Page 132 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

They go, still bickering, and the sound of them thunders down the stairs. I turn back to the mirror. The door opens again, and I sigh. “Girls—”

Marcus fills the frame in dark formal clothes, the collar high and closed, his hair pulled back off his neck. He’s shaved.

“You’re not supposed to see me yet.” I frown at him.

“You look so beautiful.” I can hear the awe in his voice.

“Marcus.” I melt at his words.

He pushes the door shut behind him with one hand, still looking. He looks at me until I have to fill the silence.

“Is something wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong.” He crosses the floor and stops near enough that I have to tip my head back. His hand comes up to the curve of my shoulder, two fingers settling over the mark. “You’re perfect.”

He says it without a scrap of teasing in it, and that’s worse than any line he’s ever used on me. My eyes sting before I can stop them.

“So are you.” My voice comes out unsteady.

His thumb strokes once across the silvered skin. “Are you nervous?”

“A little, yes.”

He draws me in until my forehead rests against his, one arm banding low across my back.

“I never thought I’d have this,” he says.

“A mate?”

“A home.”

My knees go unreliable, so I get a hand on his chest. “You had a home.”

“I had a house full of furniture I didn’t choose.” His mouth grazes my temple. “Until the two of you walked into it, I had no idea how much of me was standing empty.”

“Stop.” A laugh escapes me with tears behind it. “You’ve turned dangerous with words. Somebody needs to take them off you.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” he murmurs, and then he kisses me.

It’s soft. His hand cradles the back of my skull, his mouth moves over mine slowly, and every knot I’ve been holding since noon comes loose. I get both hands into the front of his shirt without meaning to, and then small knuckles hammer the door.

“You’re not allowed to be late to your own mating ceremony!” Mia bellows through the wood.

“And if you ruin her face you have to fix it yourself!” Bella adds.

Marcus drops his forehead onto my shoulder and groans. I laugh until my eyes water.

They’ve strung the lights between the trees. The clearing behind the pack house opens under a canopy of them, hundreds of small bulbs looped from trunk to trunk, lanterns hanging low enough to touch. Long wooden tables run in rows down the whole of one side, loaded end to end, with candles in jars set along the middle of every one. Somebody has jammed white flowers into every gap. Children tear between the table legs shrieking, and off to the left, a couple of men are arguing over a fiddle.

There’s a boy of about six under the nearest table with an entire bowl of frosting, and nobody has spotted him yet.

They part for Marcus as he comes through, and the ones closest to him drop their eyes. When he steps forward, three hundred voices go quiet at once.

Adrian waits at his shoulder in a dark jacket, a thin pale line still visible across his throat. Cole and Tomas keep still behind him, chins down. Tomas crosses his eyes at Bella, and Cole mimes a swoon at Mia. Marcus turns his head about two degrees, and both of them snap upright.

The girls go ahead of me. Mia carries the lantern with both hands, chin down, her ears scarlet. She keeps sneaking looks at the crowd to check if they’re watching her do it. Bella has the ribbon looped over her wrists, working hard at looking solemn. It lasts nine steps until she catches Rachel’s youngest waving and beams straight through it. My chest hurts watching them.

Zaheela meets us at the center with her hands clasped. “A bond is instinct,” she says, and her voice reaches the tree line without effort. “It arrives whether you want it or not, and it asks nothing of you.”