He steadied the rifle, and let the red dot drift until it centered perfectly over Nico’s heart. He wouldn’t do it. Probably. But it was a nice thought.
Down below, Raphael caught sight of the laser and stopped dead in his tracks. “I’m just going on a hunch here, Nico. You might want to let go of the female,” Raphael said, his casual tone traveling to Sebastian’s ears.
Nico glanced down, saw the red dot, and slowly released Morgan’s arm, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. Assassin humor. Got it. A warning shot in the air would have sufficed.”
Morgan looked up, eyes blazing with curiosity and a spark of challenge. She couldn’t see him, but she was searching. Sebastian’s lips curled into a smile—dark, dangerous, and just for her.
“Did he seriously just have a rifle laser pointed at you?” the female with long black hair asked. She was pretty but didn’t hold a candle to the woman he knew was his.
“You can’t take the assassin out of the male,” Raphael offered.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Morgan, are you sure about this?” Another female said, presumably the one who looked like a librarian, but since Sebastian wasn’t looking at them anymore, he could only trust his ears.
“I’ve always liked a challenge,” the husky voice of his mate said.
Sebastian chuckled as he dismantled the rifle with practiced ease and stepped into the light spilling from the terminal, boots echoing on the concrete. He stepped out of the shadows, letting himself be seen.
The group tensed, every eye snapping his way. Sebastian moved with slow, deliberate menace—not because he wanted to frighten them, but because he couldn’t quite turn it off. He was a weapon, always had been. The difference now was that he was a weapon with more than a purpose for just killing. Now, he had a task greater than any target.
He stopped a few feet from Morgan, met her gaze, and let everything else fade. Excitement, fear, the jealous ache at the knowledge that others had known her first—all of it burned beneath his skin, but none of it showed in his voice when he spoke.
“Morgan,” he said, letting her name settle between them like a promise. “Welcome home.”
And for the first time in a hundred years, Sebastian felt a future open before him—sharp-edged, uncertain, and filled with the kind of excitement he’d been born for.
Morgan watched Sebastian step from the shadows, his presence swallowing the last bit of distance between them. For a split second, she was still back on the plane, knuckles white on the armrest as the wheels bumped onto the tarmac. Sheremembered the cold when she opened the hatch, the way the Montana wind slapped her cheeks and clawed at her hair, and how the stairs felt steeper than any she’d ever climbed—like descending into a new life. Morgan could feel something building—electric, prickly, the kind of tension that made her skin itch and her instincts flare.Predator, she thought, and shivered for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold.
She wasn’t a shifter. No claws, no fur, no predatory instincts thrumming beneath her skin. She was just Morgan: solidly, stubbornly human.Butshe was also animus, the rare thread in her blood that the Damarians called a blessing—one that could bind her soul to a mate and make him complete. Verion, the Damarian who’d inked the stylized bear on her upper arm, had told her quiet stories after he’d dropped the bomb of her future: of fate, of bonds that could not be broken, of a certain bear shifter who’d waited centuries for his other half. She’d listened, half skeptical, half desperate to believe that maybe the universe had something bigger in store for her than the life she’d had so far. Now, faced with Sebastian in the flesh, all those stories felt too small.
She didn’t have a shifter’s senses, but she didn’t need them to feel the crackle of danger and destiny in the air. The airport around her faded, the cold and the wind and the echo of her friends’ footsteps all receding until there was only this: the man with eyes that seemed to see straight through her. Not just in the predatory, assessing way she expected—but with a glimmer of something else. Something that looked a lot like relief. Or gratitude. He was tall—of course he was tall—and broad-shouldered, dressed in black that managed to look both intimidating and annoyingly effortless. His hair was a shade too dark to be called brown, his eyes sharp and unreadable, and his mouth curled in a half-smirk that said he found all of this vastly entertaining.
Morgan’s first thought was:Oh, Verion’s description didn’t do him justice.Her second was:Well, at least I won’t be bored.Because who could be bored with a man who looked likethat?
Her pulse quickened. She wondered if he could hear it, if it sounded as loud to his shifter ears as it did to her. Verion had described Sebastian as “the kind of male who’d walk through fire and never flinch, but might stumble over a kind word.” Now, seeing him in the flesh—tension in every line of his body, jaw set with the effort of holding himself back—she understood exactly what that meant.
The mate pull was there, a subtle thrum in her bones. Not overwhelming, just undeniable—a magnetic thread tugging her toward him. She was grateful for the steadiness of it. There was enough chaos inside her already.
He moved with the kind of predatory grace that sent a ripple through every primal part of Morgan’s soul. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t need to. The world bent around him, and she imagined every eye—human and shifter alike—would slide away rather than meet his gaze.
He stopped a few feet in front of her, eyes scanning briefly over Nico and the others before landing on Morgan. She felt the weight of that look—cool, assessing, and then, unexpectedly, warm. There was a flicker of something like relief in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth softened just enough to be dangerous.
He’d stopped a few feet away, and the shaman group fell back, giving them space. Morgan drew a slow breath, letting the cold steady her, remembering what Verion had told her: “Damarian males are attracted to strength and confidence. Remember, this union between you two is no accident.”
She lifted her chin, meeting Sebastian’s gaze. “Home,” she said, voice calm, “isn’t a place. Although, you’re big enough to have your own zip code.” There was a cough of laughter butshe ignored it, her attention too caught up by the massive man before her.
He huffed a soft laugh—surprised, maybe, or just relieved to have something to anchor himself to. “I can agree with you on both counts. I’ve lived in my house for a very long time, but it has never felt like home. Not yet.”
Her breath caught at his words and the soft tone in which he spoke, something she had a feeling he didn’t use often. “Maybe we can change that.”Holy crap, who am I?Morgan silently asked herself. She’d always been pretty bold and outspoken, but she’d just met this man, a supernatural man, and she’d just insinuated that she’d help him make his house a home because they were mates.Mates, she whispered into her mind. Not boyfriend and girlfriend, not husband and wife; mates.
His mouth twitched—half smile, half warning. “I’ll take you up on that, and hold you to it.”
She shrugged, some of her nerves easing with the familiar back-and-forth banter she was good at. “It’s a good thing I’m a woman of my word.”
Morgan heard Nico clear his throat. “Sebastian, as agreed, Morgan is here by shaman law. She’s in your care now. I trust you’ll?—”
Sebastian held up a hand, never taking his eyes off Morgan. “I know the law, Nico. I also know how to keep what’s mine safe.”
