Page 96 of Cross To Bear

“I don’t need you hurting yourself for me. Just this.” She was lying on her side, her cast propped up against her healthy calf, and I pressed my entire body against hers. “Do this for me and I’ll be happy.”

I kissed her hair, her neck, her shoulders, getting lost in the sensation of her skin on my lips, her scent, just like I did a good meal. I wanted to dive right into her and never come up for air. I’d breathe her in instead, long, deep lungfuls, sweet as a garden in full bloom and…

Sweet as honey.

I pulled back slightly, carefully rolling her onto her back and staring into her eyes.

“Maddie?”

“I wanted tonight to be perfect for you,” she said, reaching up and scratching her fingers through my beard in a way I wanted to wake up to and go to sleep with every day. “I wanted to make you happy.”

“You did, right up until you hurt yourself. I don’t need that, ever. Please, Maddie—”

“I wanted to make tonight special, because…” She blinked as she stared into my eyes, her strokes growing slower and more intentional as her lips pursed, then smoothed. “Because I think I’m ready now.”

“What, for a shower?” I went to leap off the bed and grab the roll of plastic bags we were using to keep her cast dry, but her hand on my arm stopped me. I stared down at her for a second and that’s when I understood what she meant.

My dads and Cayden’s dads were the same guys. My mother was just a woman they slept with on and off for a month or so, before they met Shandi, Cayden’s mother and their fated mate. When they worked out who the hell I was, they’d sat me down and told me how things worked.

“You’ll find your fated mate one day, mate.” One of my dads clapped me on the shoulder. “And when you do, you need to pay real close attention.”

“There’s a special scent, sweet as honey, but also rich and kind of floral,” another said. He nodded slowly. “That’s your sign.”

“It means she’s ready,” someone else said. “Ready for you to make her yours. Her heart is open.”

“She’s convinced you’re the one,” the first of my dads said.

“And she wants to bind herself to you for the rest of her life.”

They’d all nodded then, sharing a fond smile, no doubt remembering that moment with Shandi.

“That’s when you need to step up in ways you never have before.”

“Maddie…” I said her name like a prayer, a savage one to the bear gods themselves, then stroked her face, right before she tilted her head sideways, presenting me the bare, unmarked skin of her neck. My mouth watered in ways no steak could prompt. “I love you. I haven’t said it out loud, but I think you know… I’ve always loved you, Maddie girl. Always. I will until the sun dies and the stars drop from the sky. I will in this world and the next.”

“I know.” She shot me a sidelong look then smiled, that impish thing that lit my heart on fire. “And I’ll love you right back just the same. Make me yours, Hawk. That’s what I really wanted from tonight. Claim me as your mate and…”

Her reply was choked off, and I regretted the fact we weren’t making love as this happened. Then maybe it would’ve softened the pain. But this train was steaming down the tracks and nothing would’ve stopped it. I hadn’t grown up thinking I’d turn into a bear, so in some ways my beast was a much quieter presence inside me, only surfacing in moments of high emotion, but he lunged right now at the bond between us. My fangs, his fangs, buried themselves in her neck, her sharp gasp breaking my heart and remaking it in seconds. Because her hands went around my neck, holding me in place as the fated mate bond snapped into place.

Maddie…?

My mind touched hers, feeling now everything she kept back. The rush of adrenalin, the sharp spike of fear, as well as arousal. Pride was mixed in there too, but overwhelmingly was this. Love, hot, sweet, true, pumping from her to me, me to her, in some kind of feedback loop I never wanted to break, because of this. My heart was like a withered, arid land, the lack of nurturing turning it into a wasteland, but it was now that it transformed.

She loved me.

She fucking loved me.

This goddess among women decided I was worthy of her time? I couldn’t seem to get my head around it.

But I didn’t need to, not now. There was no way to intellectualise or process what I now knew to be true. She was just as much mine as I was hers and maybe that was what summoned the bear.

“Maddie, I…”

A roar choked my words off and all I could do was grab her in my arms and run through the house with her cradled closer, one arm stabilising her wounded leg.

“What the fuck, Hawk?” Crash asked, stampeding after me.

“The bear wants out,” Razor snapped, wrenching open the sliding door to let me and Maddie into our huge, but very sheltered back yard, right before the bloody bastard shoved his way out of my skin.

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