Page 82 of Impawssible Magic

“I didn’t lurk.”

“You absolutely lurked. But it was endearing lurking. Protective stalking.”

“There’s no such thing as endearing lurking or protective stalking.”

“There is now.” I squeeze his hand. “I’m retroactively deciding it was charming. Romantic, even. Very murder cat of you.”

He sighs. Long and suffering.

I grin.

This is going to be fun.

TWENTY

ASLAN

Iwake to the sound of soft snoring.

She’ll deny the snoring later. I’ll never tell her.

Dawn light filters through my bedroom windows, painting everything gold. Leire is sprawled across my chest, one arm flung over my stomach, her breathing deep and even. Her hair is a tangled mess of red and bronze, half-covering her face. The claiming mark on her shoulder has faded to a permanent pattern—my tiger’s signature written into her skin.

My tiger rumbles contentment.

Mate. Ours. Complete.

For once, I don’t argue with him.

I lie still, watching her breathe, cataloging the freckles across her nose, the way her eyelashes fan against her cheeks, the curve of her mouth that’s just slightly parted in sleep. Memorizing this moment so I can call it up later, on the hard days, on the days when the world burns and the Warding Line strains and new threats emerge.

She shifts in her sleep. Her hand flexes against my stomach, fingers curling. Me, maybe. The thought shouldn’t warm me as much as it does.

I’ve held vigil before. Watched over wounded pack members, dying friends, the slowly cooling body of the woman I built a life with. Those vigils were heavy with grief and duty and the bitter taste of failure.

This is different.

This is watching someone I love simply exist. Breathe. Dream. Be alive and present and here, in my bed, in my life, in my future.

Dorothea would approve. The thought surfaces unbidden, but it doesn’t bring pain anymore. Just a quiet certainty that she wouldn’t want me to stay frozen in grief. She’d want this—want me happy, want me living, want me holding someone else close in the morning light.

Thank you, I think, to whatever part of her might still be watching. Thank you for loving me enough to want this for me.

There will be hard days. There will be danger. The Preservers are still out there.

But right now, in this golden morning light, with my mate warm against my chest⁠—

Right now is enough.

The knock on my door shatters the peace.

Leire jerks awake, magic crackling at her fingertips before her brain catches up. “What⁠—”

“Company.” I’m moving, pulling on pants, scanning the room for threats. But everything in me reads the visitor as harmless before I reach the door. Just... unexpected.

I open the door to find Grandmother Peach on my porch, carrying a pie dish covered with a checkered cloth. Silver hair piled in its usual gravity-defying arrangement, looking as impossibly put-together as ever for seven in the morning.

“Good morning, dear.” She beams at me, those too-bright eyes taking in my bare chest, my mussed hair, my general state of recently-interrupted intimacy. “I brought cobbler.”