“I always thought we’d end up at your pack.” She settles back against me and watches the Glen slide by over my shoulder. “A quiet little life at House of Zorah. But this...” She trails off, like there are no words big enough.
“It’s like a dream,” I finish for her.
“It’s better than a dream.” She tips her face up to mine. “It’s real.”
I press my mouth to her hair so she can’t see my face. “I didn’t want to give you small. Not after everything you handed over to stand here. You earned the whole realm, Mara, and I meant to put every inch of it in your hands.”
She winds her arms around my neck and gives me her whole weight, her face hidden against me, breathing me in. I carry her on, our son riding warm between us. Then she lifts her head, and there’s a new sharpness in her eyes, her lion coming up under the surface.
“I’m going to need somewhere to nest. Soon.”
“Already handled.” I shift her higher in my arms. “There’s a den waiting on you, a proper one, the way our son should come into the world. And when it’s time, I’ll bring Sam and Claude through to see you through the birth. Whoever you want at your back, baby.”
She searches my face, something giving way in hers. “You really did think of everything.”
“I wasn’t going to get it wrong this time. Not when this is your forever home.”
She purrs.
It rolls up out of her against my throat, deep and content, the sound I’ve been starving for across all those empty nights, and it stops me right there in the middle of the road. I hold her and let myself have it. Then I start walking again, carrying her the rest of the way home, through the Glen I tore back out of the dark for the two of them.
Our new beginning.
50
Aaron
Another Six Months Later—The Glen
Ireach across the bed for her before I’m even awake, and my hand lands on empty sheets. I sit up. The other side’s been slept in and left, the light still thin in the windows, and I drag a hand down my face and tell myself not to do this. She didn’t leave.
But the thought’s already in me, stupid and familiar, sinking its teeth in deep. Did she leave me? Did she finally take a clear-eyed look at this life I talked her into and change her mind?
I’ve watched her be happy here. She laughs in our kitchen, nurses our son before dawn, curls into my side every night—and none of it stops the animal part of me from bracing for the morning she wakes up and remembers everything she gave away to be here.
Then the door eases open and she comes in with him on her hip, and everything in me goes quiet at once. Mara, in her nightgown and the robe she never bothers to tie, her hair loose, her tail swaying behind her.
Just the sight of her puts me back together. She crosses to me with the cub, and the room fills with them—honey, warm skin, that milky-sweet newborn smell.
“You’re up early,” she says.
I reach for the cub, both hands already going for him. “Here, let me?—“
“No.” She shifts him out of my reach, easy. “I’ve got it.”
She climbs onto the mattress one-handed, careful, and settles back against the headboard. I scoot in close and look at my son. Mother Fate, he gets me every time. Lucian.
He’s got my eyes, dark and serious, watching the world like he’s already taking notes on it. But his mother’s in him too—a pair of rounded lion’s ears tucked into his curls, a little tail that won’t hold still, curling and uncurling against Mara’s arm. A hybrid.
The future king of the Glen, half warlock and half lion, and not one soul here has so much as blinked at it. They love him exactly as he is—they line up to.
Mara works her breast free of her nightgown, and he’s rooting for it before she’s done, frantic, latching on with a greedy little sound.
“Lucian.” She laughs down at him. “Easy, boy.”
I can’t help grinning. I lean my shoulder into hers and watch him eat. It’s so good it aches.
Mara catches me looking and rolls her eyes. “I have been here six months, Aaron.” She says it fond, her thumb stroking circles on his back. “I delivered our cub in this very room. And you still wake up every morning sure I’m going to be gone.”
