Page 52 of Wolf Trial

Verne read my incision, my confusion, and came closer, drying his hands on a towel embroidered with a little moon. It was the strangest detail—this conversation, this man who said I was his soulmate, who’d saved my life by making me a werewolf, and his cute little tea towel.

“Mates aren’t chosen at random,” he explained, with crushing devastation I could almost feel pinching my chest. “We’ve given you the worst impression of us. You’re not our mate because you’re the first woman to wander into this forest in months, or the first female wolf we’ve encountered in almost as long.”

I shrugged, feeling… brittle for reasons I didn’t understand. My wolf had been quiet for too long, and I suspected this breakable feeling came from her. “I figured it could have been anyone, and it was just a wrong place, wrong time kinda situation.”

Verne drifted closer, and it struck me how strange it was, to see an alpha male be hesitant. Cautious. As if he walked a delicate tightrope, and moving too fast, saying the wrong thing, would send me running.1

“It’s sheer fluke that we met when you’ve only been in Lunova for days,” he replied, sinking onto the arm of the tufted chair and watching me with big, sad eyes, like he’d never see me again. “Even if we’d met before, when you were human and alive, I would have known you’re my mate. It would have been fainter, the bond nowhere near as strong as it is now, but I would have known.”

“And when you say strong…”

He ran his thumb over a thick, gold ring on his hand, the movement repetitive. “Being away from you all day was torture. I couldn’t draw a full breath, couldn’t get my mind to stay away from you. Any longer, and it would have started to hurt, your absence a physical pain.”

I narrowed my eyes, but I didn’t get the sense he was trying to guilt me into staying. So I walked around the sofa and dropped onto its cushions, almost swallowed into them. Goddamn, this was comfortable.

“The bond isn’t just designed for pups,” he said, spinning his ring faster. “It’s a partnership. Sure, part of that partnership is a family in the traditional sense, but there are mates who choose not to have children. It’s not an expectation for our pack, alianazara. It would be something we choose, all of us together.”

All of us together. I blinked, and filed that away in a sordid folder deep in my mind.

“So this feeling eating at me all day, making me so restless I couldn’t sit still… that’s the bond, trying to make me come back to you?”

“To where you belong,” Verne said softly. “Like the bond urged me back to your side, where I belong.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “That’s crazy talk, you know that right?”

Verne’s smile was a little less sad than before. “Most things about being a wolf are crazy. It’s instinct, purer than anything else. The bond doesn’t have expectations, it doesn’t judge. It knows we should be together, and won’t rest until we are. It’s… belonging. Pack, but more than pack.”

“So you don’t have bonds urging you to screw Lainsz and Leander senseless?” I asked dryly.

Verne choked. “Not bonds, no. And Leander and I don’t…”

“But you and Lainsz do?” I blurted with zero tact. “Lainsz?”

“Lainsz is… an extremely complex man. Try to ignore his hostility, that’s not who he is deep down.”

The assholery seems to run pretty deep to me, I thought but decided to be kind and not say.

“You haven’t met the real Lainsz yet. Only his trauma.”

I made a low sound, allowing that. Most people had baggage; Lainsz was an entire suitcase factory.

Verne rubbed his jaw, looking at a spot over my shoulder. Silence spooled out between us, then his stare fixed on me again.

“What?” I asked, my ears burning.

“Everything is your choice, Sadie. Whatever you choose, when you choose it. But don’t mistake this bond for something that could happen to anyone. It’s you, and only you. You’re our mate, our perfect fit, the woman chosen by moon and forest and fate.”

His dark eyes were doing something to me. My stomach fluttered, and I couldn’t look away even as my common sense screamed.2

“I’ll find a way to be patient. I’ll wait as long as you need, alianazara, but the moment you’re ready for us, I want your eyes rolling back for me. I want your moans filling every corner of this cottage. I want you so beautifully languid, so lazy with pleasure, that you don’t leave our bed for hours.”

My body went from nought to hell yes, right now in milliseconds, and my breath hitched when he rose to his feet, crossing the few small steps between us to touch my face. “But I’ll wait, until you’re ready. Until you’re at peace with your wolf body, and secure in your place in this world. Until there’s no doubt in this clever mind.”

“How do you know my mind’s clever?” I drawled, head tipped back to look at him. “I could be a complete idiot.”

“No.” He folded at the waist, brushing a too-soft, too-quick kiss to my mouth. “You’re my mate, my equal. That means you’re wicked with cleverness. Intelligent, and patient enough to know when to pick your battles.”

His words were like soft rain on sunburned skin, but… “Actually, I just pick fights with everyone.”