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  “I’m afraid to say it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. You can hear her. Your bear can hear its mate, right? You know how we feel.”

  Taking her face in my hands, I paused before covering her lips with mine again. “I know you love me. Take your time in saying the words, but I know you love me and that’s plenty enough for me.”

  I didn’t allow her to answer. This time wasn’t like the others. She was sure of what I was offering, my complete and unfiltered love through that kiss. Nudging her lips open with my own, I began a slow torture that was enough to lull us both into oblivion.

  With her hands on my chest, she gently pushed back from it, taking a second to recover.

  I loved that she had to recover from me.

  “I’m ready. I have to do this now before I lose my courage.”

  “Okay. I’m taking my pants off, but that’s it.”

  “I had to pick that spot, huh?”

  “Yeah, you did. You might thank yourself on the night of our mating ceremony.”

  “I might.”

  I held her gaze and never let it go while I disrobed in front of my mate. It wasn’t a big deal for me. We shifters stripped in front of each other all the time to turn into bears, but Dahlia wasn’t used to that kind of life.

  “Shit.” Her hands were shaking and I had to take a second to calm her once again. “I don’t know the effing words.”

  “Hey, just speak from the heart.”

  She whooshed out a breath that held the world on its shoulders.

  “Reach down deep, Dahlia. Close your eyes and let your bear take over. She knows the words that you want to say. Let her take over.”

  I watched the transition happen before me. She closed her eyes slowly. Her shoulders relaxed at once and the tension lines on her face diminished.

  And when she opened her eyes again, the glitter in her stare was purely her bear looking back at me. She and her bear were the same. We often referred to them as two different entities, but really, in the core of things, they were the same soul, torn between two very different bodies.

  Like the sky that was pulled between night and day.

  “I am yours, Tarrow. And you are mine. I place this mark on you to signify our eternal bond and the promise that one day we will be mated. You love me, right? Tell me please.”

  “I love you Dahlia, heart and soul, I love you.”

  “Then accept my mark as my love for you.”

  She bent down and before I could process what was going to happen, teeth broke through skin and only stopped when they hit bone. The pain lasted only seconds and the joy of her mark triumphed any lingering agony.

  She raised up and wiped away the trickle of blood from the side of her mouth. She had a skirt on and I wouldn’t propose she take it off, I would just pull it down as much as I needed to.

  Not nearly as much as I wanted to.

  I made sure she was focused again before I continued. Unlike my mate, I knew what I wanted to say and had been rehearsing it for days.

  “Dahlia, I’ve waited for you all my life. I’m completely in love with you as my mate as my future and as the female who stole my heart. The mark you gave me means that I belong to you in this life and Creator willing, into eternity. I am your mate forever, whether you would love me or accept my mark. You’re everything I’ve always wanted, sweetheart and so much I didn’t realize I wanted. Will you accept my mark on your body signifying our bond?”

  Shit. I made her cry.

  “Of course I do.”

  She gasped as I pulled the side of her skirt down slightly, just enough to do what I needed to. And before I bit down on her beautiful hip, I sent up a prayer to the Creator, thanking Him for creating her just for me.

  Dahlia

  I had expected a lot of things the next morning after being bitten on the hip by the most handsome, caring man on the planet.

  Pain.

  Weirdness.

  Yet, as I stirred and looked down at his sleeping form as I was propped up on my elbow, the only thing I felt was undiluted bliss.

  The sun had just risen. Its rays barely touching the bottom of the window sill. I wasn’t usually an early riser, but my bear had woken me, begging me to take advantage of this time with him.

  She knew we might not have it again for some time.

  “It’s kind of creepy trying to sleep while you’re staring at me like that.” His eyes were closed but his sarcasm was wide open. “Aren’t you a sleep until noon type of girl? That’s what your sister said.”

  “A lot has changed overnight.”

  “Has it?”

  That had him facing the sun.

  “I want to run with you. Everything is settled—in here.” I placed his hand over my tank top clad chest, no longer timid about him touching me. “I—I do love you Tarrow. It’s never been clearer to me. You’d never let anything happen to me and you’re going to be there for me for the rest of our lives.”

  He chuckled and pulled me down to rest my face in the crook of his neck. “Damn, I must be better at that bite thing than I thought.”

  “You were very good at it. It only hurt for a second. See?” I pulled down the side of my shorts to show him the mark, nothing more than a faint scar, pink and puckered.

  Before I could react, he’d thrown me on my back and his body was flush with mine. He kissed a dangerous path down the front of my torso until he reached the hip in question and then paid it even more attention than I thought any hip in the history of bodies had ever received.

  “Do you feel different?” I asked.

  “I do. It’s hard to explain. Do you?”

  He turned released me, laying on his side. “All the doubt-all the unease—it’s gone. Most of it.”

  Clouds rolled in his eyes at my confession. “Is it me you doubt?”

