Page 42 of Falling for her Guardian

Storm looked at her and she shrugged. “I’m a little scared to go through the Entrance again, but I’d love to meet your family.”

“You were nervous before,” he said.

“Yeah, but that was before we almost died.”

He grinned. “I’ll call my folks and see when we can come for a visit. Maybe while we’re on our break.”

“Not tomorrow though,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

She raised her brows and said nothing, and he stared at her for a long moment.

Then he said, “Oh, hell yeah, not tomorrow.”

“Get a room, you two,” Hunter said gruffly.

“We have one,” Storm said. “But first, I have to feed my mate so she knows I’m the best male around.”

“I already think that,” she promised.

“Yeah?”

“Of course. You saved me. Three times. That makes you the very best mate in the world.”

“Aw man, I need to find my mate,” Winter said. “That’s so sweet it’s giving me a toothache.”

Seren laughed and the table joined in.

Storm lifted his glass. “A toast to the best mate that fate could give me.”

Seren lifted her glass. “To the best mate a human could ever have.”

The others lifted their glasses, and Winter said, “To the rest of us poor, single bastards finding our mates, sooner rather than later.”

“Hear, hear!”

Seren and Storm tipped their glasses together and then took a drink.

“I can’t wait to get you home,” Storm murmured in her ear.

“I can’t wait for that too.”

Seren was nervous about going to Storm’s clan. It wasn’t just because she was meeting his family for the first time, but because of the portal.

She touched the place on her hip where Santa had removed the tracker. The little white star was pretty neat, but she hated knowing that Jack Frost had been tracking her without her knowledge.

“It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” Storm said as they stepped out of the barracks and walked toward the waiting vehicle that would take them to the Entrance so they didn’t have to walk. “The tracker’s gone. There haven’t been any more attacks on portals.”

It had been two days since the bomb. Everything was back to normal except that there were a lot more guards around, and even though they’d been taking time off for their mating and getting to know each other, Storm had needed to be in a few meetings for the changes to security around Northernmost.

“I know,” she said. She climbed into the vehicle, which looked like a big snowmobile with a cab. “Hi, thanks for taking us to the Entrance.”

“Sure thing,” the elf said. “I’m Alder. There’s a team waiting to escort us all through, so even though you’re a Guardian,Storm, you need to hang back until we get the all clear on the other side.”

“Will do.”

They bumped along the snow-covered ground to the portal, where a handful of men stood around the bone structure. She recognized Hunter and Winter, as well as Maverick and another snow leopard named Chase. When they got out of the vehicle, Storm introduced her to Hawthorne, an elf security guard.

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