Page 22 of Trusting Her Mate

I already know what’s coming. I’ve been thinking about it since Peyton left my cabin, since she dropped the word gathering and walked out like she hadn’t just set a bomb in my kitchen. The answer sits in my chest, heavy and cold, refusing to move.

“We have to look like mates,” I say. “Not two wolves sharing a cabin. Not allies doing each other a favor. Mates.”

Wren’s pulse jumps. I see it in her throat, that quick flutter that she can’t hide no matter how hard she tries. “What does that look like?” she asks, voice smaller now.

“Close. Comfortable. Like we know each other’s bodies.”

“I’ve only known you for three days.”

“Then we practice.”

She laughs, brittle and sharp. “You want to rehearse being in love.”

“I want to rehearse not looking like strangers.”

She goes quiet. Then she swings her legs off the bed and stands, and suddenly the space between us is gone. Her knees nearly touch mine. Her scent, faint and struggling past the herbs, wraps around me, sweet and wild, curling like smoke.

“Fine,” she says. “But if you make it weird, I’m using one of your murder tools.”

“Understood.”

“And if you tell me to shower one more time, I’m using it on you.”

“Fair.”

She steps around me and walks toward the bathroom. At the doorway, she pauses without turning. “Boone?”

“What?”

“I’m scared.” The admission is so quiet I almost miss it. She says it the way she says everything—fast, flat, like if she gets it out quickly enough, it won’t count.

I don’t tell her not to be. I don’t tell her it’ll be fine. She’s not a child, and she’s not a fool, and she deserves better than comfort that costs nothing.

“I know,” I say. “I’ll be right here.”

She disappears into the bathroom. The door closes, and the shower turns on. I stand in the bedroom with my fists clenched and my wolf clawing at my ribs, and I think about what I’m going to have to do tonight.

I’m going to have to touch her in front of everyone. Hold her. Look at her like she’s the only thing in the room. Make every wolf in Katu believe that she belongs to me.

The problem isn’t the acting. The problem is it won’t be acting.

Not for me.

****

The shower runs for forty minutes. I use the time to do something useful. I strip the bed, remake it with clean sheets, and put the extra blankets Raine brought on the couch. I reorganize the shelf. I move Joy’s carved bear from behind the candles to the front, where Wren put it yesterday, and leave it there.

I end up standing in the middle of my own cabin, useless, nothing left to fix, the shower still running, my wolf howling for her.

When the bathroom door opens, steam rolls out, and Wren steps into the hallway, wrapped in a towel, her wet hair dripping onto the floor, her skin flushed pink from the heat. I look at the wall.

“You could have warned me,” I say.

“You could have not been standing in the hallway.”

“I live here.”

“Then go stand somewhere else.”