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When I just stared at her, Nora’s expression turned uncertain. “I mean, if you still want to be mates.”

“I still want to be mates,” I reassured her. “More than anything. I’m just taking a moment to savor the moment.”

“Savor later,” she demanded.

I bent my knees and rolled us over again, bracing my weight on my forearms as I started pounding into her like a man possessed. Nora wrapped her legs around my waist and held onto my shoulders, rocking her hips up to meet me stroke for stroke. In the background I was dimly aware of the headboard pounding against the wall in time with my thrusts, but I was too far gone to care.

“Ollie!” Nora screeched my name as her orgasm hit, making her inner muscles clench around my dick almost painfully.

With a growl of release I let myself go, pushing as deep as I could inside her and releasing my seed. I lowered my head, nudging Nora’s head to the side to give me access to her creamy white neck, sniffing her skin.

“Yes Ollie, do it.”

Without warning I sank my fangs into her skin, marking her as my mate. Nora gasped as another orgasm rocked her body. I stayed with her until her movements calmed, licking her neck to seal and cement the mate bond. I could feel it even now growing stronger, the thin filament that already connected us thickening to an unbreakable bond.

Nora rubbed her hand over my back and shoulder as we both recovered.

“That felt different,” she finally said. “The last orgasm. Not just stronger but… deeper somehow.”

“It’s the mate bond,” I told her as I shifted my weight and propped my head on my hand to watch her. “We’re connected now. Until the day I die I’ll never be able to think of another woman. I’ll dedicate my life to making you happy.”

Her eyes clouded with tears before she blinked them away. “If you’re going to dedicate your life to making me happy, we really need to deal with that ladder to your loft.”

I chuckled softly. She’d been complaining about that ladder since the first night she stayed there. It was awkward for her. She worried about falling and didn’t like the way that by the time she got down the ladder, went to the bathroom, and came back up she was wide awake. Little did she know I had a special Christmas present that would take care of that. Ben was going to help me build her a staircase. But I wanted that to be a surprise.

“We can add onto the cabin,” I assured her. “Or live here at Rosewater Manor. Or buy a new place that’s just for us. The only thing that matters is that we’re together.”

Nora

Iknew as soon as we got downstairs that my kids had heard our sexual antics the night before. All three of them were avoiding my gaze. The girls looked embarrassed and Scott looked like he wanted to punch something. Or someone.

As soon as we sat down Sage brightened. “Is that a mate mark on your neck, Nora?”

I clapped my hand over it, then realized I was being ridiculous and put it down.

“Yes,” I said, looking around the table. “Ollie and I were officially mated last night.”

“Yeah, we all heard,” Scott grumbled.

I gave him a warning look that made him turn his attention to his plate.

When we went to town yesterday I’d given my kids a piece of my mind.

“I spent my entire adult life being there for you kids, putting your needs before my own, and being at your beck and call even when you were old enough to take care of yourselves,” I’d reminded them. “I love you and I want to have a relationship with you, but not if this is how you’re going to act.”

“It was just such a shock Mom,” Laura told me. “We never even knew you dated.”

“Well, now you know. I would think you’d be happy that I found such a great guy. You should get used to Ollie because he’s going to be around for a while.”

To their credit, they behaved much better when we got back to the Rosewaters. I could see that they were trying. It also helped that before Ollie and I came down to breakfast Sage and Edward had given my kids some ‘tough love’, as Sage called it, about my being a grown woman who was entitled to happiness and a life separate from them.

They still weren’t thrilled about me and Ollie, especially after hearing us have sex, but at least they were trying to be nice.

All of us worked together on the Thanksgiving dinner, and by the time the rest of the Rosewaters arrived we were almost done. The adults gathered around the long table, the little ones at a card table off to the side, and we enjoyed the feast. The Rosewaters had a way of putting people at ease and bringing them into the fold, and it didn’t take long for my kids to bond with their cousins and their mates.

After dinner we went outside to work off the enormous amount of calories we’d consumed. Well, the humans did. The shifters could eat their weight in carbs and not gain an ounce.

Eventually the guys started playing football, including Scott and Ollie, while the women went for a walk down by the river.