Sofia doesn’t rush me or try to talk me through it, which I appreciate. She waits for me to settle myself, and when I finally do, she doesn’t look the least bit concerned that I got so jealous I literally forgot how to breathe.
“So, I guess we have established that your tiger is done being ignored, huh?”
“Seems that way,” I respond, because what else can I say? That was pathetically obvious.
“Don’t worry,” she says, waving a hand in dismissal. “It’s all totally normal for shifters. Accepting the mate bond was the firstthing my wolf and I disagreed about. I felt like I was losing my mind. Your tiger might have let you call the shots before, but she’s making herself heard now that it matters.”
My head whips around to stare at her, “Hold up, you weren’t in agreement with your animal about the fated mate bond? How does that work? Do you get a choice?”
“Oh, that’s easy to explain. My mate, Luca, is an asshole who underestimated me and treated me like a kid. I wasn’t exactly keen to accept him, but my wolf is a slut and didn’t care. It’s cool; we’re back on the same page again now. Luca is still an asshole, but he is an asshole obsessed with me. Also, he fucks like a beast and learned the hard way to never underestimate me again. So here we are.”
“I think I might love you,” I say with a laugh.
“Course you do, we’re sisters now,” she says, bumping me with her shoulder. “Just don’t let Ryan hear you say that because he will freak out that I’m trying to steal his girl, even if I am already marked and mated.”
She rolls her eyes and laughs, and my heart warms. My family is wonderful. I love them all dearly, and I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t ended up with them. But there’s a sense of home I didn’t even fully understand I was missing. I knew it before, yet I didn’t at the same time. It was abstract and theoretical. But now it’s a real, tangible thing: that sense of belonging and the belief that I could be myself.
I’ll be forever grateful to Ryan for bringing me here, even if I don’t know how I feel about him after all the lies that happened beforehand. My tiger lets out a little snarl of disagreement. Shedoesn’t care about everything he has done, she just wants to move forward. With him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ryan
“I don’t like this,” I say, flopping back on the couch in my sitting room. I haven’t been home in weeks, and I thought I’d have Maya with me when I finally walked through the door. I wanted to be the one to share everything about shifters with her, but maybe I should have done that sooner. Fates, who am I kidding? I definitely should have told her sooner.
“Yeah, I hear you,” Luca replies. “But you know Sofia wants Maya to accept your bond as much as you do. Maybe even more. She’s not going to say or do anything that would deter her.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say with a sigh, running my hands through my hair. Sofia has my back. She always has. “Speaking of bonds, is that a bite mark on your shoulder?”
Luca grins like an idiot before pulling his shirt to the side and revealing the mate claiming bite on his shoulder. “It was before the full moon run, but I guess you were too preoccupied to notice,” he says with a cocky smirk. “I do not recommend a half-completed bond, by the way. That shit nearly drove me insane.”
I probably should be pissed at my best friend’s cock-sure attitude when it comes to my little sister, but I want them to be happy. I’vealways wanted them to be happy, even when they were both too stubborn to see exactly what was in front of them.
Fated mates should equal a perfect match. I’ve fucking banked my sanity on it. Not that there are any doubts that Maya is the one for me. She’s everything I could have hoped for. Smart, caring, stunningly beautiful, strong, resilient, sexy as hell. There’s literally nothing I would change about her other than the lack of a completed bond and my mark on her neck.
But we’ll get there.
I have to believe we will.
A knock on the door rings out, and Jackson lets himself in without waiting for an invitation. It’s how we’ve always been.
“The girls kicked me out,” he says with a laugh while showing me the bottle of bourbon he brought with him. “Your mate was a little freaked about the idea of hanging out with Emily socially after being her therapist, but Sofia convinced her human rules don’t apply when no one is human.”
“See,” Luca says pointedly. “Sofia probably has her closer to accepting the bond in ten minutes than you have in weeks.” He laughs as I throw a pillow at him. I’m not really mad; I don’t care how we get to the acceptance part, as long as we get there.
Jackson grabs glasses and ice before pouring each of us a generous serving and setting the bottle on the coffee table. I swirl the bourbon, watching the ice and amber liquid circle around the glass before knocking it back. The familiar, steadying burn of the alcohol is gone all too soon.
I need a distraction to help me give Maya the space she has asked for.
“I don’t know if she’s going to accept me,” I admit. “I know I won’t survive it if she doesn’t, but I’ve already fucked up too much to try to push her.”
“Have you told her what will happen if she doesn’t accept the bond?” Jackson asks, and I shake my head.
“I want her to do it for the right reasons. Not because she feels like she has to do it to keep me alive.”
Luca and Jackson share a look, but they don’t comment. I’m exhausted. Maya’s presence has calmed my wolf, but the past few weeks have taken a lot out of me. I haven’t gotten to shift and run enough. I haven’t been connected to the pack. I’ve gone from living and breathing pack dynamics, council politics, managing alliances, and planning rescue missions to my sole purpose being about getting my girl.
And I’m failing spectacularly at it.
