Page 61 of Primal Mirror

A flutter against her mind, a reminder that it wasn’t just the two of them in this clearing. “The baby’s…excited to see you again.” A pause. “Her brain isn’t formed enough to give me much, but I sense her emotions. She knows you.”

“From the outside, psychometrics and empaths have a lot in common.” He passed over a cinnamon roll. “I can put together the bed while you devour this.” A slow grin.

Her stomach tumbled, leaving her breathless. Unable to speak, she just nodded.

Then she watched him move with feline grace as he opened the package to take the pieces inside. His every move held a wild power and for this moonlit fragment of time, she allowed herself to believe that he was her man.

Her Remi.

Looking after her not out of obligation because she was pregnant and in need, but because he wanted to.

A silly fantasy but no one had to know.

“Futon needs to be moved out of the way,” he said. “You want to use your feet to do that in case my imprint does make the frame unusable? I don’t want you without a place to sleep.”

Auden nodded and, after finishing the cinnamon roll, went over to nudge the futon to the far wall using her socked feet. Remi was in socks, too, having told her he’d worn two pairs to insulate his imprint from the floor.

Auden wasn’t so sure she didn’t want his imprint everywhere. He filled up the space, big and warm and wild.

“Here.” He’d put together a chair in the time she’d been moving the futon. “Try this. Easy test—and you need a proper chair.”

Auden touched her pinky to one surface first, got no real feedback. So she placed her whole hand on it…and got a faint but distinct wash of protectiveness…and annoyance.

Cheeks hot, she said, “Why are you annoyed?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“It’s because it’s fresh. Psychometrics can usually only pick up embedded imprints, but direct contact within minutes can occasionally open the doorway.”

“I’m annoyed because you’re tired and pregnant and standing when you should be resting. Sit.”

Auden wasn’t one to take orders, but because her back ached, she sat. “You don’t have to be rude about it,” she muttered, even as she reached back to undo the tight knot of her hair and finally relax the pressure on her scalp.

Growling, Remi grabbed the food carrier, placed it next to her, then picked out a flat, bread-like creation with tomatoes and cheese on it to put in her hand. A bottle of nutrient-enriched water was placed beside her chair. “Now, behave.”

Remi knew he was acting like an uncivilized bear, but she was so small and had huge shadows under her eyes, and it was infuriating. Despite his growling, she didn’t seem mad, or—even worse—cowed or scared. Her hair was longer than he’d thought—past her shoulders, with big and loose curls that bounced the instant they were set free, her eyes bright as she watched him work while she nibbled at the pizza bread with obvious pleasure.

His fucking heart melted.

That had not been in the program. Even if Auden was in any state to play with him woman to man, Remi was shit in relationships. He could commit to being an alpha, would die for his pack, but when it came to women? He was a fun bed partner, and then he was gone.

“You’re not your father, Remington.” His mother’s slender fingers against his cheek, her face so frail that final month before he’d lost her. “Your heart is a huge and powerful thing, your love a storm force. Why won’t you let yourself love and be loved like you deserve?”

The thing was, intellectually, Remi got it. He wasn’t his shithead of a father. He didn’t abandon people. He was still friends with kids he’d known as a cub, even though they’d scattered across states and continents; the Arrows considered him a rock-solid friend and ally; and not a single member of RainFire would give a second thought to picking up the comm and calling him if they needed their alpha.

Each and every one knew Remi would come, that Remi kept his promises.

But emotions weren’t that easy. Because tangled around his worry about what he’d be like with the woman he loved was grief old and deep. Losing the only person who’d stuck by him from childhood, it had wrecked him. He’d had no pack to fall back on, no family who’d embrace him. Only Angel, a friend new, the bond between them in the process of forming.

His mother’s death had left him hollow and adrift, a leopard without a home, a changeling without a pack—because he wasn’t going to take advantage of their foster pack’s kindness by saddling them with a dangerous dominant who had no loyalty to them, and who was, quite frankly, angry and messed up. A part of him had broken the day they put Gina Denier into the earth, the fracture a permanent part of his psyche.

His leopard had learned that love on a personal, private level equaled pain so deep it was beyond blood and bone. And now he was falling for a woman who might cease to exist, her brain injury eroding her sense of self until only the cold darkness remained.

“You’re thinking too far ahead,” he muttered to himself. “Focus on the bed.”

“Did you say something?” Auden licked a bit of cheese off her finger.

His groin tightened, the most primitive part of him in no doubt about what he felt for this woman with the eyes of luminous blue who’d walked into his life without warning. “Just figuring out the join,” he said, and put his head down to work. “How did you escape Ms. Wai’s iron grip?”

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