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"What?"

"You're smug."

"What? I am not."

"You're extremely smug. It's structural. It's holding up your whole face." She pokes my chest. "Say something stoic. Fix it."

"Coffee's downstairs."

"There it is." She chuckles.

She drops her head back onto my chest and I lie there letting a woman make fun of me in my own bed. And, I understand that if the world ends tomorrow at midnight, this was the most important thing. Right here. Twenty minutes of gray light and an arm I can't feel.

Then she says, into my chest, "Last night. You said it wasn't a claim."

"It wasn't."

"So what is one?"

No one has ever asked me that before.

"It's a bite," I say. "Here." I put two fingers where her neck runs into her shoulder. "It takes about four seconds."

She goes very still under my hand.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"No ceremony. No coven. No..." She waves a hand. "Candles?"

"Well, you can but you don’t have to. No."

"How many people have to agree to it?"

And there it is. The question my whole life is standing on.

"Ideally it should be both fated mates so two," I say.

She sits up.

I make myself say the rest, because I’d rather she hear it from me.

"It can be broken. A powerful enough witch can cut a mating bond, but nobody walks away from it clean. And it's worse on fated mates than just regular mating bonds." I look toward the window.

I swallow.

"It only took you six months to tell me that."

"Yes. I guess so."

She looks at me for a long time. I let her. I've spent years learning how to be looked at by people who are deciding what I am.

"Okay," she says finally.

"Okay?"

"You could've claimed me in April. But, you didn't." She shrugs one shoulder. "I don't have to hold a parade about it. But I noticed. Thank you."