Page 60 of Broken Arranged Mate
“Okay?” she asks on a breath, drawing her chin back.
“Yes,” I nod, reaching out and putting my hands on either side of her, something snapping into place when I’m touching her again. “I want your ideas, Ash. I want every single ounce of you, if you’ll give it to me.”
She’s still, as if she moves, it might shatter the moment. “What are you saying?”
I suck in a breath, examine her—that small, straight nose, the dark brown eyebrows like her brother’s. The tiny vertical line between her brows, the way her blue eyes glint in the light. She’s mine, and I’m hers, and I never want to feel what I felt tonight again.
“I’m saying,” I whisper, dropping my head down even more, so my lips practically brush against hers as I speak, “that I lied to you. During the blood moon—I told you that I didn’t feel it. That you weren’t my mate.”
“You…did?”
I let out a quick breath, and she sways forward, so our lips nearly press together.
“Yeah,” I say, hands moving over her back, pulling her closer to me. “I did. I was—I was young and stupid, and I thought that having a mate would just get in the way. I thought that if anyone found out about you, they would hurt you. I still thought that, when I—”
Pausing, I shake my head, letting my nose run the length of her cheek.
“Fuck, Ash, leaving you was the worst thing I’ve ever done. I did it because—because I realized I was falling in love with you, and it scared the hell out of me. I thought that mates were one thing, married was another, but loving you…it opened me up. I thought it made me vulnerable, but that was naive.”
Slow, soft tears roll down her face, and I reach up, swiping one away with my thumb. “Loving you makes me stronger, Ash. It reminds me that I’m a good man, and that I can be a good leader.”
“It really,reallysucked,” she says, the words breaking on a sob, and I tuck her into my arms, leaning down and pressing my mouth to her ear, whispering as quietly as I can so nobody else hears it.
“And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” I murmur, rubbing her back and holding her tight. “I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you the way you deserve, Ash.”
Chapter 34 - Ash
As Oren and I walk home, we talk about my ideas for improving the pack.
I tell him that while the girls and I were lost, we passed a lot of little communities with run-down homes, and it made me think about the renovations I’ve been doing on our own house. It made me think about how I could pass on the skills Gramps gave to me, teach people how to fix up their homes, and encourage them to come together and take care of their homes together.
“How things look seems trivial,” I say, as we walk along the road toward home. We could shift, but walking like this feels right, his hand at my back, the large, empty sky above us. “But I think it would help people to feel more like this land belongs to them again. Taking care of something—caring about how it looks—that means you’re investing in the future.”
Oren stops, studying me. “So, all those renovation projects when you were pissed at me—?”
I can’t stop the flush that rushes over my cheeks at the realization that he’s right. Even through the worst of it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I still wanted him, that I could still make it work.
Maybe that’s what being mates means.
“I’mstillpissed at you,” I say to deflect, but it doesn’t affect the smile on his face.
We talk about the shifters leaving the territory, many of them fleeing for the Llewellyn pack, or even to Ambersky, where omegas are treated better. We discuss the logistics of opening up a college here, like the one in the Llewelyn territory, about what it would take to open it to omegas.
Oren mentions a new training program that would go into effect at each school, each workplace, to touch on the issues facing omegas as well.
I bring up putting together a community center, a place where the pack can come together, like in Ambersky. Oren adds that it should have free housing, a clinic. A place where omegas can come when they’re in heat, if they feel they have nowhere safe to be.
Around us, the desert is calm and quiet, the occasional critter moving through the brush, but for the most part, it’s quiet around us as we talk, until we reach home.
And when we do, I feel the heat come on the moment we get back, washing over my body in a single, heated press of arousal and sensitivity.
My heat normally only comes a few times a year, but I know it’s normal for moments of high stress to trigger it. I guess I’m just lucky it didn’t come on while we were still tied up in that basement.
There’s a reason it’s calledheat—and I can already tell that this one is going to be brutal, sweat prickling along my collarbone and hairline. Everywhere my skin touches something else feels too hot, the leather under my legs already growing wet with my sweat.
Oren looks over at me the moment I feel the slick between my legs, and his expression shifts, something determined passing over it as we walk up to the front porch.
“Come here,” he says, and a moment later, he has his hand behind my back, his arms coming around me as he carries me into the house.
