Page 36 of My Mate

Casey rolled her eyes, but she was already crawling toward him.

“You can’t keep doing that,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Changing the subject or putting a ban on the one we’re talking about, just because you don’t like it.” She gave a tut-tut.

“Aren’t you tired of us speculating?” he asked. “It’s exhausting, and do you know what is going to happen?”

“What?”

“We’re going to be fifty years old and laughing about how much time we wasted thinking about something that might not happen.” He knew he never should have gone to Lucinda, nor should he have listened to her in the first place. “We’re mated. All we have to do right now is focus on us and what we want. That is it.”

Casey moved in close, wrapping an arm around him and resting her head against his chest. She tilted her head back to look at him.

“You’re right. If I am pregnant, what does this mean?” she asked. “For you?”

He smiled. “It means we’re going to get our own place. We won’t have to keep sneaking around to be with one another.”

She snorted. “We don’t do a whole lot of sneaking. In case you didn’t notice, our parents like to make time for each other. We’re not getting in the way of that.” She let out a sigh. This one wasn’t filled with frustration, but it had a softness to it. “It would be nice to have our own place. We wouldn’t have to keep making love in the forest. That would be nice.” She snuggled against him and he sensed she started to relax, and that was what he enjoyed.

“You don’t like making love in the forest?”

She giggled. “I do, but not when it is freezing cold.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” He kissed the top of her head. “I want you to marry me.”

This made her tilt her head back and release a gasp. “Is that a proposal?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“You’re not going to get down on one knee?”

“No, I’m not. This is going to be the proposal you remember. You don’t need me bowing down or declaring anything. You know the way I feel about you, and that is not going to change. I love you, and now that you’re pregnant with my child, I’m never letting you go.” He kissed her lips as she tilted her head back to look at him.

“We’re really going to do this?” she asked.

“Yeah, we are. I’ll talk to my dad about getting a place of our own. I don’t think it will happen before Christmas, but next year we could be decorating something for ourselves.”

He couldn’t help but love that smile on her lips. In that moment, he didn’t care about the vision or what it meant. All he cared about was spending the time with Casey. Lucinda had been unclear. There were three people who played a part in his death. He didn’t know who the third player would be, but he was more interested in making sure it didn’t happen.

Casey would never forgive herself.

He had Casey and his unborn child to fight for.

****

Lucinda hated this feeling.

She glanced through her mix of herbs and potions, and she had always known something was off, but now she was sure of it. A special herb was missing—an enchanted chamomile she’d been experimenting with.

On one of her many visits with Klaus, the Alpha had mentioned how worried he was about pack females, and some of them were not able to control their wolves. Lucinda knew how difficult it was for some of the wolves. She tried to keep herdistance from the pack, as she knew how tempting it was for them to seek her out to use magic.

Magic was dangerous and deadly. The cost of doing business was far too high.

After Klaus’s sadness, she had decided to try and experiment with suppressing the wolf inside the woman long enough to give birth. She knew it was a risk to even attempt. Meddling with someone’s wolf could have dire consequences. She created the chamomile into a tea, but there was no way for her to test it. She’d need her subject to be willing, and to ask Klaus for his permission, and of course there was always the risk something could go wrong.

She had never told another soul about this experiment, at least she didn’t recall telling anyone. Apart from her book. Her missing potions book and the missing chamomile. She didn’t know how long it had been since she misplaced her book or the herb.

---