“Okay,” he said.
I blinked. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” His voice was calm. Certain. “I don’t need the whole map yet. Just tell me where to stand.”
James was quiet for a moment. His thumb traced circles on the back of my hand, and even that small touch sent sparks skittering up my arm.
"Is that what you want?" he asked. "A permanent bond with me?"
The question hit somewhere vulnerable. I'd spent so long running from this—from him, from the pull, from everything the bond implied. And now here we were, tangled together ina sleeping bag on a frozen mountain, and he was asking me to choose.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I've never let myself want it. Wanting things is dangerous. Wanting people is worse. Everyone I've ever cared about has either left or been taken, and I learned a long time ago that it's safer to not get attached."
"But?"
I met his eyes. In the dim light, they were dark and warm and patient—so goddamn patient, like he'd wait forever for me to figure out what I wanted.
"But you make it hard to stay unattached."
He smiled. Just a small curve of his lips, exhausted and genuine. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't entirely meant as one."
"I'll take it anyway."
The silence stretched between us, comfortable now. The bond hummed, and I let myself feel it—really feel it, without fighting or analyzing. It felt like warmth. Like safety. Like coming home to a place I'd never been.
"There's something else," I said. "Something I need to tell you about the feral."
James's expression shifted, sharpening with attention. "Okay."
I pulled my hand from his, needing the distance for this. "When I have visions, they're not random. There's always a reason I see what I see. A connection. With the feral, I assumed it was because of what I am—whatever ability lets me find lost things, reach people who are unreachable."
"But?"
"But there's another connection." I forced myself to meet his eyes. "The bond I have with you—the mate bond—I feel it with him too."
James went very still.
"The feral," he said slowly. "The one on this mountain. He's your mate."
"Yes. Or he could be. The bond isn't complete—it's barely even formed. But it's there. I feel the pull toward him the same way I feel it toward you."
I watched his face, waiting for the reaction. Anger. Betrayal. The jealousy that would be perfectly reasonable when your mate told you she was bonded to someone else.
Instead, James was quiet. Thinking. Processing in that careful way he had.
"That's why you came up here," he said finally. "Not just because you saw a vision. Because you felt him."
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me because..."
"Because I didn't know how. Because I barely understand it myself. Because—" I broke off, frustrated. "Shifters can have multiple mates. It's common. Rae has six. But I didn't know if that was what this was, or if I was just broken somehow, feeling things I shouldn't feel."
"You're not broken."
The certainty in his voice made my chest ache.
