Page 95 of Wolf's Reckoning
“If she’s your mate…” He hesitated. “You sure you want to keep playing house like this is temporary? And um…theother, other thing you haven’t told her yet.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Another log. Another swing. Splinters everywhere. “But I know what my wolf wants.”
I didn’t want this. I didn’t trust this. Mates were sacred, yes—but they were rare. Rare andpermanent. An alpha didn’t choose his mate. The Goddess did, and fuck, I wasn’t ready to be chosen. Not by Rowen. Not when she hated me. Notwhen I still carried the wound of her turning me away all those years past.
But the way she smelled…the way her skin had warmed when I got too close…the way my wolf was pacing now, circling the scent she’d left behind like it was already ours…because itwas.
She was my destined mate.
Fuck. Me.
I dropped the axe, breath ragged, avoiding Killian’s wide-eyed stare. This was more than strategy. More than duty. This was Luna’s claim…and my instincts had already answered.
Killian watched me quietly. Then, with the exasperated patience of a man who knew me too well, he said, “What do you do now? Stop treating her like the enemy and start figuring out what this actually is before you screw it all up?”
I let out a slow, bitter laugh. “Too late for that.”
I pressed my hand to the bark of the nearest tree, trying to ground myself. Because I could handle enemies. I could handle war. But Rowen, with a mating bond starting to bloom in her blood?
That was a battle I had no idea how to win.
Chapter 23
Rowen
I couldn’t sit still.Not for long.
I finished breakfast, unpacked the food delivered to the house from pack well-wishers, and then reorganized everything in the kitchen pantry—twice, like I ran a grocery store. Then I moved through the house he had chosen, noting what needed to be done and what could be improved. I found myself in the bedroom, staring at the bed as it sat there in silent accusation. I straightened the sheets and left again, trying not to remember how I had woken up curled into his side this morning.
I folded a blanket on the back of the couch. Made tea I didn’t drink.
Something was off. Not wrong. Just…off.
I couldfeelhim. Even from outside, even across the grounds. Wolfe’s presence settled in my bones like an itch I couldn’t reach. I told myself it was just because we were sharing a house now. Sharing air. Sharing walls.
But I’d spent years pretending I didn’t feel anything atall. And now, every time he came close, it was like my skin remembered him before my brain could catch up.
I hated it.
I hated that Inoticed.
A breeze pushed through the open window, and I caught the scent of woodsmoke and something…warmer. Something male. Dominant. Familiar in a way I didn’t want to unpack. I shut the window hard enough to make the frame rattle.
“Rowen? You okay?” I turned to the voice that came from the hall behind me. Adair was there, a basket of herbs in her arms. “I’ve been watching you from outside. You’ve been pacing for twenty minutes. Either you’re plotting a murder or trying to calculate how many steps it takes to walk off sexual frustration.”
I laughed at her crudeness. “Shut up. I am not…frustrated.” I was, I really was. I saw more of the pack milling about outside, waiting patiently. “What’s happening?”
“We’re fixing the pack leader’s house up for him,” Adair said easily. She grinned at me again. “Just saying, you’re twitchier than a pup with her first heat.”
“Because I’m trying to survive sharing a space with a man who thinks growling directions at me is foreplay,” I snapped waspishly.
Her eyebrows went up. “You think it’s foreplay?”
“I think hethinksit is.”
I didn’t tell her about the look in his eyes earlier. The way his voice had dipped. The way my name had sounded in his mouth—dark, ruined, reverent. I didn’t tell her about the need to climb his body like a tree.
I sat down on the edge of the couch, pinched the bridge of my nose. “He’s up to something.”
