The energy rolling off him smelled of both curiosity and excitement. That was so much better than him reacting to us with fear and disgust.
“That, um, isn’t exactly what I’m saying,” Briar replied, though he’d barely finished getting the words out before Leo launched right into another babbling stream of chatter.
“Am I going to shift into a snow leopard now?” He asked, eyes going wide. “Holy shit, that’s fuckin’ badass right there! Bring on the claws.”
Briar chuckled, then broke into relieved laughter. The best part of it all was that neither had taken their hands off me. Hearing him sound so eager and hopeful, I hated that Briar was going to have to disappoint him regarding shifting, but I was beyond thrilled that he hadn’t run screaming from the room.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, like, I’m seriously sad to have to tell you that it doesn’t work that way ‘cause the look on your face just took a load of worry off my mind,” Briar explained. “But I need you to set aside everything Hollywood and romance novels have told you about shifters, because our kind is born, not made. We don’t have in-between forms either, though there have been times when I’ve wished for one.”
The light in his eyes dimmed as his lips rapidly turned from grinning to frowning as he studied us.
“Then how can I be your mate if I’m just a human?” he asked.
“Your genetics might be human, but that doesn’t mean the fates didn’t create you just for us,” Briar explained as I stretched my paws out, not wanting Leo to be sad when this day was so unbelievably special to us.
As soon as our eyes met, I scooted the rest of the way forward until my upper half was draped across his lap. Purring, I rubbed the top of my head beneath his chin, eager to get some of my scent on him to start the bonding process.
“Does that mean I can plant a kiss on the top of his fuzzy head?” Leo asked.
“It sure does,” Briar replied as I purred louder. “It also means that you are the only one allowed to kiss us or touch us in an intimate manner from this point forward. Once a snow leopard is mated, that’s it for us; there can be no others, and someone trying would make us physically ill, not to mention violent and desperate to get as far away from them as possible.”
No other words were needed. Leo hugged me and kissed the top of my head, then lifted my face and rubbed noses with me the way Briar had earlier, drawing a louder purr from me.
“Why was he curled up against the door when I came out of the bathroom?” Leo asked. “He seemed upset and even a little scared, or am I reading too much into what I saw?”
“No, you are spot on,” Briar assured him. “He spotted my bondmark but not his own when we were undressing to get ready for bed. He started to panic, because we’d just been making out and frotting against the door, and he was scared that he’d done something wrong by touching me when I was no longer his. I didn’t see my bondmark until he pointed it out to me, but I saw his and tried to draw his attention to it, only we heard the door to the bathroom opening, and he got scared and shifted instead.”
Leo gasped, then hugged me so tight I let out a littlemurphas he squeezed the air out of me. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to explain this to my dads, but going away on holiday and winding up with two snarky, fuzzy, adorable snow leopard mates officially makes this the best vacation ever. I am going to be seriously pissed if I wake up in the morning and find out I really slipped on the ice, knocked myself out, and dreamed all of this.”
“Not a dream,” Briar declared, wrapping us in a hug and holding us close. “Not even fuckin’ close.”
Chapter 7
Briar
Waking in the morning to Maverick, still in his fur and held securely in Leo’s embrace, was the best feeling in the world.
I was mated.
Well, not in the fully formal sense of the word, since neither Leo nor Maverick wore my claiming bite yet, but I was confident that would come once we had the chance to get over all the shocks we’d been hit with yesterday. That Mav had panicked so badly he hadn’t wanted to shift back out of his fur still concerned the hell out of me. Of the two of us, he’d always been the more traditional, at least when it came to the formal rules and customs of our snow leopard culture. I got what had freaked him out, but I don’t know how well I’d have handled things if our mate marks had tied us to different people.
There was no way I’d have just been able to quit wanting him, and there was no way Mav would have allowed me to touch him after that. I think it would have broken something in me if the fates had been so unkind to us. I’d forever be grateful that didn’t turn out to be the case.
Seeing the way Leo had taken the whole shifter and mate thing in stride was still a bit mind-blowing. I was afraid he’d wake and freak the fuck out when he realized that none of the events of the day before had been a dream, so I carefully slipped from the bed in search of a bit of caffeine-infused brain juice to wake me up in the hopes that I’d be on top of my game if that happened.
If I could persuade him not to flee the cabin for parts unknown, we had a true chance to make things work. Short of telling us he’d been raised by his dads and what he did for a living, he’d shared very little about himself, despite peppering us with questions. Shambling out to the kitchen in thick fuzzy socks, I snagged an energy drink and cracked it open on my way out the back door to stand on the porch and see what the weather had in store for us today.
No fresh powder. Damn. With the way the skies had darkened yesterday, I was certain we’d be hit with a deluge of fat, fluffy flakes for Mav and me to roll around in. While there was still plenty of pristine snow left unspoiled by our romp yesterday, it was at least several days old, with that hard crust on the top that wasn’t as much fun as fresh powder. Ah well, it wouldn’t stop us from rolling around in it, as long as we weren’t chasing our mate down if he decided to take off on us.
I didn’t think he would, though. I truly didn’t. While we’d all been mentally worn out by the time we’d crawled into bed with Maverick’s furry butt in between us and me curled up behind him with my hand on his side, Leo and I had chatted for awhile, though the conversation had mostly consisted of me reassuring Leo that he was, indeed, curled up in bed with a snow leopard, who positively had no issues with Leo cuddling him in the middle of the night and would not eat his face if he tried.
If he’d been conscious for Mav’s meltdown when he’d thought we would have to eat the carcass to get rid of the humanwe’d accidentally frightened to death, he’d have known without a shadow of a doubt that man flesh was definitely not on the menu, unless we were talking about a bit of licking and a nibble or two.
Should have grabbed a second energy drink. The first was half-drained, and my brain was still a bit foggy around the edges and hella muddled. With how low the sun was on the horizon, casting a slight bleed through the tree trunks, it was literally the ass-crack of dawn, which was never good for figuring out much of anything, unless it was what time to reset the alarm for. Yet I’d known I wouldn’t fall back to sleep if I’d remained in bed, and eventually, my restless thoughts would have induced squirms and wiggles, which would have inevitably woken one, if not both, of my mates.
I didn’t even have a bed big enough for mates back home. Just a double that barely allowed for two bodies to tumble around on it when Mav slept over, and the queen-sized bed at Mav’s wasn’t much better. We had so much we needed to work out and so many things we still needed to explain to Leo, and here I was, unable to even work out a proper starting point.
It was definitely phone-a-friend time, or in this case, phone a parental unit who would hopefully have some pearls of wisdom to impart upon me. It was a good thing my father was always up early, making his daily pilgrimage to the marketplace for fresh fruit, produce, and the seafood that made up the bulk of the menu at the diner he ran three blocks over from the cookie shop.
