He'd waited thirty-four years to find his mate. He'd wait a hundred more if it meant keeping her. But he didn't have to wait anymore. She was here, marked and claimed and gloriously, permanently his.
His bear rumbled with contentment, and Corin finally let himself drift. For the first time in weeks, his sleep was dreamless and deep.
She was safe. And she was his.
35
CHLOE
The first bee appeared on a Tuesday.
Chloe was kneeling in Corin's orchard, her bare hands pressed flat against the soil, when she heard it. A single, tentative buzz near her left ear. She held perfectly still, barely breathing, and watched as a honeybee landed on her wrist.
It walked across her skin, antennae twitching, then lifted off and flew toward the hives.
She sat back on her heels and laughed.
"They're coming back," she called to Corin, who was checking frames three rows over. "I just had a visitor."
He straightened up, a grin spreading across his face. "That makes twelve today. Up from four yesterday."
"Twelve." She pressed her hands deeper into the soil and felt it, the steady pulse beneath the frost, warm and alive and reaching back. No fear. No recoil. Just recognition, like an old friend greeting her after a long absence.
The land was healing. She could feel it in her blood, through the bond that had always been there but that she'd never trusted enough to use. The corruption was fading, the poisonedchannels clearing, the ancient magic settling back into the earth where it belonged and she was helping it.
A week ago, she'd nearly died channeling that magic. Now it flowed through her as easily as breathing.
"You're doing that thing again," Corin said, walking over to stand beside her. "The glowing thing."
She looked down at her hands. Faint silver light traced the veins beneath her skin, pulsing in rhythm with the earth's heartbeat. She hadn't even noticed.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize." He crouched beside her, pressing a kiss to her temple. "It's beautiful."
"It's still weird."
"Beautiful and weird aren't mutually exclusive." His eyes were warm as he studied her face. "How does it feel?"
"Like..." She searched for the right words. "Like I've been wearing gloves my whole life and finally took them off. Everything's sharper. Clearer. I can feel the roots waking up beneath us, the water table shifting. There's a patch of wild garlic about fifty yards that way that's about to break through."
He looked in the direction she'd pointed. "There's never been garlic there."
"There is now." She smiled. "The land's making up for lost time."
"Chloe!"
She turned to see Wendy coming down the path from the house, her dark curls bouncing, her overnight bag slung over one shoulder. She'd been staying at the inn for the past week, but today she was heading back. Back to her life, her work, whatever it was that seers did when they weren't saving their sisters from dark druids.
"You're leaving already?"
"My flight's in four hours." Wendy set her bag down and looked around the orchard, her brown eyes sweeping across the rows of trees, the white hive boxes, the patches of green pushing through the frost. "This place looks different than when I arrived."
"It is different."
"I wasn't talking about the plants." Wendy's gaze settled on Chloe, something soft and proud flickering in her expression. "You look different. Stronger."
"I feel stronger." Chloe stood, brushing dirt off her knees. "I can feel everything now. Not just the sickness or the damage. Everything. The way the roots communicate with each other, the way the water moves through stone, the way the soil composition changes from one yard to the next."
