“Nothing?” Tristan asked gently.
“I like fixing stuff,” Colby admitted. “Engines. Bikes, mostly. I had this beat-up BSA back before Nico—” He stopped, damning himself for letting that name slip out.
Tristan didn’t speak, but he didn’t pull away, either.
Colby took a deep breath. He wasn’t there anymore. He had to hold on to that. “I rebuilt it from the frame up. Took me forever. But when it finally ran…” He shook his head. “Best feeling in the world.”
“Sounds like you already know what you’d want,” Tristan said.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“It matters to me.”
God. That voice. That steady, unshakable voice that justmeantwhat it said. He still couldn’t quite see Tristan’s face in the dark, but he could feel the truth of him.
“You don’t know what Urban will decide,” he said.
“Matt’s not going to kill you,” Tristan said simply. “If he hasn’t done it by now, it means he has doubts. He’s a goodman. He’ll do whatever it takes to protect his pack, but he wouldn’tchooseto hurt anyone else. He’d only do it if he was forced to.” Tristan’s voice quivered slightly with the strength of his emotion. “And if he makes you leave, I could come with you. If you want me to.”
Colby opened his mouth to answer. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but what came out was, “Why?”
Tristan was silent for an instant. Then, he took a deep breath and said simply, “You’re my mate.”
The words dropped into the darkness, where they seemed to rebound around the silent barn until Colby’s head was filled with them.
“I’m what?” he asked faintly.
Tristan let out a breath, almost a laugh. “I wasn’t going to say anything yet. It felt unfair, with you locked up and everything so uncertain, but then I thought about it, and it seemed more unfairnotto tell you when I already knew. I felt it earlier tonight. We’re mates.”
He said it like it was something precious, not a threat or a leash, and Colby didn’t know what to do with that. He’d dreamed of meeting his mate. Before Nico, when he still believed in things. But Nico had taken even that and twisted it.
“No one else would want you,” he used to say. “But if you’re good enough, maybe I’ll claim you.”
Colby had known, deep down, that wasn’t how it worked. Fate didn’t barter. Mates weren’t earned or deserved. They just were. Or they weren’t. But the lie was repeated so often, and fear and loneliness had gnawed at him so long, that it had started to feel like a promise.
So now, hearing that word in Tristan’s voice—soft and sure, with no conditions wrapped around it—Colby didn’t know how to trust it.
He swallowed, mouth dry. The words rang in his head, louder now. He tried to say something, because Tristan was waiting, but what came out was a question he hadn’t known was there.
“What does that mean to you?”
He heard the rawness in his voice and hated it. But Tristan didn’t flinch.
“It means I’m with you,” Tristan said softly. “That you matter to me, before anything else. Well—apart from morality, I suppose. And maybe Jason’s cupcakes because, well, you know.”
He hesitated, long enough for Colby to feel the weight behind what came next. “But if what you really want is for me to back off, I will. You don’t owe me anything. I just wanted you to know.”
Colby’s breath caught. He didn’t say anything, but he turned the words over in his head, wondering if they were true.
Some part of him knew they were. Because even with his wolf still curled up tight and silent inside him, something deep in his bones had already recognized Tristan.
Being Tristan’s mate didn’t feel like a trap, but it didn’t feel safe either. It felt like standing on the edge of something both terrifying and wonderful.
TRISTAN
He’d told himself not to expect anything. But still, when Colby didn’t immediately confirm that he, too, knew they were mates, uncertainty crept in.
Colby hadn’t been thinking of the future—hadn’t been sure hehada future—so maybe it wasn’t surprising he didn’t feel it too. But even knowing that, for the first time Tristan doubted himself. It wasn’t as if he had a manual for what it felt like to meet your mate. What if he’d been wrong?
