Page 107 of Shifter Marked and Claimed

We stayed and watched the druid Adira had retrieved perform the memory wipe. As soon as she finished, Vedar called emergency services. Chloe was still out cold and tied to the chair when we went through Adira’s portal and emerged onto Vedar’s front lawn.

“Congratulations on your pairing,” Adira said, focusing on Vedar.

“Pairing?” I asked.

Adira’s brilliant blue gaze pinned me.

“The mate bond you now share with Vedar.”

“Mate bond? I thought…the other guy said dragon bound.”

She glanced between the pair of us. My gaze drifted to Vedar, who looked like he was two seconds from turning dragon and eating Adira.

“It appears there are a few things you two need to discuss,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.” She disappeared through the portal once more, leaving me alone with Vedar.

CHAPTERSIXTEEN

“Mate?”I repeated, struggling to breathe.

Vedar closed the space between us and wrapped me in his arms. Everything seemed so much less scary when he held me. I wanted to stay there forever, breathe him in, and let him soothe everything away. But I knew, eventually, I would need to step back, and it would all come crashing down on me again.

“Vedar, stop. My human brain needs a minute to grasp this.”

“To grasp what?” he asked even as he released his hold on me.

I stepped back.

“The fact that I’m your mate. What does that even mean?”

His expression turned confused and slightly frustrated.

“It means exactly what I told you before you accepted a piece of my heart. You’re mine. Forever.”

“Yeah, you mentioned the forever part. And the treasure part. And I got the idea that you want to do more than just look at me. But mate? You didn’t say taking a piece of your heart would be like marrying you. Vedar, I haven’t even graduated high school.”

He scoffed at that.

“It is a human tradition that holds no value here.”

He had a point. Why would I need a diploma in Uttira?

“And if we venture into the human world,” he continued, “you will never need to perform their mundane routines for currency. I will provide everything you need.”

“What I need is a damn sanity check. I don’t know your last name. Where you were born. How old you are. What your favorite food is. Or color. Or anything. We don’t know each other. What if I want to go back to school because I miss being with people? Are you going to let me, or does forever mean locked in this house until the day I die?”

A sudden pounding gave me the distraction I needed to look away from Vedar.

Zoe stood at the window, the flat of her hand beating the glass. That wasn’t the source of the noise, though. It was Sir Cuddles, in rock form, rolling into the front door, again, and again.

“Come,” Vedar said, holding out his hand.

I stared at his strong fingers, wanting to touch him far too much, and slowly shook my head before making my own way to the door. If my refusal to touch his hand annoyed him, he didn’t comment. He simply reached around me and opened the door.

“It’s about damn time,” Zoe said, hurrying toward me as I stepped inside. “You were gone for hours.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I opened my arms, and she flew into them.

Everything we’d lost, everything we’d endured and were still enduring caught up to me, and tears began to fall unchecked down my cheeks.

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