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Oh, I definitely shouldn’t have thought about Ayla’s white, sharp teeth at my neck. I knew that some other cryptids just didn’t get it. They thought it was a strange ritual that we sealed our love by sinking our teeth into our mate until they bled, but…well, they just didn’t get it.
As shifters, we had several different scent glands in different parts of our body. I’d heard theories that they were similar to human lymph nodes, but somewhere along the evolutionary chain, we’d diverted off into our own branch.
Our main ones were in our wrists on either side of our shoulders, just below our belly buttons and then in our inner thighs. But only one of them was our mating gland. It did vary from shifter to shifter whether it was on the right or left side, but we all had one.
Then that singular, sensitive gland was pierced by the teeth of our mate, and when their saliva entered our bloodstream, it released a deluge of euphoric bonding chemicals. I’d never experienced it myself, but I heard it was a high beyond any drug, and a happiness beyond reproach. It was love, undiluted, unmarred by the complications of life, coursing through the system like the ultimate blessing.
For so long I thought that I'd never have a chance at that; that my ghost of a mate was lost to me forever. But now that Ayla was in front of me and knew the truth, excitement bubbled through me anew. All the things I’d given up, all the things I’d refused to let myself think about, were suddenly on the table again.
Wild.
Except Ayla wasn’t a shifter, meaning she didn’t feel compelled to bite me and had no mating gland. But if she wasn’t a shifter, how were we fated mates? Why did shefeellike a wolf?
“Do whatever you need,” I answered. I most certainly meant it.
“Okay, close your eyes and open yourself up to me.”
My first instinct was to make a crass joke, but I quickly cut myself off. This wasn’t the time. Instead, I did as Ayla said, closing my eyes, trying to settle my mind.
It was then that something incredible happened. I wasn’t magic sensitive by any means. Some people could occasionally sense such things, but I was pretty much blind to it. I could stand next to a powerful sorcerer, and unless they were an active threat, I wouldn’t know they were magic users at all.
But I felt it the moment I was connected with Ayla’s own power. At first, I was thrilled, but then there was just something so…sooffabout it. Ayla said the Shriek had poisoned her magic somehow, made it into something she couldn’t access.
Well, that wouldn’t do at all. I wanted my mate,allof her, not perversion by a warlock with megalomania. I gripped at the strange feeling and ripped it away from her, casting it out of the both of us.
It was such a strange sensation, all of this only going on in our heads, and yet it felt just as real as if we’d used our own bodies. The more I ripped away at the wretched shadow, the more I felt the bright, comforting magic of my mate bleed through.
Soon she was also able to fight off the corruption on her own. Bit by bit, little by little, we found enough of her so she could fully cast a healing spell.
Was it weird that I found us working together in such a way romantic? Probably, and yet it absolutely was to me. We were holding each other’s hands, barely a breath away from each other, and working on something together. What more could I ask for?
Well, maybe for her to bounce on my c—
“There!” Ayla’s wide smile soon made me forget everything I’d been thinking about. “I’ve got it!”
I felt her send a purging blow of magic through herself, and after twenty-four years of having absolutely no magical skill, this was certainly an uncanny feeling. The blast wasn’t destructive in any way. Instead, I experienced a simmering glee, effervescent and full of joy that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere. Was this how Ayla always felt when she healed? No wonder she was so dedicated.
It didn’t last long; a minute, maybe two. But I felt it the moment the last of the shadowy curse left her, and it was justsooverwhelming in the happiest way. I was so swept up in the joy of it all, in finding my mate, working with her, in her being safe, that it was like my brain turned off and my instincts took over… and what they told me to do was kiss my mate.
The next thing I knew, my lips were crashing against hers, my arms embracing her like two halves of the same whole that were finally reunited. It wasn’t a lustful response, wasn’t an amorous attempt to sneak in an impromptu make out session, just a pure celebration of all that'd just happened for us.
But that quickly began to change as the seconds passed, probably because Ayla was kissing me back without reserve, her arms now wrapped around my shoulders. I hadn’t really expected her to be so into it, but soon her kiss was more demanding than mine, like she’d been dying of thirst in the desert and finally allowed her first long drink of cool water.
I wasn’t complaining about it. We clung to each other, our lips moving in a kiss that was growing more heated by the minute, but as much as I wanted to stay in her arms and just revel in what was happening, I knew that we couldn’t.
Not yet.
Breaking away, I took another long look at her, and God, if she didn’t have me hardening in my own pants. Her lips were swollen, and her cheeks were flushed, and now I longed to lay her down and fully seal our mating bond.
However, I knew both that I didn’t want to rush it and also that it wasn’t safe. Not at all...
I gently sat her back down on the same rock and took a deep breath. It was supposed to help clear my mind, but instead I was just filled with her scent, intoxicating me thoroughly.
“What?” Ayla said, sounding truly baffled and even punch-drunk as I took a long stride away.
“Listen, I need you to stay here, all right?” I wasn’t surprised when her mouth opened to object, because of course shewould. Ayla always objected to anything that involved her not sacrificing herself for others. “Look, I know we have a lot to talk about, but right now I need you to go back and find the others.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ayla argued as she jumped to her feet.
