Page 61 of Their Mate
“You’re quiet,” Aidan said, reading me the way he was beginning to do far too easily.
“I’m thinking.” I took a bite to stall. Dry, salty, forgettable. “About exit routes. Weapons. The part where the Elder Lycan sets this whole place on fire.”
Aidan shifted closer, just enough to share heat. His voice stayed low, careful. “And what are you thinking when you’re not pretending it’s only about logistics?”
I should have pushed back. Instead, I watched my thumb worry at a seam in my sleeve and told the truth. “That I don’t know what to do with… this.” I flicked my gaze between them. “The bond. You. All of you. It’s—” I forced a breath. “Not what I planned.”
Declan’s smile was small and real. “We’re not asking for a plan. Just you.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
Declan shifted to sit in front of me, forearms on his knees. “Tell me something true,” he said. “Not tactical. Just something true of you.”
I almost said no automatically. Then I worried my lip and told them a truth that I hadn’t told anyone ever before. I don’t know why. In that moment, it just felt right.
“I don’t like needing anyone. It makes me sloppy.”
Aidan made a soft sound. “That made you honest.”
My mouth tilted. “Says the wolf who bit his best friend to keep him breathing.”
“Exactly,” he said, unbothered. “That’s what needing each other looks like with us.”
Declan reached out, slow enough that I could stop him if I wanted to, and brushed dust from my cheek with his knuckles. Heat flared under my skin like I’d stepped too close to the fire. “We’ll take your pace,” he said. “All of us. You set it, we follow.”
I caught his wrist before he pulled away. Not hard, just enough to keep the moment from ending. “You’re infuriating. Besides, your pack mates already blew that. They couldn’t have cared less about my pace because I’d injured the two of you.”
He grinned. “I’ve been called worse. And we’ll give the three of them a thrashing as soon as we’re out of this mess.”
Aidan shifted closer still, his knee bumping mine. “May I…?” He nodded toward a loose strand of hair falling in my eyes.
I surprised myself by nodding. His fingers were warm as he tucked it back behind my ear, callused pads careful againstmy temple. The mate bond thrummed under my skin, low and insistent, like a wire drawn tight.
I both loved and hated how good it felt.
“You two always this charming,” I muttered, “or is it just when you’re trying to make me forget I should be running for the hills?”
“Both,” Declan said unapologetically.
“You don’t have to run right now,” Aidan said quietly. “Just… sit with us. Breathe with us.”
My protest came, tired and brittle. “I’m a member of the Watch. I’m always on guard.”
“Be what you need to be,” Declan said. “And be ours, too.” He lifted my hand, turned it palm down, and pressed his mouth to the backs of my knuckles. “You don’t have to pick a side in this exact second.”
My chest felt like it loosened. I hated that they could do this, walk me right up to the edge and make the fall look like flying.
Across the room, Logan folded the map. “Thirty minutes,” he said. “Then we move.”
“Copy,” Edward answered without turning.
Jamie flicked his knife closed and winked at me like he hadn’t been listening to us the whole time. “If you three are done making eyes, I’ll go scrounge for more supplies.”
“Go,” I said, deadpan. “Before I stab you myself.”
He laughed and sauntered off.
I looked back at Aidan and Declan. They didn’t crowd me. They didn’t press. They just… stayed by me. A constant presence at my shoulders. Patience in their eyes. That steady, aggravating kind of safety I’d spent years pretending I didn’t need.
