Page 44 of Their Fated Magic

“You,” Rinan says simply, like that should answer all my questions.

“Me?” I ask, not understanding what they’re talking about at all.

“Yes,” Drogo says, and he’s doing that strange thing again. Holding eye contact like he’s trying to communicate something really important to me.

“Is it because you wanted my pack and supplies back? I can leave those for you if it’s a big deal.”

Rinan snorts. “No, we don’t give a shit about your pack and supplies.”

My mind keeps working. “If it’s that you think the witches are going to work with the bears now, you’re wrong. I intend to stay far away from the witches for the rest of my life.”

“That’s not it,” Drogo says, and he sounds frustrated.

I toss my hands in the air. “Then what is it? Why are you here?”

Arlys moves forward in the water so that we’re only a couple feet from each other. “We’re sorry.”

“Sorry?” My brain isn’t making sense of any of this.

He nods. “For how we’ve been acting. For how we’ve treated you. For how we’ve spoken to you. For everything.”

I don’t know what to say. This wasn’t even on my list of things to expect. “Okay, you’re forgiven.”

“Just like that?” Drogo asks, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

I shrug. “I mean, we’re never going to see each other again, so why does it matter? I don’t want to hold onto this kind of anger.”

They flinch like I’ve struck them.

Arlys runs a hand through his long dark hair. “The thing is, we don’t want that. We don’t want to never see you again. We’ve realized since right after your wedding to Garrick how much we care about you for who you are. We don’t care that you’re a witch. You’re ours. Our wife. And our mate.”

Mate? I almost laugh. Mates are important to shifters. Garrick explained that to me. He would never treat me the way they have. How in the world can they now say I’m their mate?

“Why would you treat me so terribly if I’m your mate?”

Drogo looks ashamed. “We’ve been denying how we feel. The truth is, I’ve been pulled to you since we first met, but our hang-up with witches and the plan we made before meeting you always dominated my thoughts. I couldn’t get past it.”

“How is it you can do that now?” I ask him.

Drogo looks miserable. “Because when you left and we couldn’t find you, I felt like I was going to die. I would have burned the whole world down to find you.” He rubs his hands over his face, looking like he’s being tortured.

“We all would have,” Rinan adds, more miserable than I’ve ever seen him before. “We were heartbroken. The pain of losing you was physical. It was like nothing we’d felt before. We put the pieces together and realized the reason why is because you’re our mate. You’re the one woman we can love. The only person we can ever be with.”

My chest aches. The truth is, I feel that way about them too, but they don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve me or my love. They’ve already thrown it away too many times to count.

Arlys takes my hand, his gaze intense. “We are so sorry. We will never make you feel the way we did before. We will never treat you like anything but our wife and our mate. We promise. This marriage will be real from here on. No more plans. Whether you fix the water or not, you’re coming home with us as a part of our family.”

They mean it. I can see it in their eyes. But I’m not sure it’s enough.

I pull my hand away, shaking my head. “No. If I was your mate, you would have known earlier, and you wouldn’t have treated me this way.”

Arlys looks upset. “The truth is that we probably didn’t know because we haven’t had sex. Sex often reveals the bond.”

“So, we need to have sex to solidify the bond?” I ask.

They nod.

My gaze runs over them. The truth is, I want to have sex with them. I want to be with them. The idea of leaving them behind has always been a painful thing. But something is stopping me.

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