  I reached out and smiled at the already growing stubble on his chin. I almost asked him not to shave again.

  “Really?” He said, startling me. I’d been so caught up in images of my mate with a beard.

  “Really what?”

  “That was quite a surge of—something. What were you thinking about?”

  “You—and a beard.” I kissed his chin.

  “Whoa. I’m never shaving again. That’s—you’re driving me to madness, you know that, right?”

  I did know. My bear and his bear had connected last night even more than our human sides had and we were enveloped with him—caught up in him—drowning in him.

  His unanswered question lingered in my head and he waited for the answer though he wouldn’t repeat it.

  “It’s not you. I don’t doubt you. It’s life. I’m not sure about the future of my family and our family.”

  Sucking in his cheeks, he barely quelled a smile. “Our family.”

  “Yeah, you and I. This is the start of our family, right?”

  “Of course it is.”

  Still on my back, I started to really look at the place he’d chosen for our marking. It was a beautiful cottage with whitewashed walls and sparse furniture. Nothing I would’ve chosen for myself, but perfect in its own right.

  “This place is great.”

  He played with the hem of my shorts and nodded. “It’s for sale, you know. The house, twelve acres. They’re renting it out as a vacation spot until they get an offer on it.”

  My expression gave my words away.

  “I have to have a plan, Dahlia. For whatever you decide.”

  “But if my family moves to the clan lands, there is no choice. I’ll go wherever they go.”

  The fury of my statement, as perceived by him, took my breath away. A tear fell from my eye as the sourness of betrayal trickled down my throat.

  No, not betrayal—rejection.

  Disregard.

  Callous.

  I sat up as he got up slowly, rolled over, and pulled a t-shirt from his bag. I’d crushed him.

  “They’ve been my only family for almost twenty years. I’ve known you for less than
a month.”

  He nodded, but didn’t look at me.

  “I get it. I do. I’m—I’m going to take a walk.”

  Fever took over my veins. “You’re not going to run, are you?”

  “No. Doesn’t feel right anymore, running alone. But you can go run if you want to. I’m close and there’s no males around.”

  He shut the door before I could tell him that running alone would be like darkness.

  He was asking too much.

  I wasn’t giving enough.

  A mess.

  I got up and after a hot shower, got dressed. I knew I was the one keeping us in limbo. If it were up to Tarrow, we would be mated and probably building a house somewhere on the clan lands.

  And he thought he wasn’t good for me.

  I was the unknown in our equation.

  He’d brought groceries with him. I started a pot of coffee and curled up on the wicker sofa, waiting for its comfort and his.

  Understanding how all of this worked was tough. I loved my family, but I also loved Tarrow. I wouldn’t say it out loud yet, but it was there regardless.

  I sipped on cup after cup and he was still outside. I ignored the turmoil going on inside of him. It was enough to deal with my own, but to endure his was pure torture.

  I stilled myself when he finally came back inside.

  “Hey,” he said and headed for the coffee.

  “Are you hungry? I’m okay at eggs.”

  “Not yet. Thanks.”

  If we were dating like humans, instead of mated, this would be the point where I was afraid he was going to break up with me.

  And he was probably afraid of the same thing.

  “I’m not going to leave you. I’m just torn.”

  Such an idiot. I could never just start a conversation. I had to blurt out emotions before they scared the shit out of me.

  He smiled and leaned against the counter. I shivered at his stance.

  I hoped he made me shiver for the rest of our lives.

  “I know. I’m not afraid of you leaving me. Your bear, well, she is loud when she wants me to know something. Not like you.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Yeah. It was-um-vivid.”

  The blush from the night before crept back up my neck and heated my ears.

  “But it’s more than attraction. You know that, right? Lust and attraction are raw and natural—love is a choice. I don’t want you to think this is all lust.”

  His tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip and he inspected the floor below, looking for something to say to me written in the cracks in the wood.

  “I know it’s not. We’ve just had a rocky start. It’ll get better. You’ll see. We just have to make the time, make the effort until things are more settled.”

  “Maybe it will be better when we move to the clan lands. We’ll be closer, right? But where will you live?”

  “For the time being, Martha, Rev’s mate, has given me her cabin to live in. Technically, it’s her office, but it has a bed and everything for when she spends the night there. It will have to do until I can get something built or we decide to live somewhere else.”

  I got up and attempted to refill my coffee cup. He gently took the cup from me and refilled it and he watched carefully as I put the sugar and creamer in it. He was taking notes. I knew him already.

  “It’s killing you that you didn’t know how I take my coffee. You’re pissed about it.”

  “I’m not pissed. I’m aggravated about the lack of time I’m getting with my mate. It’s selfish and I shouldn’t feel that way, but damn it, I do.”

  I set my cup down and positioned myself between him and the counter. “You’ve got me now and soon enough you will have me a lot more. Can we just forget everything else and focus on this time we have? If I think about everything, I’ll just implode. Make me forget, even if it’s just for a little while.”

