Page 51 of Bride of Choice

A weird sound I’d never heard him make before left him as his eyes shot open, blue gone until chips of glass as black as night fixed on me.

He was across the room before I could blink, jerking my chair out to scoop me up, take the seat for himself with me in his arms, to curl me close. Hugging me to him while his hands checked me over everywhere, like he just had to be sure, his throat worked and mumbled grumblings in a language I didn’t understand left him. I could make out, okay, and safe, amongst his garblings, but that was about it.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“No find. Smell. Bum-bum mark Jo hut. No Jo. No Bum. Go. Look. Find. Ask for Jo. No find. Berkr say Jo sick, fall, at Rothy’s.” His voice kept cutting off and he was rocking a little.

Slipping my arms around his waist, resting my head on his wide shoulder, I hugged him back as he busied himself snuffling my hair. “I’m fine. It’s okay.”

A pained noise left him.

Glancing up, meeting Dorothy’s stunned gaze as she eyeballed us curiously, I swallowed thickly and quietly asked for tea.

The second she left the room, I sat up, gripped that self-guilt-trippin’ male by the short hairs on his chin, and jerked him down to me. “You didn’t hurt me,” I whispered, “okay?”

I waited until he nodded to correct myself. “Not physically.” Biting at the inside of my cheek, gaze darting away, I quietly admitted, “You leaving me like that and disappearing, acting like it was all wrong, that’s what hurt me.”

Letting go of his chin scruff, I buried myself back against him. “Don’t do it again.”

Giving him a squeeze, I smiled as I nuzzled a pec and a soft rumble left him. I was just fucking happy to have him here and not acting a fool. “I mean it. Don’t do it again,” I muttered darkly, then smoothed my hand down his lower back, lower then, and pinched one of those little, furry, round sourdough rolls he calls a butt cheek.

Gopher yelped but then purred, the sound stuttering in his chest.

Dorothy came in, because perfect timing, lady, making more noise than usual. Her gaze caught and held on the bracelet on my wrist as I lifted my hands higher, settling them on his upper back.

Her smile grew to a thousand watts as she eyed us. “My, what a pretty trinket. Where did you get it?”

“Thanks. Gopher gave it to me,” I said simply, turning and lifting it up for her to see. “It’s a best friends bracelet.”

A sputtering noise left the woman. My face flushed red at that but I held her stare evenly, not once breaking as she eyed me and the male practically wrapped around me.

Clearing her throat several times, tamping down the twitch of her lips, she said, “A best friends bracelet, you say?” The look she was giving me said she didn’t believe that for a minute but she was happy to leave me to my delusions.

Gopher let out a rumbling noise that startled the matriarch, but she laughed. “I knew you back when your parents were weekly visitors for trading, back when you were in diapers. Don’t you go muffle-growling at me, boy!” she warned him.

Gopher mumbled an apology but it was half assed at best.

When I glanced between them curiously, Dorothy grinned. It was a proud look. “His mother and her mates live a fair distance from us, but they used to come to market to trade often enough the boys all got to play. It was nice. Very nice family.”

Gopher squirmed in his seat. I’d glance up at him to see what all that was about but his arms tightened around me.

“Krampusnauchtt,” he cut in on the embarrassing to him reminiscing.

“Berkr told you, I take it?” she asked, cutting the crap, all traces of humor leaving her.

What happened to keeping that shit on the down-low?

Gopher shook his head. “Bum-bum,” he said simply.

“Joanie said he was out scouting for them,” she filled him in, gesturing at me vaguely. “The Watchers believe they have her marked for the hunt.” There was something in her eyes when Gopher growled and latched onto me harder. “She needs a place to stay in the meantime…” She tossed it out there so casually.

“I was thinking of asking Booger to bunk with him for a bit or-” I’d started to say, to be cut off shortly.

“Mine,” Gopher grunted out, before his love-me-and-run-off-leaving-me-like-he’d-broken-me-ass could possibly think better of it.

“Or not,” I muttered with a shrug, trying to see Dorothy’s amused face around Gopher’s furry arm wrapped around me.

“It wouldn’t be wise to take her back to her hut.” Dorothy gave Gopher a long look. “Or the other unmated’s huts. They’re too close to hers. It’s not safe.”

---