Her face falls.
“We are not going to make it in our mate bond if we don’t start communicating better,” she tells me.
I drop my head. She’s right. I sealed her in our suite and put her to sleep with my magic. I kept the truth from her because I thought I could handle it alone, and all I did was make everything worse.
Her tail lifts from my lap. The tassel slides to my chin and lifts until our eyes meet. She gives me a smile, soft and certain, and my chest gives out. She’s been right this whole time.
I nod. “Okay.”
Her smile widens. I let mine drop because she needs to hear the rest.
“What I’m about to do is dangerous,” I tell her.
“Then we will face it together.” She holds my gaze. “You will not live without me?”
I smile because it isn’t a question. She already knows. I nod.
She cups my face with both hands and leans in until her forehead is against mine.
“I will not live without you,” she says. “I need you to understand that, Aaron.”
Those words hit me harder than anything else tonight. Nobody has ever said anything to me that meant more.
“I love you, Mara.”
“I love you more.”
I kiss her. It starts soft, her mouth curving against mine, and then I grip her thighs and stand. She wraps her arms around my neck and I carry her toward the stairs, kissing her the whole way. Her tail curls around my waist.
I’m probably going to die to save Wintermoon. But spending forever with my mate, I know it will be worth it.
23
Mara
The Next Morning
Aaron opens a portal in our living room and pulls me through it. The clearing hits me first—smoke and broken wood. Scorch marks climb the walls of the buildings facing the square and the smell of burnt timber and something sharp and metallic sits heavy in the air.
Leah is standing near the far end with her hands raised, magic pouring from her palms as the broken windows pull themselves back together piece by piece, and a wolf shifter is sweeping debris into a pile near the fruit vendor’s cart.
I take in the clearing. The warlocks are gone—the ones Aaron beheaded. Someone cleaned up the bodies, but the blood is still there, soaked into the ground in dark, ugly patches. I swallow hard.
Aaron closes the portal behind us and I keep hold of his other hand while he turns straight to the cottage. The magical chains are still wrapped around it, white and blue-gold light woven together, humming low.
“It’s not going to hold,” he says.
I look up at him. “How much longer do we have?”
“A couple of days. Maybe less.”
My tail goes stiff behind me.
Kade approaches from the Market area. She looks Aaron over and stops in front of him, offering her wrist.
“Damn, you look like shit,” she says. “I can help.”
Aaron grins but steps back from her wrist. His face still looks rough—the bruises from last night are healing quickly due to the mate bond, but haven’t disappeared. I wouldn’t mind if he took it. Vampire blood would speed things up.
