Page 22 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

“I wouldn’t lie about—”

*Because I don’t think you actually live here. It smells too dead for that.*

He stilled. “Dead?”

*It’s so… nothing.*She moved her paws uneasily. *It’s like nothing exists here. A void.*

Mordecai worked his jaw until he could trust himself to speak. “You can shift here or in the bedroom. The bathroom,” he corrected himself as Peony let out a squeak. “You said it can take you a while to shift, so take all the time you need. I have staff on call who can purchase you anything you need.”

*What, like… a personal shopper? You don’t need to buy me anything.*

“You’d prefer to wear something of mine?”

Her tiny furry head snapped around. *What?*

“When you shift, you’ll be naked,” he said, slowly, scarcely able to believe he needed to say the words out loud.

You didn’t, his dragon reminded him.You could have spoken to her telepathically.

Yes. Correct. He could have brushed the edges of her mind with his, his attention shivering down the connection between them like a plucked string, and said the wordnakeddirectly into her brain.

*Oh. Right. Yes. I… I didn’t think of that.*Cats could not blush. But Peony’s psychic voice had a very warm, pink feeling to it. *But first, can you take me to a mirror?*

His first instinct was to pick her up, protecting her tiny form within the safety of his hands, and carry her.

He quashed the impulse.There is no way she would appreciate me manhandling her,he told his dragon when it argued with him.And the idea that she would find me to be a source of safety…

He directed her to the en suite, somehow managing not to think about the fact they were passing through his bedroom. If she had been in human form— No. She’d made it clear she preferred to be in cat form around him, probably for that very reason.

The matebond was meant to be powerful, representing a strong physical and emotional connection between two people.How much easier to ignore an unwanted attraction when you have needle-like teeth and claws and a whole world of sensory overload to block out your despised mate?

He kept his thoughts well hidden. For a change, Peony was doing the same. She jumped onto the vanity and stared at herself in the mirror for a long minute, and all he felt from her was a tremor of… something.

He frowned.

Then—

*This can’t be happening. This can’t beright.*Her voice was hushed. She was trying to hide it.

Mordecai ignored a tic in his cheek. If she was trying to hide her thoughts, the polite thing to do would be to pretend he didn’t hear them.

This rapidly became more difficult.

Peony’s thoughts quick-fired through his brain, each one pricking like a tiny knife, too fast for him to follow. What was she reacting to?

Her cat form was ridiculously cute. Its fur was long and soft and the color of butterscotch, with white socks. Its eyes were huge, luminous green with flashes of gold that reminded him of the same flashes in her human eyes, although the base color was different. Brown in her human form, green in her cat form. When it meowed—which he was certain must have been accidental on her part—it was tiny and high-pitched and like something off a cartoon.

Fate must have been drunk when it paired the two of them: his brute of a dragon and this tiny, adorable creature. It was a cosmic joke.

*This is what I put my life on hold for?*Peony’s voice was a horrified whisper.

Ice trickled down Mordecai’s spine. Polite be damned.

“Regardless of the circumstances, you are my mate, and I am—” Something in his chest twisted painfully. “I am yours. We need to accept that.”

*How am I meant to accept it?*Peony-the-cat’s fur stood on end, her tail as stiff and fluffed-up as a wire brush, but it was her human face that burst into his memory. The way she had swallowed back her anger and disappointment back at the bookstore. He’d wanted to see her bare her claws then.

I should have been more careful what I wished for.

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