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She smiles back at me. “If the announcement needs to wait, then you’d better get inside before someone sees you out here.”
She has a point, and I nod at Scratch to get inside.
He hesitates before he does so, and the soft sigh he lets out does not get past me.
I know he is going to have the most trouble adjusting. We have gone from having nothing, to claiming a whole town as ours to rule over. It is a lot, and that is why I am trying to control how quickly things happen.
I step into the house after Scratch and close the door behind me.
Lita’s face still seems red while she gazes thoughtfully at Scratch.
It occurs to me that it is not going to be easy to communicate with our mate while my mother is gone, and while we are still waiting for Fox to arrive with Snake.
She smiles at Scratch, reaching out to touch his arm.
It’s instinctive to want to touch each other, but I notice it makes my brother flinch.
He is not used to this kind of attention.
None of us are, but that does not explain his reaction.
Lita pulls her hand back and crosses her arms under her chest.
I look at him until he looks back at me.
“What is wrong?” I ask, in a low growl.
“Nothing is wrong,” he snaps back.
He moves past Lita, going into the living room after a second of hesitation.
I move toward our mate, and I touch her upper arm.
She looks up at me. “Thank you for saving our town.”
Our town. Hers and mine.
It belongs to us now.
All we have to do is claim it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Scratch
Idonotknowhow to feel when our mate touches me. We are alone with her, and she seems to be interested in us, but I cannot make myself believe any of this is real.
It is too perfect. Leaving The Abyss and finding a true mate was my dream for so long, and yet now that it is beginning to come true it feels like it is an illusion that might shatter if I try to hold onto it too tightly.
So, I move out of the hallway, where my mate was attempting to make some sort of connection with me. Even if she cannot hear anything I tell her, she is open and willing to find a way to communicate with me.
I should not have walked away.
It is not what any of my brothers would have done.
I know if Fox was here, he would have her halfway to her bedroom by now, drowning in kisses and making her beg for more. Snake may be content to follow his lead, but I know he would have grabbed the chance first if he’d had it, too.
Now, she is in the hallway alone with Scar, and I know he will be making sure she is feeling better after I was rude to her. I clasp my fingers around the stone I’ve carried since I was a small child. It is a simple grey stone with a smooth surface that I have been attached to ever since I laughed for the first time that I can remember. Scar had taken me out to the forest that night to hunt, and we had failed at capturing a meal, but he made me feel better by carrying me out to the river where he taught me how to skim stones across the surface of the water.
