I was so fucking wrong.
My wolf wasn’t broken. My wolf waswaiting.For her.
I moved toward the signing table, each step drawn by a force I couldn’t have resisted even if I tried. And in that moment, her head lifted and her eyes met mine.
Green. Bright, vivid green with gold flecks that caught the light. They widened as she took me in, confusion and curiosity flickering across her face.
She was beautiful. Messy and real and so achingly gorgeous my chest hurt just looking at her. The slight smudge of ink on her cheek, the way her t-shirt slipped off one shoulder, the defiant tilt of her chin as she stared up at me.
My wolf was losing its mind.Mine. Ours. Claim her. Mark her. Never let her go.
“Mate.”
The guttural word ripped out of me. I couldn’t have stopped it if I fucking tried. Her mouth dropped open, maybe about to ask what the hell was wrong with me-
Then Thessa’s elbow connected with my stomach. Hard.
I grunted, the impact enough to make me blink, to pull me back from the edge of completely losing control in the middle of a human bookstore. My sister was glaring at me with murder in her eyes, her smile fixed and dangerous.
“Brother,” she said through her teeth, “what the fuck are you doing?”
Right. I just growled “mate” at a stranger, in public, while my eyes were probably doing that amber-flash thing that tended to alarm humans. Fucking hell. This was bad.
“Who are you?” my gorgeous mate asked, and her voice husky and warm. “And why are you calling me mate?”
“I’m so sorry about him. He’s…We just moved here,” Thessa said quickly, stepping in front of me with a laugh that was slightly too bright. “We used to live in Australia. The slang stuck. ‘Mate’ means ‘friend’ there. He calls everyone mate. It’s embarrassing, honestly. We’ve tried to break him of the habit but he just keeps doing it. Don’t freak Riley out, asshole.” She glared at me.
This was a lie. I had never called anyone mate in my entire two hundred and thirty years of existence because the word was sacred, because it meant everything, because I’d been waiting my whole life to say it to the right person. But something else caught my attention.
Riley.Her name was Riley. It was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard.
She was staring up at me with wide, confused green eyes, but not afraid. I noted that with a rush of relief so intense it nearly buckled my knees. This woman, who barely reached my chest, who had no idea what I was or what I could do, wasn’t afraid of me.
Thessa kicked my ankle.
“Right,” I managed, my voice rough. “Australia. Everyone.”
Eloquent. Years of diplomatic training and that was the best I could manage.
Riley raised an eyebrow. “Huh. I’ve never heard an Australian accent like yours.”
“It’s regional.”
“What region?”
“The... outback.”
Thessa made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a groan of despair at my complete inability to lie convincingly.
Riley’s lips twitched. She was enjoying this. Enjoying watching me fumble and fail. And instead of being offended, I found myself wanting to fumble more if it meant she kept looking at me with that spark of amusement.
“Well, nice to meet you, Ka-e-lan.” She pronounced my name wrong on purpose. I could tell by the way her eyes danced. “I’m Riley. Wolf book lady extraordinaire.”
“Nice to meet you as well.” My voice came out lower than intended. “Riley.”
Her name felt sacred on my tongue. I wanted to say it again. I wanted to say it a thousand times. I wanted to learn every variation of how it sounded, whispered and shouted and moaned...
“So what brings you to my signing, Outback?” She leaned back in her chair, arms crossing over her chest. “You don’t really seem like the romance type.”
