“Your one and only?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”Sephie could no longer look at the man she had fallen in love with, feeling as if a heavy weight was pressing down on her chest.“Is it because you have a mate that you stopped us from making love completely last night?”
“Partly,” he acknowledged.
“Which part?”she bit out, her disappointment almost too much to bear.
How could she be expected to just walk away from this man and the magic that surrounded him?
The man she had fallen in love with, possibly before she even met him, if her obsession with Ranulf’s carvings was an indication?
“The part where it would not be safe for us to have penetrative sex until you know about and have accepted that you are my fate mate?—”
Sephie gasped.“I’myour fated mate?”
CHAPTERELEVEN
“Sephie, you are only my fated mate, if you choose to be.”Ranulf took one of her hands in both of his.
She was Ranulf’s fated mate!
Not some other faceless, nameless woman she already hated with a vengeance, but her, Sephie Malcolm.
The heavy weight eased from her chest, her emotional pain of a few minutes ago evaporating completely.
She was the mate of a dragon shifter!
She wanted to shout it from the rooftops, from thecastlerooftop!
Instead, she reined back her euphoria.There were still things she needed to know.“I can make that choice?”
“Yes.”
Why the hell would any woman in her right mind choosenotto become the fated mate of this gorgeous, sexy, and protective man?Or any woman in herwrongmind, come to that!
Even so… “Would you have told me that if I hadn’t asked?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“When I believed you to be over the shock of the past twenty-four hours.The last thing I would ever want to do is take advantage of you when you are still recovering from being scared for your own life and that of your parents.”
Sephie studied him again, still sensing he wasn’t being completely honest with her.“Something isn’t sounding quite right here.What happens to you if I refuse the mating?”
“I would sicken and eventually die— I could have lied to you, my Sephie, but I will never do that either,” he explained when she gasped again, in horror this time.“If you do not consent to becoming my mate, then I will not want to go on living anyway.”
The thought of Ranulf dying was— No.Just no.“But if we’d had penetrative sex last night, the decision would already have been made for me?”
Ranulf winced.“I would have tried to give that to you, but once I was inside you, I know I would find it very difficult not to bite, mount, and mate you.”
Sephie surged up from beneath the bedcover to grab a hoodie, presumably Ranulf’s, from the bedroom chair.She quickly pulled it on over her nakedness.Which, when the garment reached down to her knees and the sleeves hung off the end of her arms, confirmed it definitely belonged to Ranulf.
There had just been something so—so visceral in hearing Ranulf saybite, mount and mate you.Even hearing those words caused a melting heat between Sephie’s thighs, her breasts suddenly feeling hypersensitive.
She turned to stare across the room at her lover.Ranulf’s muscular chest was bare above the duvet, his hair tousled, those green eyes—that really did occasionally have silver flames dancing in their depths—fixed on her intently.His expression was once again guarded.
