Page 49 of Claimed By The Tracker

She turned to look at me, and her expression was something I'd never seen on her before. Just her. Present and unhidden and more alive than anyone I'd ever met.

"This is the first time I have ever used this power without hiding it."

"How does it feel?"

"Like breathing," she said again. "Like the first breath after holding it for twelve years."

The bond shifted then—from background pressure to foreground presence, like a dial someone had finally stopped trying to hold down. It hummed between us, steady and undeniable, and my wolf went very still at the change.

"I want to tell you something," she said, "and I need you to just hear it. Not solve it."

"All right."

"I am not scared of the bond anymore. I was. I'm not scared of you—I wasn't, actually, from the parking lot. I was scared of what it would mean." She took a breath. "And I'm done being scared of things that belong to me."

"What does belong to you?"

"This does." Her voice was steady, her magic quiet at her palms—controlled, not contained. "The bond is mine too. Not just yours. And I'm choosing it—not because of what it means for the contract or the case or the Council. Because it's the first thing in twenty-eight years that's been entirely mine to choose."

My jaw went tight with the effort of holding still, with the effort of not crossing the distance between us and ending it.

"Then choose it," I said. "Out loud. I need to hear you say it."

She crossed the two feet between us and put her palm against my chest. Her magic sparked where she touched—warm, not painful, the ozone smell giving way to something softer, something that was just her, unmasked now. The wolf surged forward with a possessiveness that took my breath, and I had to work to hold it, to give her the moment instead of taking it.

My hand came up and covered hers.

"You're mine, Jace Mercer." Her mouth was close to my jaw now, her breath warm against my skin. "I decided."

"Say the rest of it."

"I choose you." Her fingers curled against my shirt. "All of it. The bond, the wolf, the twenty-eight years I didn't know I was waiting for. I choose you."

I kissed her before the last word finished leaving her mouth—slow at first, deliberate, my hand sliding up from her palm to cradle her jaw so I could feel the exact moment she stopped holding anything back. She tasted like cold air and certainty, and when she made a small sound against my mouth the wolf and the man agreed on something for the first time all morning: mine, mine, finally mine. Her free hand fisted in my jacket and pulled, and I let her, my arm coming around her waist to close the last of the distance between us.

When I finally lifted my head her eyes were bright, her breath uneven, her scent gone soft and open in a way I felt in my back teeth.

"Yes," I said against her hair.

Not agreement. Arrival.

We stood like that for a long moment—her palm on my chest, my arm around her, the anchor humming faintly at the post behind us.

"That's different," she said finally, her voice muffled against my jacket. "The bond. It doesn't feel like pressure anymore."

"What does it feel like?"

"Like something that's been looking for its place and just found it."

Then the wind shifted, and under the pine and the frost and the last trace of her, I caught something that didn't belong.

Then I saw them.

Chapter 16

Through Every Wall

JACE