His wolf lunged so hard his vision went white.
He stepped forward before he’d chosen to move, snow crunching beneath his boots, wolves backing instinctively out of his path, the witches tensing like bowstrings.
“Dani,” he said, the word raw, hoarse, ripped straight from a wound he’d never healed.
She flinched.
Actually flinched from him.
He froze only long enough for the sting to register, then he kept walking, fury and disbelief tangling in his chest until he could hardly separate them.
“What—” his voice cracked; he cleared it roughly. “What is this?”
Chase blinked rapidly between them. “Arthur?”
“Quiet,” Arthur snapped, the word bursting out like a command threaded with alpha dominance.
The entire clearing stilled.
Dani squeezed the child’s hand. Pulled her half-behind her. Protective. Feral.
Arthur’s wolf howled in recognition.
Mine.
His vision swam.
Mine.
Mine.
And the child, the girl whose chin trembled but who stood with her mother…
His wolf surged until the edges of his vision blurred.
Ours.
He stumbled a step, shock tearing through him.
A true mate.
Not a crush. Not young longing. Not the foolish thing he’d felt years ago.
This was real, ancient, the bond blooming under his skin like fire, magic older than the packs pulsing awake, snarling with sudden, wild certainty.
Dani Taylor was his true mate.
She always had been.
He’d just been too young…too stupid…too blind to see it.
He breathed her in, salt, ember-warm fire, winter apples, fear, stubbornness…
His knees almost gave out.
“Dani,” he rasped, softer now, “look at me.”
She did, but it wasn’t warmth in her gaze.
