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Cole nodded. “Well, that’s incredibly sweet of you. But I think the conclusion I reached last night was that it would be swapping one set of circumstances for another. Things are okay for non-shifters here now, but I don’t want to be at the mercy of that sentiment changing. I don’t want to give Noah a community and have him get attached to it, just to have to flee like my parents did.”
“That’s fair,” I said, digging into the oatmeal. “A smart choice, I think. And we can always adopt what we like from here and take it back with us for your pack.”
“Our pack,” he corrected with a grin. “It’s your pack, too, sweetheart.”
“Is it?” I asked. “I mean, I’ll still be human. I don’t think many shifters will consider me part of the pack.”
“Of course you’re part of it,” he said, his brows knitting as he smoothed his hand over my back. “I’ll be alpha, and you’ll be my mate. There are no technicalities or fine print that say you are required to be a shifter to be a part of my pack. It’s my pack. You’re part of it if I say you are.”
I gave him a half-hearted smile as I pushed my oatmeal around in my bowl. Sure, maybe that was true in some ways. But my mind went back to the night before, to Cole telling me about the woman who came onto him.
“Do you think that girl would have made a pass at you if I wasn’t a human?” I asked finally.
Cole stilled, and I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Marley, I thought we were in agreement about you not becoming a shifter.”
“Like I said last night, we may not have a choice in how people see me. I mean, I was announced and introduced as your mate last night to most of those people, and that woman still felt like it was okay to come onto you.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”
Cole’s mouth worked a little, and he sighed. “That isn’t because you’re a human.”
“Then what is it?”
Cole withdrew his hand from my back and sat up next to me, rubbing his chin in that way he always did when he was thinking or stressed about something.
“She came onto me because I haven’t claimed you,” he said finally.
“Then just do it already!” I urged. “It’s not worth holding off if it opens us up to stuff like that. Cole, I don’t want to feel like I have to worry about women clamoring all over you when we’re apart.”
“Marley, it’s not that simple,” he said. “The process of claiming is a little intense.”
In that moment, it occurred to me that claiming might be the equivalent of marriage in shifter-speak. This whole time, I’d been flippantly asking Cole to marry me. “Is it a marriage thing or something?”
“What?” Cole asked, seemingly surprised by the leap in logic. “No, we have mating ceremonies for things like that.”
“Then what? You don’t want to be tied down or something?”
“Marley, you silly girl,” he said, taking my hand. “It has nothing to do with a fear of committing to you. Trust me, if it were that easy, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Hell, even if it weren’t easy, I’d do it.”
“So what is it?”
Cole shifted a bit uncomfortably, but I didn’t take my eyes off him. I’d been dying to learn what claiming was about. He’d made jokes about an unhinged sex act, but I’d thought he was just pulling my chain to get a rise out of me. Now that he was looking so desperate to get out of this conversation, I was starting to worry that claiming was something gross or painful.
He inhaled and breathed out. “All claiming is intense because it’s having sex while one or both partners are partially shifted.”
The words landed, but my mind failed to disentangle their meaning. “Is a partial shift even possible?”
“Yes,” Cole said, looking down at the bed as he fidgeted with the sheets. “It’s more like the kind of shit you’d see in a pre-clawset movie or something.”
I was quiet for a moment, trying to remember those old movies and what the shifters looked like in them. Somewhere in my distant memory, I thought I could recall mangy-looking creatures with patchy fur, clawed hands, and awkward-looking snouts.
“So, like that naked mole rat vibe?” I asked, trying to school my face.
“Naked…what? No. Just…” He sighed. “Here. Look at my hand, okay?”
He put his hand in front of me. His fingers elongated, his skin darkened to a shade similar to his dark brown hair, and his nails grew to tapered, vicious points.
I reached out to touch his hand, noticing that the areas of skin that looked darker were actually covered in soft, velvety fur, almost like a squirrel’s.
“Soft,” I remarked, quietly enamored.