  “Make you forget?” He asked. I nodded and bit my lip. “I think I can handle that.”

  He lifted me onto the counter. His rough hands went under my shirt and skimmed the length of my back.

  And that’s when his phone rang. He cussed and laid his forehead on my chest while reaching into his back pocket for the culprit.

  “What?” After listening for a moment, the blood drained from his face and he retreated. “I apologize, Alpha. I asked to be left alone for twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours.”

  He tried to pace while he talked, but I held him to me, my legs around his waist. After a few minutes and a tornado of expressions, he hung up the phone.

  “I have a meeting at four. It was supposed to be at noon, but they’re changing it to give us a little more time. Apparently, Rev didn’t relay the message about us trying to get in some alone time.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “The feline-shifters have made a bid to buy the land between their clan and our clan.”

  The only land between the clans was my house.

  “Our house?”

  “Yeah. Some of the cats are realtors and they got word that your house would be up for auction soon. We don’t really want to run and step in cat shit, you know what I mean?”

  “I do. So what’s going to happen?”

  “I guess that’s the reason for the meeting. At least it’s not about the grizzlies this time. Maybe they finally got a clue and moved on.”

  Taking advantage of his rant, I leaned over and began along his jaw, attempting to kiss away the stress.

  “What are you doing?”

  Grazing my lips to his earlobe, I stopped to say, “I’m distracting you. I’ve got you for eight more hours. You’re wasting time.”

  He allowed my assault for a few minutes before breaking away. “I promised your father that everything with us would be done right.”

  I choked on a laugh. “You did?”

  “I did. Even if I hadn’t promised him—I won’t have you regret waiting. Let’s get out of here and get something to eat. We’ll come back later when we’re calmer.”

  I wouldn’t be calmer until I got what I wanted. Tarrow was in my cells now, under my skin, flowing in my veins.

  I doubted it would ever be enough to satiate me.

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t be upset. It’s not the lack of want that’s stopping me.”

  I sighed and got down, purposefully sliding myself down the length of him. “We need to be mated sooner than later.”

  “Well, at least we agree about that.”

  We spent the morning having breakfast and shopping through the adjoining town. Tarrow bought everything I touched in the first few stores. Finally, by the third store, I learned not to look at anything too long and definitely not touch anything. He would go broke.

  I was a touchy shopper. Anything looked good at a distance, but I had to touch an item to know if I wanted it or not—especially clothes.

  He found a park off the side of the main road. There wasn’t much to it. A central fountain with a statue of some Louisiana governor of the past. The water came out from around his feet like he was in a water show. We sat on the edge, simply enjoying the sunshine and normalcy.

  Here, we were just another couple enjoying a date.

  “What’s that about?”

  My eyebrows pulsed. “You know what I’m feeling.”

  “I’d like to know what the faces mean, apart from reaching into the bond.”

  “That was me enjoying this day with you. Just a little bit of normal.”

  “Sometimes a little bit of normal is the best cure for life.”

  “Then we should definitely move here.”

  “It would be nice to not be on someone else’s schedule for once.”

  I couldn’t believe those words were coming out of his mouth. He was the one who never strayed from his pro-clan position.

  “But they’re helping my family. And the…Echo is nice.”

  “The Coeur.”

  “That.”

  “Maybe I’m sta
rting to see your side of things. And if it would make you happy, then it would be okay with me—eventually.”

  I checked my phone. It was past one o’clock.

  “Do we have to leave now?”

  He checked his watch. “See what I mean? Someone else’s schedule.”

  Oh, crap. I broke him.

  “I’ve turned you to the dark side. Your Alpha, Beta people are going to kill me.”

  “Trust me. I’m not their favorite person anyway. I doubt they’ve even noticed I’m gone. The Alpha didn’t even know I was gone until he called a meeting and I didn’t answer.”

  My phone buzzed with a new message from Acacia. Dad had been told about the move and he wasn’t pleased.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Life is calling and it’s pissed off. My mom told my dad we were moving to your house and the shit hit the fan.”

  “Let’s go. I’ll drop you at home and then check in on my mom before going to the meeting. Unless you want me to stay with you. They can have the meeting without me. I’ve never missed one before.”

  I thought about it for a minute and then responded. “How about I call you if I need you.”

  He gifted me a crooked smile and squeezed my hand. I noticed that he tended to do that when he was about to say something profound. “I’ll drop what I’m doing and come for you.”

  He wasn’t just talking about that night. He meant for life. For the rest of my life and maybe longer, my mate would drop anything and everything and come to my aid if I needed it—or even just wanted it.

  “I know you will. It’s taking me a little longer than you, but I know that now. Do you even know you do this?” I squeezed his hand back.

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  I giggled. “No, I kind of like it. I know I’d better pay attention. You’re going to say something meaningful.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, the pressure. Now I’m going to have to make sure I say something really good when I do this.”