“They said you’d sworn never to take a mate,” I say, wanting to understand more about their world as well as distract him, if only slightly. “That you’re not the claiming type. What does that mean?”
A breath moves through him, making his bare chest rise and fall slowly.
I keep my gaze forward after that, giving him spaceto choose silence if he wants it. After a few paces, his voice stirs the air again.
“I made that vow a long time ago,” he says, each word deliberate, measured like he’s walking a path he hasn’t revisited in years. “I thought it necessary then as I became the alpha.”
He pauses, then adds more quietly, “I told myself it would keep things simple, not entertaining any of the women who offered themselves as a potential mate. It was easy then, telling myself to focus on the pack and not my own needs, because none of them stirred that desire within me.”
I glance toward him again, catching the furrow of his brow and the way his gaze stays fixed ahead. I trust he’ll tell me if anything I’m asking is too forward, but I do wonder why speaking of this seems to put him on edge.
“But claiming and being mates…” I press gently, “what does it actually mean?”
He finally looks at me, golden eyes catching the light, the warmth in them shining with…desire now.
“It’s not claiming in the sense of ownership,” he rumbles. “It’s a bond between two souls. A recognition in both parties that they’re not complete without melding with the other. It’s said by those that have experienced it that it isn’t truly something that can be chosen if it’s real. It’s destined from the moment both souls are born.”
His words instill a sense of wonder at the thought. Like their bonds to animal spirits, it sounds beautiful. A connection that anyone would be lucky to experience.
“And the vow you made?” I hedge, unable to hold his gaze as I finish. “Is it still…true?”
We reach a bend in the trail where the trees part just enough to reveal the mountains in the distance, their peaks softened by a curtain of morning mist. I feel the weight of his gaze as he turns to look at me once more.
Our footsteps falter as I return his gaze and let the silence stretch, warm and steady between us. The breeze stirs the hem of my shirt and lifts the edges of his dark hair, but neither of us moves.
“You make me question it,” he admits, somehow not coming off possessive, just…honest. “Everything I thought I was certain of shifts when I’m near you.”
He hesitates, then adds, “I know we barely know each other. I’m not trying to…force anything. You’re still trying to remember who you are and what kind of life you had before all this. You might’ve had someone you don’t remember. Someone you need to find your way back to.”
I look down, his words brushing gently against the fragile truth I keep tucked deep–because Ihavethought about it. In the quiet moments, in the hollow silences between who I was and who I might become.I’ve wondered if there’s someone out there with pieces of me in their heart and mind. A life I once belonged to. A love I might’ve promised.
He continues, gentler this time, like he senses the weight of the thought, like he wants to offer space for it. “I just…I don’t want to lie to you, or to myself. Not when it’s the first thing that’s ever felt…different.”
My heart aches in the hush that follows. Not just for the uncertainty of who I was, but for the strange, trembling truth of who I’m becoming…and how easily that truth seems to be stitching itself around him.
When his fingers brush mine again as we begin to walk, I don’t pull away.
Chapter 14
Wren
The river doesn’t listen to me.Again.
I stand ankle-deep at its edge, eyes locked on the slow-moving current, and I will it to shift. To rise or twist or shudder. I picture the water splitting sideways, just a few feet. I picture the current stalling out completely. I imagine it bending just enough to prove that something inside me is tied to the earth like the display of powers days ago.
Yet nothing happens. The river babbles along like it hasn’t heard me at all, or if it did, it found me unworthy of responding to.
I drag my hands through my hair, pushing it back from my face with a growl of frustration.
“Why do you suddenly hate me?!” I scream at the offensive water.
The sky is too bright, the wind too calm, and theground too quiet. Everything around me is soft and peaceful, and it makes me want to scream.
It’s been days since the meeting and the earth split around me…days since the world felt like itansweredme.
I’ve tried everything. The trees. The dirt. The wind. I’ve stood barefoot in every patch of ground within close walking distance. I’ve whispered, shouted, and begged to no avail.
No stir. No hum. No answer.
