Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I swallowed. “Yeah. It was silly. I just…I got scared.”
He stroked my hair back from my face. “Yeah, me too. I was scared of losing you.”
I pressed my lips over his, stroking them softly. “Well, you didn’t.”
He rubbed his lips together as if savoring my taste. “There’s one more thing I haven’t told you yet.”
“What is it?”
“Last night when I bit you?”
“Yeah?”
“When a male wolf meets his fated mate, he marks her with his scent, so the other wolves know she’s been taken. It’s stupid, but it’s our biology, so we can’t help it. I didn’t mean to mark you, but I got carried away with the full moon.”
I touched the small scab on my neck. “This? You marked me here?”
He nodded. “Yeah. A serum coats our teeth and embeds into your skin. So you carry my scent now.”
I carried his scent. “I guess it’s the wolf version of a wedding ring?”
He laughed. “I guess so.”
“I don’t get to mark you?”
Johnny’s smile was brighter than the moon. “Are you saying you’re okay with it? Being mine?”
I smiled, too. “That means you’re mine in return?”
“For life, baby. Wolves mate for life. You are my purpose now. Keeping you safe and satisfied is all I fucking care about.”
Well.
In that light, who really cared if he’d used me to get info about Chapman? That guy was dangerous, and I was thankful that Johnny tried to do everything possible to find him.
“Is the gray wolf out there Chapman?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t me who finished him. Knox and Travis fought it out with him before I got here. He was choking your sister based on the marks on her neck.”
“Oh my God!” I climbed off Johnny’s lap. “I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“Yeah, for sure. Sorry, baby. I just needed to make us okay first.”
I threaded my fingers through Johnny’s, and we walked out to the living room and stopped short.
“Um. Yeah. She looks okay to me,” I mumbled, and Johnny pulled me into his arms.
Lyssa was in the kitchen, sandwiched between the naked shifters, making out with both of them. At the same time! One kissed her while the other stood behind her, one hand between her legs, the other on her breast through her moo-moo.
“Yep. Pretty okay.” Johnny and I smothered our laughter as we walked backward into the bedroom. As soon as we shut the door, we burst into peals of laughter. It felt good to laugh with him, all the tension and angst of the day releasing into the air. As we expelled the old, we refilled our lungs with fresh oxygen.
With a new understanding of who we were together and apart.
A restart to us.
“Are they her mates?”
“Absolutely. I love you, Lys-I mean, Emma–Oh!” Johnny grinned. “Now I know why you only wanted me to call you baby in bed!”
I laughed. “Yes. I didn’t want Lyssa intruding on our intimate times.”
Johnny pointed toward the door. “Like we just intruded on hers?” We fell into another fit of laughter.
When it petered out, Johnny ran his knuckles down my cheek. His dark eyes met and held mine. “I love you, Emma. I know I still have a lot to learn about you and how to make you happy, but I’m all in. I’m your guy, thick or thin. Forever.”
36
JOHNNY
When a shifter died in wolf form, he didn’t shift back to human. That made proving Chapman’s death to the human world a real issue, but that wasn’t our problem. The Shifter Council would deal with the fall-out of the failed capture. He tried to kill a human, and more importantly to the Council’s perspective, my marked mate’s sister. That alone warranted a death sentence.
Knox, Travis, and I carried Chapman’s wolf body out to a far field to let the buzzards take care of it. The Council dispatched someone to repair the broken glass at the property straight away. As soon as Lyssa and Emma packed, plus the place buttoned up, we left for Wolf Ranch. All five of us.
Emma and Lyssa weren’t ready to be parted, and there was no way Knox and Travis were going to let their mate out of their sight, so I invited them to the ranch. Once we arrived at the bunkhouse–where the trio would stay during their visit–we had some beers and ate take-out BBQ we’d picked up on the way home.
I sat back and learned about my mate and her sister as Knox and Travis grilled them over dinner, hungry for every last detail. Lyssa apparently already knew about us being wolves–Emma had told her right before we arrived–and she seemed open to the idea of belonging to two men. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was into doing wild and impulsive things, like being with two guys at once, and wasn’t sure if she fully understood it all yet. Her mates would be there for her as she figured it out. And settled in. There would be no more roaming for her.