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“Like Jules?” I asked. His name was burned into my brain. He was the evil that was hurting my mate.
She nodded. “We were promised to each other since we were little.”
I frowned. “Promised? Like mated?”
“Sort of,” she said. “A promise of an arranged marriage. Our parents decided that our marriage would make the coven stronger, and so they set it up.”
“I didn’t think mortals did such things anymore.”
“My family”—she grimaced—”my coven, is very into pure bloodlines. They don’t like other species . . .”
“Like gargoyles,” I said with a sigh.
“Yeah,” she said. She seemed to be wrestling with herself, but finally she continued, “I was okay with it at first. Jules is handsome, his dad is head of our coven, and for a long time I had a crush on Jules . . .” She took a couple of sips of her coffee as if she was steeling herself.
I waited. This was a hard story to tell, and I needed to give her all the space she needed to tell it.
“. . . but he hurt me.” She scowled. “He hurt me in a way there’s no coming back from.”
Anger curled in my gut and I wanted to run out and kill the bastard. He’d hurt my mate so deeply that she was afraid to care about anyone again. And remembering the darkness curled around them, I knew he was still hurting her.
“So I won’t marry.”—she looked at me with sadness in her eyes—”I won’t mate. I won’t let anyone else control my fate.”
A knife twisted in my gut, but it didn’t matter if she rejected me. I would never love another, and how could I not love her even more for standing up for herself? For making a choice, even if it hurt, to put herself first?
“I’m sorry, Gideon,” she said.
I closed my eyes, taking a breath and pulling in her delicious licorice scent. “I’m sorry he put you through that,” I said with a growl. “In fact, I’d like to kill him if you’d let me.”
A choked laugh escaped her.
I opened my eyes, letting her see how deadly serious I was. “You are precious, Toni, and you shouldn’t let anyone treat you as anything less.”
She nibbled on her lip. “Gideon . . .”
Toni was so goddamn sexy and she didn’t even know it. No wonder that asshole didn’t want to give her up. I inched closer to her on the couch. “But if it was just us—no fate, no family, no coven—you care about me, don’t you?”
Her face heated and she looked away. She was afraid, afraid that mating was just another way to trap her, but it wasn’t. It was love. Pure and simple.
I reached out and took her hand in mine. She seemed so small and fragile, but my mate was stronger than she appeared. “I care about you.”
She met my gaze. “I don’t even know what love is.”
I put her hand against my chest. “My heart beats faster when you’re near. That’s love.”
“Gideon—”
“I want to wake up every morning to make you breakfast and see you smile. That’s love.”
“It was really nice that you made a meal for me,” she said. “But I don’t—”
I pulled her to her feet and met her eyes. “I love pleasing you,” I said, stepping forward and forcing her to back up, “and making you call out my name in passion. That’s love.”
She opened her mouth to protest again, and I pulled her to me, pressing my lips to hers. I stroked my arms down her back, and with each touch she relaxed more against me, sinking into our kiss. I just wanted to make her forget everything outside of this cabin, outside of us.
Her coffee cup fell from her hand, and she wrapped her arms around me.
Breaking our kiss, I met her gaze. “You don’t think this is love?”
