“Altan,” he answered on the first ring. His voice shook. I’d tortured him with the distance, but I needed the time to process.
“Can you come over? I want to talk.”
He sucked in an audible breath.
“It’s not bad. I’m not breaking up with you. I promise.”
“Give me ten minutes.”
It took him eight to get to my apartment and knock on the door. I opened it, tears already in my eyes. “What?” He came inside. “What’s making you cry?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. You’re here and I missed you. It’s only been one day. It’s a little overwhelming the way I feel about you. I never thought this would be possible.”
Sothea, my alpha, my partner, my love, my…mate picked me up and sat on the couch, tucking me into his embrace so that I faced him. “It’s possible. I knew you were mine the second I saw you in the shop. Greta put my design in the machine, and I told myself that only my mate would bear that tattoo.”
“I’m your mate,” I whispered. It was more than a statement; it was sealing our fate.
“You are, if you will have me. We only talked for a few minutes about it, but no marriage contract comes close to the bond of fated mates. I’ll never look at another with lust. I’ll never cheat on you. There is no divorce. If we fight, we fight, but we always come back to each other. There is no walking away from a mate. Even if one day you decide you don’t want me anymore, I’m bound to you forever. That isn’t a punishment either. There’s nothing I want more than to be bound to my beautiful mate for the rest of my life and, goddess willing, the afterlife.”
I laid my head on his chest. “I want that. I want you and me for the rest of whatever time we have. I love you, Sothea.”
He cupped my chin, bringing my face up to his. “I love you, Altan. My bear loves you. All we want is for you to be happy.”
“I am.”
We shared a few sweet kisses and then he held onto me. “What do you want to do today?” he asked.
“I want you to mark me. Isn’t that what shifters do?”
“I kind of already have. With the tattoo. But I’d like the traditional version as well.” He chuckled. “You already marked me. You kept apologizing, but I was so damned proud to wear your mark.”
“What if I hadn’t accepted you? And you have my bite on your skin.”
Sothea shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact I belong to you.”
“Is there a reason you haven’t marked me yet? If you knew I was yours?”
“Because you had to know the truth about me being a shifter before that. I’d be a real asshole if I marked you and then told you I turned into a bear at will.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“Nothing, sweet mate. Nothing.”
I pulled at the hem of my shirt and pulled it off. “Make me yours already, alpha.”
We ripped off our clothes and this time, making love to him was frantic. Like he couldn’t get inside me fast enough. “Brace yourself on your hands and knees,” he said. “It’s how my bear wants you. So I can bite your shoulder.”
Three strokes were all it took for both of us to fall apart, and then I felt his teeth break the skin. I cried out with pain and then with absolute blissful ecstasy. We collapsed onto the floor in a heap of heaving breaths and sweat. “Wow.”
“Wow is right.” Despite our sweaty bodies, he wrapped me up in a hug. “I can feel you now. You’re happy and safe and feeling sated. I can sense everything about you.”
“It’s a shame I can’t feel the same things.”
“You will. In time. As our bond grows, you will get a sense of some things. It might not ever be as strong as mine.”
We lay there basking in the joy of our mating.
“Guess what?” Sothea asked.
