Page 72 of Ignited

“Yeah. Two little weeks. Anybody can do that. But a bond is for always. How long before I fuck this up?”

She thought about that. He needed a real answer, and she needed to give him one. Finally she said, “I don’t know. Does that matter?”

He gave a disgusted huff. “Of course it matters. How could it not?”

She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Because, maybe it’s not about not fucking up? Maybe it’s about… I don’t know. Just… what you and your brother do. Being there for each other. Fighting and making up. Doing your best to make the bad times less heinous. Taking turns being strong.”

She reached out to him, brushing his hair back, smoothing the furrowed lines on his forehead. “Maybe the bond isn’t a cage, or an obligation. Maybe it’s just a safe place to come home to, where someone loves you no matter what. Couldn’t we make it that?”

He gave her a crooked half-grin, emotion filling his eyes. “What if that’s not how it’s supposed to be?”

She gave him her reckless, wild tiger grin. “You thought either of us was going to follow the rules? That’s cute.”

He laughed and swept her into his arms. “You’re the perfect mate, Kittycat.”

“I love you, Wolf. Let’s be bad together.”

He pulled her to him and covered her lips with his.

They made love in the cave, on a pile of army blankets, wild and breathless and tender. But all too soon, the real world intruded again.

Karisma said, “We’re going to have to go after Maximilian, you know. We can’t let him mess up the pack. And I think we’re going to have to take Thanatos with us.”

“I don’t trust him,” Boomer said.

“Me either. We’ll just have to have each other’s backs, is all.”

He sighed. “Fuck. I really do not want to do this.”

Karisma bared her teeth. “I do. I’m going to kill that Maximilian fucker dead.”

They hiked back to the Ridge in human form, wearing clothes from the supply cache. The magic of the bonding still sizzled in their veins, and Boomer could see it giving Karisma strength.

His mate. One who didn’t even care if he fucked things up. But he still couldn’t. He had to come through for her, had to help her finish this.

When they arrived at the cabin, everyone was still there, even though Boomer and Karisma had been gone for hours.

Bro was cleaning his guns on the coffee table.

DB had conjured a chess set from somewhere, and was sitting at the kitchen table playing chess with Thing. The disembodied glove gave Boomer the willies, floating around moving pieces on the board. Especially because it seemed to be winning.

And Thanatos… Thanatos was in one of the comfy chairs in front of the TV. He’d gotten into Boomer’s Netflix queue, and the hood was watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries.

Now Boomer had fucking seen everything.

“Yo,” he said, as everyone looked up. “Here’s what happened in the previous episode. Karisma found me, I yelled a lot, and she bit me.” He wrapped his arm around her neck and kissed her. “In the claiming kind of way. We accept your congratulations.”

Everybody’s mouth was open. Even Thing had swiveled around in the air to look at them.

Karisma said, “So, if I’m not going to get any stronger—and Maximilian can potentially suck out the pack’s juju through the Orb—I suggest we start planning this mission. Any chance we can get it done by Christmas?”

Of course it wasn’t that easy. It never was, was it?

At least this meeting was slightly less acrimonious than the last one, although there was almost as much yelling.

They called in Gunn, as pack alpha, and Mikey came with him as his right-hand person.

Boomer had thought the first problem was going to be finding Maximilian, since last he heard, Thanatos didn’t know exactly where he was.