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He wrapped his arms around me. “I’m your mate, so you need to include me in your decision-making.”

I sat him down and explained that marking was the final part of mating. It was a sign that we’d claimed one another, and he asked how it worked.

“My beast uses a small flame to mark your skin.” I pinched my fingers together. “Just a tiny owie, like being burned by a match.”

“Fine. I can do that, but if I’m marked, you have to be too.”

Humans didn’t produce fire or have claws, so I’d have to come up with a method for River to mark me.

“I’ve got it. Don’t go anywhere.”

He rolled his eyes and told me to stop saying that.

I tore out to the workshop and chose an offset of the rose granite. I raced back to the house, and River was exactly where I’d left him.

“Where do you want the mark?”

He yanked his shirt to one side and tapped his collarbone.

Not too hot, I told my dragon. But he understood what he had to do. Holding River’s hands, I placed my mouth on his skin and parted my lips. There was a hiss of fire and it was done.

You finally did it, my dragon sighed.

My mark sat on his collarbone, and he was mine. I’d never allowed myself to want this, but my mate had asked for it, and there it was on his skin.

He ran his fingers over it. “It’ll look cool when it’s healed and I have a scar.” I kissed it, knowing my dragon shifter saliva would make it scab over faster.

My mate picked up the rock and bounced it on his palm. “I assume this has a purpose. I just can’t figure it out, but I hope you’re not going to be working in here.”

Once again, I had my beast produce a flame, one much hotter than what I used to mark my mate. The rock glowed red, and I pulled my shirt over my head.

“Where do you want to mark me?”

He ran his fingers over my bare skin and placed a finger just above my belly button. “In your center.” He took the rock. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’ll be quick.”

I hissed as my skin sizzled from the red-hot stone before River removed it. Unlike my mate, my mark would heal by morning.

River had chosen to put a mark on me, and he was now my mate in all ways possible.

“So you’re really mine?” He pulled me close. “For always? I love you.”

“As I love you.”

My beast closed his eyes, satisfied that we were both mated and marked.

I nuzzled his ear. “You can’t get rid of me ever.”

He buried his face in the base of my throat. “That never occurred to me.”

River fell asleep in my arms, and I thought about the last few days and why they were different. It wasn’t just about the baby and us mating. But something had stopped.

I hadn’t been counting. I used to know to the second when River would leave, and now there were no more numbers to calculate. I had no idea what the time was, and I didn’t care.

The project I’ve been making, the one under the cloth in the workshop, was still unfinished. I’d never considered why I was doing it and who it was for. But maybe it was for me all along, because from now on, I’d be counting the sunny hours.

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