“So? I acted rashly.” Cassian swallows, and I watch his throat move. “Every instinct I have was screaming at me to mate you. All I could think about was how desperately I needed to make you mine. But this is yourlife, Juniper.”
And now regret crashes through our bond, like storm-swell waves under a tempestuous sky.
“And now?”
He looks up at me, his dark brown eyes haunted.
“It’s your life, too. Do you… do you wish we weren’t mated?” Hot tears slip down my cheeks, but I don’t bother swiping them away. I can’t move—can’t even breathe—as I wait for an answer that could break my heart into a million pieces.
“Juniper, I’ve wanted to mate you since the moment I first laid eyes on you. After we met on the beach, I went home and told my mother I’d found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”
“You did?”
Hope blooms in my heart, and I crawl back across the bed to him, setting a hand on his knee. “And you still want to spend your life with me?”
“I should be asking you that question.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “A thousand times yes. Cass, I don’t regret that we mated. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I took your choice away from you,” he protests, but I feel his hope, how it grows inside him, warm and golden like the summer sun.
“You’re my choice.”
“Oh, Juniper,” he murmurs, taking my hand from his knee and drawing it to his lips. He presses the sweetest kiss to the back of my hand and pulls me closer. “My love. My heart. Never, ever doubt that I love you. Doubt my decisions, my actions, even my character, but never doubt my love for you.”
“You love me,” I murmur.
He tugs me onto his lap, the wry smile on his lips vanishing the moment I capture them in a kiss.
“Constantly, endlessly, imperfectly, I love you, Juniper.”
I feel it through our bond, an incandescent warmth that lights me up, filling me with the purest, sweetest love.
“I love you, too. My mate.”
“Yours,” he vows. “Forever yours.”
He brushes his lips over his bite, and a shock of desire ripples through me.
I let out a whine, and he does it again, his lips and tongue hot against my skin.
“Cass,” I protest. “We need to talk about this.”
“Can’t help it,” he says, and I feel his smile against the crook of his neck. “You’re wearing my bite and nothing else. Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
I groan and rock against his hardness, the friction sending sparks of pleasure through me.
“T-talk first,” I pant.
He’s still smiling when he looks up and meets my gaze, and he nods. “Talk first,” he agrees. “We have all the time in the world for everything else.”
He bundles me into his arms and pulls my silky blanket up to our chins, and as we brush noses in the dim light of the foreign nest, it feels like we’re thousands of miles away from the rest of the world, though it waits right outside the door.
“Where… where are we?”
“My family’s private jet, which explains the locked and warded door I put between us and your other men. It wasn’t intentional; it’s a feature of the jet. My father is a councilor on the Council of Nine, so the security is top-notch. I didn’t mean to lock them out. The moment I had you safe in my arms, I stopped thinking. As to where we are now? My best guess is that we’ve landed at a private airfield about a half an hour outside of Deer Island. I have no idea how long we’ve been here. My rut completely obliterated my sense of time, and I’m sorry for that. For not being able to hold out against my rut. From the moment your brother called, I was fucking terrified that we wouldn’t make it in time, and then there you were, stumbling through the snow. It triggered something in me. Something I should have been able to resist.”
I brush my nose against his. “I didn’t mind. You alphas seem to think a rut will break me. It won’t.”
