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Gwen set their drinks on the table as she asked, “You okay?”
“Fine.” His world had been rocked, of course, but in a good way. Zander drew her close, drinking in every little detail of her face, quietly savoring the knowledge of what she was to him. “I’ll be even better when your shift is over and I can get you home.”
“Not long to go.”
As Gwen walked away, he said to Ally, “I have no idea how to tell her that I believe she’s my mate. She’s not a shifter; she wasn’t raised knowing that she’d one day be mated. She won’t be prepared for it or for how much the mating bond will demand of her.”
Ally gave him an understanding smile. “Yeah, it will come as kind of a shock. This isn’t going to be easy. I don’t envy you having to explain it to her.”
“And if she were to ask me to confirm that she was, without question, my true mate, I wouldn’t be able to prove it until we felt the pull of the mating bond. I don’t know if my belief that she’s my mate would be enough for her. Not when she still holds back from me.”
“She only holds back because she doesn’t realize this is serious for you.”
Zander ground his teeth. “I marked her. I told her that she’s mine.”
Ally snorted. “Everyone knows shifters are territorial over pretty much everything, even over what we consider temporarily ours. Unless you’ve told Gwen in no uncertain terms that you want something long term with her, she’s unlikely to be aware of it.”
Well, no, he hadn’t been clear about it. He was regretting that now. “There’s so much shit going on around her. The question is . . . if I tell her she’s my mate, will it make her happy, or will it make her feel like yet more stuff is being piled on her?”
“I don’t know.” Expression thoughtful, Ally worried her bottom lip. “Look, I know this will be hard on you, but maybe . . .”
“What?”
“Maybe it would be best to keep the true-mate thing to yourself for now. Tell her this is serious for you. Make her believe it. Let her see that she’s important to you. If she’s secure in what you feel for her, she’s more likely to accept that you’re mates than if you simply blurt it out at a time when she’s still unsure what’s going on between you.”
Zander scrubbed a hand over his jaw, knowing Ally was right but not liking it because . . . “Not telling her, resisting the urge to claim her, will be extremely difficult for me and my wolf.”
“Yes, but with all this crap going on, she needs something good in her life right now. At the moment, that’s you. Keep being that good thing that’s distracting her from the bad. Keep being the person she can relax with. When she’s ready to hear it, you’ll know.
“You’ve already lured her to you, Zander. Now you just need to keep her with you. Use everything you have in your arsenal, including your pack mates. We’ll be behind you on this. If she’s yours, she’s also ours.” She patted his arm. “Congrats. Your days as a bachelor are long gone.”
“Why are they long gone?” asked Bracken as he and Derren joined them.
Zander told them his belief that Gwen was his mate. All the while, he kept his eyes locked on the source of his current emotional mayhem, letting the knowledge that she was his mate sink in and fill him up.
“Makes sense.” Bracken took a swig of his beer. “Just because you can’t feel the pull of the bond doesn’t mean it isn’t there, Z.”
Derren nodded. “It just means something’s blocking it, and that could be any number of things. Do you think she’ll react well to being part of a pack?”
Ally drummed her fingers on the table. “According to Marlon, when Gwen was a kid, she used to wish that she was part of the pack that occupied the land near the trailer park where she lived.”
“Marlon really does like to chat,” mused Zander.
Ally shrugged. “He wants her happy. He thinks you could make her happy. Anyway, my point is that I think it would help if we all sort of embrace her and make her feel like she’s one of us, which she is—though she doesn’t know it yet. If she can associate our pack with safety and security, she’s less likely to freak out when she realizes she will be part of it.”
“I’m not so sure Nick will be happy to embrace her,” said Zander. Before he’d left pack territory after their brief visit, Nick had pulled him aside to talk about Gwen.
“I have it on good authority that Gwen’s not a threat to the pack—if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have let her in the same house as my mate and daughter. Derren won’t tell me why she can be trusted, only that it wasn’t his secret to tell. I don’t like that, but I respect it. Still, I’m hoping that you’ll tell me at some point, because it has to have been something big for her to have won over four of my wolves, especially Derren—he’s almost as jaded as you are.”
“It’s not my secret to tell either,” said Zander. “It’s hers. I won’t break a promise. I gave her my word, and that means something to me.”
Nick lifted a brow. “And the fact that I’m your Alpha doesn’t?”
“Why don’t you just say what you really want to say instead of asking probing questions.”
“All right. You’ve marked her. Earlier, you glared at us all like you’d gut us open if we did a single thing to upset her. This isn’t some casual thing for you, especially if her feelings come before our concerns. So, I have to ask myself if this means you now have divided loyalties. She already has you keeping secrets from me for her, so you can’t say my concerns aren’t valid.”
“If Shaya asked you to keep something quiet from the pack, would you?”
“Yes . . . but Shay’s my mate, Zander. Gwen Miller is just someone you marked. Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me?”
Zander gave a quick, sharp shake of the head. “She’s not just someone I marked. She matters to me. Do I have divided loyalties? Depends on what it is you’ll ask me to do.”
“And if I asked you to stay home, to send Eli to Oregon in your place, would you?”
“No. I promised her that I’d see this whole thing through with her to the end.”
