A grin spreads across my face, and my heart ticks fast with delight. Yes. Our wedding. That’s why I have left Idalis in the cottage and roamed the forests of Athica.
Our union is just there. It’s so close. I will be there in a matter of minutes, and when I open the door, the scent of my mate will fill my lungs, and her body will fill my arms, and then I’ll be able to mark her with a sealing bite on her neck under the full moon. Followed by languid licks and open-mouthed kisses as I fuck her deeply and roughly just how she likes it.
I lengthen my strides, taking up more and more of the land with each step. Nearly running to see her.
I have so many things to say to her. I have so many promises to murmur into her skin.
The cottage stays the same distance away, but I do not break my stride. I move faster and faster until I am almost running—and then I am running, my legs burning as I move up gentle slopes in the field and descend the other side.
Still, the cottage does not get closer.
A pinprick of fear digs into the back of my neck, and the hairs on my arms raise in answer. I should be there by now. It never gets closer.
Is this some other spell, or curse? Has the land turned against me? Is it trying to keep me away from her? For I was never meant to find my wolf mate. But she is no wolf, and she is mine. I know it so!
A portal appears in the air ahead of me, open to my homeland on the other side, but I change directions and avoid it, going past. No, no, I cannot leave her!
The storm rages inside of the portal, threatening and striking down lightning as the sky darkens. No! I don’t want to leave. Not now. I can’t!
“Idalis!” I scream her name but there’s no sound.
Idalis’s cottage is no closer as I sprint, my lungs aching and sweat pouring down my back. The night air hardly stirs. It is too still. All the land around me is too still. Why didn’t I notice before? It is as if I am running through a painting of the land and not the land itself. A land like this should be alive with birds and insects and creatures in the forest, but it makes no sound.
Am I alone here?
I cannot be alone here.
“No,” I say aloud to the stillness. “No. This is not real. This is a dream. You cannot keep me from her! She is mine!”
With those words, the land comes to life around me. A nightbird calls from some nearby tree, and a small animal bounds across my path. Idalis’s cottage is closer, then closer again, and in a matter of steps I am slowing to a halt by her front door.
I put my hand on the handle and pull.
It swings open, and there she is, standing just inside, a bundle of white cloth in her arms. Her eyes brighten when she sees me, and her face flushes.
“Ryker, my love,” she says, and a shudder of sheer arousal goes through me. No one has ever said my name like that before. With such devotion. There’s some other magic in it—there must be. It is a claiming, somehow. The air is thick with it. With peace. Even though we are not married yet, there’s something in her voice that makes me think we are bound by fate. Meant for me. Mated.
My dream-mind is not surprised by this at all. My dream-mind knows that she is my mate, and always has been. My dream-mind knows that a wedding ceremony is not necessary to tie our souls together, but it is a celebration that means something to Idalis, so we will have one, even though we are already mated. My dream-mind is amused by the idea of a wedding ceremony and enchanted by it, too—not because I have any special fondness for wedding ceremonies, but because I have a special fondness for Idalis, and anything my mate wants, I will give her.
“Mate,” I say. It is the only word that comes close to describing this feeling.
“Did you find the florals?” she asks, blushing as she steps closer, hugging the linen to her chest.
“I found them all.” I swing the pack off my back and let it rest on the floor at my feet. “I found you.”
“Of course you did.” She laughs again, an enchanting, sweet sound. “Why wouldn’t you have found me? This is our home. I’ve been here always, waiting for you.”
Any uneasiness I felt melts away. What she says is true. It is real. The strange distance before was a trick of the dream and nothing else. We were always meant to be.
“Come here.” I reach for her. “I need my mate in my arms.”
Idalis offers me a simper, her eyes darkening with her palpable want, and shifts the white cloth she holds into one arm so she can extend her other hand to me.
Her fingers are inches from mine when the color begins to fade. The edges of the dream close in until Idalis’s face is all I can see, and then she’s gone, too.
I’m back to staring at the darkness behind my eyelids.
This time, I don’t immediately sink back to sleep. I lie still on the bed for a few beats, listening. My heart pounds and my body thrums with life. My wolf, content and sated.
