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I stare at the rock formations and the meadow in front of me, and flashes of purples, blues, and grays swirling on my brush take shape in my mind’s eye. The boulders and mountains snap into a familiar shape. I picture the meadow grasses dotted with gold Mexican poppies and draw in a sharp breath.
He’s right! This is the landscape in the small painting of us that he stole from me. I twist my neck to look around. Oh wow. This exact landscape is in at least half of my paintings. All the ones that feature the two wolves, black and white. Yin and yang.
My pulse races. Goosebumps prick my arms and the back of my neck.
“Asher”--I sound breathless– “I’ve never been here before.”
He meets my gaze, his brows popped high. “Never?”
I shake my head.
“You haven’t been here before tonight?” he repeats, like he can’t believe it.
A sob catches in my belly. The next one surges up my throat, but I don’t know why. It has something to do with the magnitude of me painting the two of us in a place where we’d have our first real date long before I knew anything. Before I knew Asher was my mate. Or even that I was painting myself and my fated mate and not two symbolic wolves from my imagination who didn’t exist.
Asher’s arms tighten around me even more. “You’ve been painting your future,” he murmurs against my hair. “Ourfuture.”
The sob finds its way out in a silent, wracking breath. “That’s…crazy. I mean, I don’t see how it’s even possible.”
I hear a light chuckle from Asher or, rather, feel it in the soft tickle of his breath in my hair. “You don’t think your wolf knew our future?”
I cover my mouth with a hand, holding in the tidal wave sized sob that erupts.
“Whoa.” Asher rubs a hand up and down my back, rocking me gently like I’m a baby.
I don’t even know how to explain the enormity of my emotions, but Asher guesses at them. “The problem is, you think art and wolves don’t mix.” He’s still rocking me. I find it hard to believe that this is the same classroom bully who is ruled by belligerence and rebellion. Right now he seems wise beyond years. “That’s because your parents are boneheads.”
I let out a watery laugh.
“You locked up your wolf, thinking she wasn’t compatible with art. She became your muse. Maybe you thought you’d keep her there, forever. Am I close?”
“Yes.” Tears continue to streak my face, and I struggle to take a deep breath. I still don’t understand why I’m crying. I just know that Asher verbalizing what I’ve been living alone with for years is healing me.
“What if…what if she’s not separate from you, Lotta? I think you might have it backwards.”
I swipe under my eyes with my fingertips.
“What if she’s not separate from your art? She could be part of your creative genius, not the foil to it.”
I can’t believe Asher even knows the wordfoil.Thismeat-head jock who refuses to complete any assignments in my class is so much more intelligent and well-educated than he lets on. Every word he speaks is like a truth bomb exploding around me.
“I think we shifters often create separation between our two parts. We say things like,my wolf got violent. My wolf won’t let me back down.Ormy wolf wants this,but I want that.” He meets my gaze, and I see distance there–his wounding. “You and I, we try to separate our wolves’ attraction from our hatred for each other–”
“I don’t hate you, Asher,” I blurt, needing to interrupt. “Do you think that?”
Pain flashes in his gaze.
He doesn’t understand why I hurt him so deeply before I left. I don’t want him to know the real reason my mom had his dad thrown out. She had those council proceedings locked up to protect me and my identity, but I wanted them locked to protect Asher. The truth would crush him–even more now that he knows I’m his mate.
He works to swallow. “We’re starting over.” Some of the hardness is back in his voice, and it hits me like a blast of cold.
My reaction must show because regret flashes in his hazel eyes. He leans his forehead against mine and whispers it again. “We’re starting over, Lotta. This is our beginning, right here, right now.”
I nod, rolling my forehead along his. “This is our beginning.”
Asher catches my head against his shoulder and kisses the top of it. “Anyway, I think the belief that we are two separate entities in one body instead of one entity in two kind of fucks us.”
“But we are ruled by separate urges.”
