Page 51 of A Beta Protects

The first hint of dawn is peeking through the edge of the curtains and Kira is stirring when I push myself to my feet.

I want to stay but I don’t deserve to.

I’m reaching for the door handle when Kira’s soft voice halts me. “Dom?”

A rustle of sheets warns she’s sitting up. “Go back to sleep, Kira. It’s still early.”

“You’re leaving?” Hurt creeps into her voice.

Shit. She thinks I don’t want her when the opposite couldn’t be more true.

“It wasn’t anything you did, I just…” I fumble for an explanation.

Is now the right time to tell her I’m a shifter, that I bit her, bonding us together and now that I have, if she walks away from me, my wolf will die?

After she gave me more pleasure than I’ve ever had?

No. This isn’t the time. But I have to tell her.

Not all shifters die when their mate does. Galen didn’t when Melody died. But my wolf hasn’t just wanted Kira for years. He’s ached for her for so long, he can’t go back to living without her. Especially not now I’ve bitten her.

When a shifter meets their mate, they bond. The urge isn’t something that can be set aside for years without that urge growing.

It’s no excuse for what I did, but there is no way my wolf—or me—can handle her loss.

Not again.

“Dom?” Kira prompts me. “If it was something I did, then?—”

I forget about going anywhere. I don’t deserve her smiles, her kindness, or her touch, but I can’t walk away knowing she thinks I’m rejecting her. That isn’t what this is.

I remember what she said in the kitchen. How easily she called herself a fuck up, how smoothly the words slid off her tongue as something that was true when it wasn’t. Bryce must have spent years telling her for those words to flow so easily. Another crime to add to an already far too long list he needs to die for.

I turn around. “You did nothing, Kira.”

She’s sitting with her back to the headboard, the sheet covering her bare breasts, her hair disheveled from my fingers when she was on her knees and her mouth…

No.

I wrench my mind back on track.

My eyes dart to the faint mark on her throat. “I bit you, and I shouldn’t have.”

Slowly, her hand rises to her throat, tracing the grooves my teeth made in her skin. “Oh, is that why you were leaving? You thought you’d hurt me?”

Freckles cover every inch of her pale skin, and I feel myself responding to her, wanting to drag the sheet from her body and do what I said I would in the forest: kiss every single one.

I would have last night, but the sight of her on her knees and the sweet suction of her mouth on me killed every thought in my brain except the need to be inside her.

“I hurt you.” By not telling you what I am. By tying us together.

She looks away, her cheeks turning adorably pink as she lowers her hand from her neck. Her voice is soft, hesitant, and sweet when she says, “You didn’t hurt me.” She darts a rapid glance at me, too brief for me to glimpse much more than her pink cheeks. “I liked it.”

I feel the impact of those three words on every part of my body. They roar, repeating like an echo in my head.

She liked me biting her.

Those words make me not want to leave her at all. They make my wolf growl at me to climb back onto that bed and give our mate more bites she will like.

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