. "You're the best mate a shifter could wish for. I wouldn't even have warm clothes if it wasn't for you. What would make you think that? Was your day really awful?"

Putting his chocolate down, Landyn shuffled across the gap between them. "I'm not able to give you my special hugs when you're working, because I know it's not safe if you get distracted. But clearly that's what you need." He wrapped his arms around Hephaestus's torso, silently marveling at how translocation cleaned his mate off and even provided a shirt, not that Landyn thought his mate needed one. But then, Landyn knew he still had a lot to learn about magic, and Hephaestus seemed more comfortable eating when he was fully dressed. "Did you want to talk about it?"

Hephaestus's sigh was long. "I know I've been working a lot lately."

"I guess there're lots of people who want a piece of your beautiful art." Landyn thought everything his mate made was incredibly complex and definitely special in so many ways. He'd never imagined how a twist in a piece of metal could evoke so many powerful emotions, but under Hephaestus's hammer those pieces of metal sang.

"Landyn, sweetling, I need you to sit up so you can see my face. This is very difficult for me, this next thing I've got to say. You might not even want to hug me once you hear what I have to say."

Frowning, Landyn sat up, although he smiled and stroked his finger over the furrow on Hephaestus's brow when he saw it. "My ferret would sense in an instant if something you said wasn't true. But here I am, watching your face, as you asked. What's wrong? You know you can say anything to me, my mate."

"All those orders I've been doing…"

"That's a good thing, isn't it?" Landyn widened his smile. "You must be very proud you have so many happy customers."

"I wouldn't know." Hephaestus was still frowning. "Apparently, the cyclops put pictures of my work on social platforms and offered customers a discount if they put orders in quickly."

Landyn scratched his head, his lips twisted as he tried to work out what his mate was saying. "You're not happy you've gotten so many orders. Oh," he said, suddenly having a lightbulb moment. "Is this a supply and demand sort of thing? I remember, when I used to work in the warehouse, the managers would talk about how if they had too many of a particular item, then they had to reduce the price they charged, so they could make lots more sales. Are you actually losing money from all the hard work you've been doing? That's not right."

"No, sweetling, it's not right, although not for the reason you've given so beautifully. You have a clever brain."

Landyn just had to give his mate a quick kiss for that, because he knew he wasn't clever, so Hephaestus was being sweet, even when he was so tired. But all too soon, Hephaestus pulled back, leaving Landyn's lips tingly.

"The cyclops set me up to be busy all the time so I couldn't spend time with you."

His mind still foggy from the kiss, wandering off from the serious conversation on the couch to a whole different room and topic, it took a moment for the words to register. When they did, Landyn was outraged. "They were making you deliberately busy? Didn't they think about your leg, or how tired you were getting? I thought they cared about you."

"Did you think they were caring because of the hugging episode? Because I never apologized for that, either." Hephaestus said gravely.

Landyn's cheeks heated. "I didn't blame you. I thought hugging you was something they were used to doing and they just forgot you were mated for a moment…you know. Habit."

"Is that honestly what you thought at the time?"

Thinking back, Landyn flipped a mental coin in his head. "No, but again it wasn't your fault, and it might have all been perfectly innocent. I was trying to be fair."

"But sweetling, while you were trying to be fair, they were trying to come between us, can't you see?"

Looking down, Landyn picked a speck of something off his fingernail. "I don't know what you want me to say to that. It's not like I can do anything to change their minds. They don't want to get to know me, and I do think that's unfair. You know" - he was hit by another thought - "it's one thing to hate someone because they did something horrible to you, but to hate someone without knowing them at all…that is unfair. Truly unfair."

"You're right." Hephaestus took in a long breath, and then added, "But Bronte did make a good point today, and that's why I need to apologize to you."

"I think those giants need to give me an apology. A mating to a shifter is the most important thing in our lives, but they don't even want to think about what might happen to you if I died because we weren't together. I would never leave you. My heart would shatter." He threw his hands apart, indicating a mini explosion. "My poor ferret would curl up in a ball and pine away with the pain of it all. He would die. If they can't care about the human me because I'm too short for them notice, can't they care about my innocent ferret? We'd both be dead in a week without you, and who would care about you then? It wouldn't be them."

