“Is that a surprise?”
“It is.” He pulls it out from behind him and holds it out to me. It’s a bouquet of sorts, wild roses, pink and red with sweetgrass.
I take the bouquet even if I don’t understand. “Thank you.” I lift the bouquet to my nose and smell it like I’ve seen the other she-wolves do when their mates brought them an offering.
He grins. “Do you like the way it smells?”
I nod at him. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought to put these together, but I like it. It’s wild and warm.”
“That’s what you smell like to me, sweetling.”
I pause and look at him over the bouquet. “What did you say?”
“That’s the way you smell to me. Wild and warm. Like the summer on the hottest day, like the Meadows after a long run and I’ve come home.”
“You can smell me?”
“I can. Realized it last night on your porch.”
I put a hand to my hair and laugh. “I thought I stunk. I was so worried about what you were smelling.”
He takes a step closer to me and loops an arm around my waist. “The only thing you smelled like was my mate. My beautiful, perfect, mate.” He kisses me so hard that I drop the bouquet as he sweeps me up in his arms. “I’m going to claim you tonight, sweetling.”
I nearly weep in relief. “Oh thank Luna.” I launch myself at him and wrap my arms around him. “I need you. Please.”
“Please?” He looks down at me. “You don’t need to ask me for anything. You demand it, you take from me, sweetling. Though, I do have a request for you.”
“Anything.”
“Be wild with me, sweetling.”
His eyes flash and I see his wolf. I understand what he means when he says wild and my wolf is only too happy to take my skin. She howls with delight when I lean in close and kiss Thorne.
“Mine,” I whisper against his lips before I throw myself away from him and into my shift. I hit the ground on all fours and take off through the meadow. I clear the treeline and plunge into the forest. I run past the places I’ve gone mushroom hunting. My wolf sprints to her heart’s content. She feels wild and alive, she yips when she looks behind her and sees our mate a few steps behind us. She pushes herself harder, wants to give him a proper chase and plunges into the river that snakes through the pack lands.
The cold water is a shock but it’s exhilarating in the best of ways. She shakes off the water from her coat and leaps over a fallen log. She’s about to double back towards the river when she catches Thorne’s scent but it’s coming from the wrong direction. It’s blowing towards us.
The scent is fresh. Our mate has been here recently. Her curiosity sparks and she takes off down the trail our mate walked. The run is short. A few minutes later we break through the trees and into a clearing. She lifts her head and sniffs, the area has been thoroughly marked as our mate’s. She slows to a trot and throws herself down in the middle of the clearing. She’s on her back, rubbing her own scent into the grass when Thorne appears above us. He kneels in front of us and our wolf stands. She rubs her snout against his cheek.
“Do you like it? If you do, I struck a deal with Ronan for it.”
I shift and stare down at my mate. He looks up at me expectantly. I put my hand on his head. “You-wait, this is yours?” I look around the clearing. It’s so familiar. I’ve been here before. Trees ring the clearing, sweetgrass blows around our legs and I can hear the sound of the river nearby.
“It’s ours,” Thorne tells me. “If you’ll have it, this is where I’m going to build our home.”
I realize I do know where I’ve seen the clearing before. This is my first time seeing it in real life, the other time was in the mate dream I had with Thorne.
I grab onto his shoulders. “I love it. I-oh my goodness.”
Home. I’ll have a home. One all my own. One fated and made just for me that I know I’ll never lose. I drop to my knees with Thorne and kiss him.
“I love it. This is the best gift I could have ever been given. Thank you.”
He kisses me back. “No, thank you, sweetling. You’ve given me a life. You gave me my purpose.” He lays me down on the sweetgrass and kisses me again. “For every day that I spent without you, for every single night you were alone, I will give you ten more with me at your side, with you in our home.”
I wrap my arms around him and pull my mate close. The heat of his body rises up around me, it swallows me whole and mingles with the desire crackling between us across our bond. I breathe in his scent, press my mouth against the base of his neck and nip the flesh. Thorne leans over me, bares his neck to me and nudges me closer.
“Claim me, sweetling.”
