Page 35 of Thistle Thorns

Shari slumped in her seat, sighing quietly, “Those looked really good.”

Aunt Peony returned momentarily with a massive bowl of sweetened whipped cream. She thumped it on the table with a mild glare at the rest of us. “You’re eating those tarts tomorrow,” she warned us. “Pastry’s only good for one or two days and this witch doesn’t waste food.”

After she had (rather aggressively) topped everyone’s portion of warm cobbler with a veritable mountain of whipped cream, the Crafting Circle ladies retreated to the loveseat in the den. They weren’t leaving until the fate of the feral fairy was decided—plus Shari wasn’t yet finished crocheting it a sweater—and Flora still wasn’t convinced Arthur’s “no” wasn’t actually a “yes” in disguise when she had not-so-discreetly asked if Arthur would hold the witches off while she freed and rescued Flint.

I’d assured her that wasn’t necessary, as Flint would be returning with her at the end of the evening. He was of no more use to the Hawthornes, just a liability. If the magic hunters did manage to track the fiáin down, they’d find it at Flora’s place, which was probably just as warded as the farmhouse, and the sunlions and carnivorous clematis would certainly hold them off until help could arrive.

No one contradicted me, especially not after they saw the scorched hearth slates and floorboards in the hearth room.

Only Mom made a protesting sound when I asked Arthur to join me on the porch to eat our dessert in relative privacy, but I shut the door behind us as if I hadn’t heard it. It opened a moment later, ejecting Otter wrapped up in a coat and a knitted beanie that flattened his long hair against the nape of his neck. He bobbed me a nod, took his bowl of dessert to the far end of the porch, and looked pointedly out at where the pixies dozed in their birdhouse.

“I like him,” Arthur told me, swirling whipped cream into his warm cobbler and lifting a bite to his mouth. I watched the dessert disappear with a lick of his tongue against his bottom lip and a bob of his throat and decided right there and then that that I was very jealous of that cobbler. Arthur caught me staring at him. “Meadow?”

Dropping my gaze, I stabbed my spoon into my dessert and shoveled some into my mouth. Now was not the time to get all pudding-like around him, not with my family on the other side of some siding and drywall. If I had to concentrate on not choking, I wouldn’t be thinking about him and that chain that hummed between us. I stuffed in another mouthful of cobbler, just to be sure.

The ceramic bowl clicked against the porch railing as Arthur set it down, his leather jacket creaking as he reached out and thumbed away the blackberry-swirled whipped cream from the corner of my mouth. He brought his thumb to his mouth, the cream disappearing past his lips, and amber flashed in his eyes.

It was only a half step back to find support against one of the porch posts. “How is it,” I whispered, my dessert forgotten—which was a big deal for a Hawthorne—“that with everything else going on, I just want to be alone with you?”

From the way Arthur’s weight was pitched forward, I fully expected him to reach for me, heedless of the dangers of my family, but something stayed him.

The desire in his expression changed to caution, and he asked, “What am I to you, Meadow? Under the maple tree, I thought you knew, but at dinner, you couldn’t find the words.”

“Oh!” I hadn’t been expecting that, and the air in my lungs left in a frantic exhale. On the inbreath, I realized just how cold the November night was. It was crisp and biting, the rain fully gone and revealing a starlit sky. “I, um, well, ‘friend’ and ‘boyfriend’ certainly don’t do it justice, do they?”

He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from my face.

“I… I don’t know what the right word is, Arthur,” I admitted softly, dropping my eyes to the space of porch between our feet. Thistle thorns, it was only the span of two deck boards, but it felt so vast.

“Mate.”

My heart stilled at the intensity of his voice.

Glancing up, I struggled to wrap my mind around the meaning he was infusing into the word. Mate? I’d only heard the term as it applied to the animal kingdom, as the bond between wolves or the act of making baby wolves. The term didn’t seem as romantic and all-encompassing as soulmate or husband or fiancé, and it wasn’t like Arthur had proposed or anything. Thistle thorns, he hadn’t even said the L word. Neither had I. My confusion, my inability to fully grasp the gravity of what he was saying, must’ve been as evident on my face as the sun is in the sky on a cloudless day.

Arthur did his best to hide his sadness, but I knew him too well now.

His weight shifted onto his heels, increasing the distance between us, and he ran a hand through his brown hair. “That time in your bedroom, under the maple tree—”

“Please don’t say it was a mistake,” I whispered. Panic and fear were like two hands tightening around my throat and squeezing the life out of me.

“No,” he answered quickly. “No. But… I can’t be alone with you again. Not until you truly acknowledge this bond between us. You need to claim it, as I have.”

“I don’t understand,” I said pleadingly.

“You’re my mate, Meadow. The twin of my soul. You accept that I am the same for you, with your whole heart.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

Maybe it was because of Jeremy Rook, or from the months of denying my feelings for him, but there was a lock on my heart somewhere. Or some kind of obstruction. One that made me doubt, even now, after all Arthur had done and said, that I was worthy of it. His love. His devotion. That he was safe to trust with the whole of me. That he wasn’t going to run away.

Because that’s what I’d done to him. Countless times.

Was this what Sawyer was so afraid of? Of trusting and bonding with someone else so completely that where you began and they ended was now just a blurred line? How did you maintain your individual self, something you’d been crafting your entire life, in the face of that bond? And worse, what if they broke the heart you had entrusted them with?

If I hadn’t already been supported by the porch post, I would have staggered into it. The lukewarm cobbler wobbled in the bowl as my hands trembled. “Arthur…” By the Green Mother, please let him know I was trying. Trying to comprehend. To relinquish myself to him.

“It’s not something I can fully explain to you, Meadow.” His voice was so soft, so encouraging. “Shifters are born with this knowledge, this instinct—it’s engrained on our souls. It’s not something you can look up and learn about in a spell book. You have to feel it, embrace it.”

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