Hephaestus tilted his head slightly. "Sweetling, you do remember when we met, I told you I was immortal, and you would be, too, once we claimed each other. You can't die."

Landyn's hands flew up, smacking his own cheeks. "My goodness, that's worse. If you left me, me and my ferret would feel torment for eternity. Those giants truly don't care at all what they're doing."

"I think they got it into their block heads that if I was too busy working to pay attention to you, then you would leave me, and then they could come back and live in the house with me, to keep me company like things were before."

"They don't know a lot about shifters then, do they." It wasn't a question, it was fact in Landyn's opinion. "If you got mad with me and my ferret, or you didn't want me around anymore because I was too skinny for you, or whatever reason, then I'd just shift, and we'd lurk in your closet, or under a bush in your garden – somewhere close so we'd know you were all right."

Hephaestus's arms came out of nowhere, catching him up and holding him close to his mate's solid chest. "I won't ever cause you to lurk in my closet, sweetling." Hephaestus's words were muffled in Landyn's hair. "Do you have any idea how perfect you are for me?"

Arching back, because while Landyn could hear the sincerity in Hephaestus's words, this time it was him who had to see the man's face for himself. "Like you're perfect for me, right?" He smiled, showing his teeth, but Hephaestus still didn't smile back.

"I have been ignoring you."

"You've been working."

"You had to go out for food because I didn't stop to eat."

"That's not good for you either, which is why I bought us dinner."

Hephaestus huffed. He seemed to be getting a little frustrated. "Sweetling, repeat after me. My mate should put my needs first."

Frowning, Landyn wrinkled his nose. "I do put your needs first. That's why I didn't interrupt you when you were working, and why I got you some food, because I knew you'd be too tired to cook, and you've never even asked me if I can cook for you, so I wasn't sure if I could use the kitchen. And I would even drive us home after work, too, but I don't know how to drive, so maybe don't ask for me to do that just now, but I could learn and then I could do that for you, too. Oh, oh." Landyn had another thought. "Maybe I could take lessons while you're working? Would that work for you?"

Hephaestus groaned, banging his head on Landyn's shoulder. As he didn't move away, Landyn stroked over the hair on the top of his mate's head. "You don't want me to learn to drive?" he asked hesitantly.

"I want to teach you to drive." Hephaestus lifted his head. "I want to cook things with you in the kitchen and taste the things you create. I want to take you places – anywhere you want to go in the world. I want to spend whole days in bed with you, loving over every inch of your body so you never worry that you're too small for my tastes, because believe me you light a fire in me no one has ever done before."

Thinking about all the work Hephaestus had been doing, and was likely to keep doing, Landyn tried to work out when they could do those things. "Perhaps you could take a weekend off once in a while so we could try some of those activities?" That could be fun.

But Hephaestus shook his head. "Tell me one thing. These past two weeks, when I've been dragging you into work with me, have you had a really fun and exciting time, amusing yourself while I'm busy?"

Ooh. That was another one of those hard questions. "I like playing cards with the automatons, sometimes," Landyn said slowly. "But I know they're your special machines, so I don't want to do that very often, and besides, they always let me win. But then, it can be nice to sit outside and watch the clouds move across the sky, on other days. Sometimes they form shapes of all types of things, did you know that?" Then he chuckled at his own silliness. "Don't answer that. You're a god. Of course you know about cloud shapes."

Hephaestus was silent for a moment, and then he said, "That's the most long winded way anyone has told me no before."

Chewing the inside of his lip, Landyn asked, "Is that the wrong thing to do? I wasn't lying. I just don't like seeing you sad. I know you have to work. I'm not a clingy mate, I promise I'm not."

"I'm the one who's been such an idiot mate. The worse mate in history, I reckon."

"No, don't say that. See, this is why I don't say anything because then you get all down on yourself and I hate seeing that. You're amazing in so many ways, why can't you see that? Can't you see how much I love you? Isn't that worth something to you?"