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I watch how the faint electrical light plays off of the golden band.
He’s yours, murmurs the Luna.
I know, I murmur back.
I hold out my hand. “Of course I will. I’m yours.”
He slips the ring on my finger, then kisses the knuckle in front of it. “And once we make it to the full moon, you’ll make me yours for life.”
I grin down at the ring nestled perfectly on my finger. “Yeah, I will.”
* * *
The Luna won’t be upfor a couple of more days. Aleks has his phone with him, but shocker: there’s no service in the shack or the woods surrounding it. I kind of want to hide out with my vampire for as long as he’ll let me, and based on how he doesn’t seem to be in any rush to go, it would be easy to convince him.
It’s not fair, though. He’s done so much for me, sacrificed even more, all while taking on the mantle of being Muncie’s head vamp shortly after losing Roman. In so many ways I’ve been selfish. It’s about time I start thinking about what’s good for Aleks, and not just me.
He didn’t come out and say it, but I’m pretty sure that he didn’t sleep a wink since he found out I left him. Based on my head start and how little rest I got, to catch up to me as quickly as he did, he couldn’t have.
Vampires don’t need as much sleep as humans and shifters do. Three straight days of running while worrying about his beloved? He was probably pushing exhaustion when he found me, then he had to deal with Christian. Shortly after he slid that ring on my finger, he curls up around me and knocks the hell out.
He’s sleeping so deeply, the only sign that he’s even aware that I’ve left the straw nest is when his fingers flex, clasping the air where I’d been laying over a few seconds ago. His flawless brow furrows, drawing attention to just how peaceful he was. I barely resist the urge to kneel next to him, caressing his porcelain cheek with my fingers.
He almost looks like a statue laying there. But even the masters weren’t imaginative enough to come up with a male as shockingly beautiful as my Aleks.
I glance down at the ring on my finger. My vampire husband.
He wants to have a wedding. He murmured that last night right before he fell asleep. A big wedding where we can invite every Cadre vamp in Muncie to witness him making me his wife. Instead of keeping me as his dirty little secret—like Kyle did, and like how I feared for so long that Aleks was doing the same thing—he has this fierce need to show me off.
I’m not saying no. I mean, I’m wearing his ring, aren’t I? I just think we need to wait until things settle down to talk about that. At the very least, let’s focus on our upcoming Luna Ceremony first.
I’m a simple she-wolf. I don’t need much in life. As long as I’ve had the basics to survive, I’ve been satisfied. Even so, I think being Aleks’s beloved has spoiled me a little. As much as I don’t want to return to real life, I’d rather not bond Aleks to me in a feral’s shack.
I let him sleep, though, because he needs it. By the time he’s finally stirring, it’s almost noon. I’ve packed up everything I brought with me, and as soon as Aleks notices that I was just waiting for him to wake up, I tell him I’m ready to go.
When he doesn’t argue, I know I was right to prepare to leave the shack. He has his responsibilities to the vamps and people of Muncie. I’ve kept their leader from them for too long. It’s time we head back.
* * *
Aleks iseverything I ever hoped to find in my mate. Gorgeous. Kind. Strong. A protector.
He’s also a stubborn bastard sometimes, a fact he proved when he immediately led me to the first supe-friendly airport he could find to charter a flight back to Muncie. Turns out that, after zig-zagging over the place, I ended up somewhere that was a two-day drive from our Fang City. By plane? We were landing in a small town outside about half an hour out of Muncie before sundown.
I hate planes. I’d never been on one before, but now that I have, it’s safe to say that it’s going to take a lot of convincing by Aleks to ever get me to go on one of those enclosed metal contraptions again.
Talk about a cage. The entire flight my wolf was torn between whining in discomfort and not understanding why I wouldn’t stick my head out of the closed window so she can sample the air up so high.
To make up for it, he doesn’t order a car to take us the rest of the way into Muncie. Jogging alongside of me in my tw0-legged form, we take a leisurely run from the airport to the borders of the Fang City.
In retrospect, I probably should’ve gone in the car. Maybe if I had, we might have avoided running into the two shifters waiting for us in the empty stretch between Accalia and Muncie.
It’s been months since I’ve seen her, but her sickly-sweet maple syrup scent lives rent-free in my mind. One sniff, and I know it’s her even before I see her. They’re not a surprise. I catch another—unfamiliar—shifter’s scent on the air with enough time to detour and enter Muncie at another point. It’s habit to go this way, since it’s the nearest path to the apartment without going near the haunted couple of blocks that everyone in Muncie avoids, but I didn’t have to.
I do anyway, because I can’t resist confronting her after everything she’s put me through.
I’m not surprised when Aleks tries to steer me away from taking that road. With his supernatural senses, he knows there are two shifters lying in wait for us. As my mate, he wants to shield me from them. As the head vamp of Muncie? Hecan’t.
Vampires and shifters are ancient enemies. Me being fated to end up with Aleks doesn’t change that. Though every instinct inside of me tells me that they’re here for me, there’s still a chance that they could represent a threat to the people in Aleks’s territory.
