Keegan beamed.“She’s one of the best people I know.”
“Okay!”Mairi clapped her hands.“I think that’s enough about me.”
“Go ahead and take a break, Mairi.”
“What?”she asked, startled.“We just opened.”
Keegan waved her hand.“Yeah, but the rush will be in about half an hour.Plenty of time for talking or ...other stuff.”
“There will not beother stuffgoing on,” Mairi grumbled, giving her cousin the stink eye.Despite that, a blush warmed her cheeks.
“Thank you, Keegan,” he said.“We can talk in the back again, Mairi, if you’d like.”
Slowly, she marched in front of him, as if she was walking toward the gallows.The glances she took over her shoulder were filled with equal parts shyness and desire.Her words were one thing, her body language something else entirely.Once they got to the break room, he reached for her hand and turned her around to face him.Holding tight even as she tied to yank it back.After a moment, she gave up.
“You don’t need to hold my hand,” she muttered.
“How else am I to win you over and get you to fall in love with me?”
She blinked up at him, jaw dropping slightly.“That’s not funny.”
“Who’s laughing?”
She sighed.“I’m not sure if you’re just cruel or oblivious.”
“We’ll get back to that in a moment, but first there are a few things I’d like to clarify,” he said.“Not to justify my actions, but to explain about my wolf.You see, he laid dormant all my life, and the moment I caught your scent, he woke up.”
Mairi looked at him, brow furrowed in confusion.“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Let me ask you a question.Who helped you during your first transition?”
“My parents and Gran.”
“I had no one,” he murmured.
She frowned in confusion.“What about your da?”
“Nae.He was an asshole, if you remember.Only told me I would shift, but not how.Or what to do.What to think.Not even to warn me there would be pain and terror.That first time, all I remember is the tremendous agony as my bones broke and my skin split.I had no idea what it meant to be a wolf.”
Her brow furrowed as she listened.
“I hated who I was,” he continued.“I hated this thing I became once a month.A slave to a beast I didn’t know or even care to understand.My gran tried many times to get my da to turn over my raising to her, but he refused.Eventually, I just didn’t care anymore, and I buried all of it in the deepest, darkest region of my mind and soul.”
“Is that why you didn’t know who I was?”
“That you were my mate?”
She nodded.
“My wolf surged to life,” he said.“For the first time, I heard him.Felt him.We ran that night, and I remember all of it.How amazing it felt.”He moved a piece of her hair behind her ear.“I thought it was all bullshit, you know?I had this friend in university who kept telling me how great it was to shift, and I couldn’t figure out why he’d lie.But the moment that mate bond snapped into place, my world opened up.My thoughts.My emotions.Everything I thought was a lie turned into truth.Because of you.”
Her mouth opened in silent surprise.“I-I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“I’m going to learnhowto be a wolf,” he said softly.“Alpha Jericho has agreed to teach me, and I would love to prove myself to you.To prove this between us is more than wolf hormones.”
Indecision darkened her gaze.
“I don’t know,” she hedged.“There’s still the fact you think I married you for your money and your title.”
