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"Yes."

I don't leave a gap in front of it this time and I don't dress it up after.

"A bond hands you a name. That's what it does. It doesn't give you a single reason."

"Gage."

"It didn't tell me you'd stand in the road and argue with me for nine minutes about a mailbox you hit. It didn't tell me you’d say good morning to thirty-seven candles. It didn't tell me you pick the mushrooms off your own pizza every single time and never once say a word to the person who keeps ordering them for you."

Her mouth does something she doesn't have permission for.

"I got every reason I have the ordinary way. Getting to know you. For six months I paid attention. Fate didn't do one minute of that work. I did."

"Then why?"

"I’ll tell you the rest of it." I sit down on the floor across from her, because standing over her while I say this would be wrong. "And when I'm done you can decide what I am."

She waits.

"My mother's name is Della."

"My father's wolf chose her in April. Second week." I stare at the floor between my boots. "Same as mine did with you, which is a joke I've found funny."

Maren doesn't move.

"He claimed her six days later. Didn't ask. Didn't wait for her wolf to answer him. He just decided his choosing was enough for both of them." My jaw tightens. "Then he told her afterward, over supper, like he'd repaired the fence."

"Gage."

"That's not how a true mate bond is supposed to work. The wolf can recognize someone. Want them. Even go half-feral over them. But recognition isn't the bond." I finally look at her. "The bond only becomes real when both people choose it. My father never understood that. Or maybe he understood and didn't care."

I rub my palms over my knees. "She stayed thirty-three years. Every morning, she sat at the kitchen window staring toward the road. I was nine when I finally asked him why she always looked so sad." The memory tastes bitter even now. "He told me she'd get used to it."

Maren's face changes.

"He was proud of what he'd done. That's the part I need you to understand. He honestly believed his wolf wanting her gave him the right to keep her."

"And when he died?"

"A true mating bond usually breaks when one mate dies. Sometimes it takes the other one with it. Sometimes the surviving mate loses their wolf. Sometimes they lose their mind. That's why our kind doesn't talk about losing a mate unless we have to." I swallow. "But what my father put on my mother wasn't a true bond. It was a forced claim. One-sided. Unfinished. His death didn't break it because there was never anything mutual there to break."

Her voice is barely above a whisper. "So she's still claimed by him?"

"His mark is still in her magic. Like scar tissue." I pause. "There is a way to sever it. A witch can cut the claim out, but the body doesn't know the difference between severing a false bond and having a true mate ripped away. Three days of pain. Fever. Hallucinations. Sometimes the wolf disappears afterward. Sometimes it comes back wrong. A few people have died trying."

Maren goes very still.

"My mother tried once."

That gets her eyes on me.

"She made it through the first night. By morning, she was screaming his name and begging them to stop. Not because she loved him." My throat closes around the words. "Because he'd been inside her magic for twenty-two years, and her body had learned to mistake captivity for survival."

I breathe out slowly.

"She's sixty-three now. Lives eleven miles out, past the old barn. And every morning she still puts two cups on the counter."

Maren's eyes shine.