Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 48193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 241(@200wpm)___ 193(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 241(@200wpm)___ 193(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
My world revels in the fact that my mate is here. She’s safe in my arms, and has been pleasured to the very limits of her body. There is no threat outside the cottage. There is no threat for miles. I do not know another place where we could have such complete solitude, though that makes me ache for her as well. A woman like Idalis should not have had to keep herself so secluded.
We stay tangled in the sheets for a long time, avoiding the rest of the world. When goosebumps cover Idalis’s shoulder, I tug the blankets up and make sure she is well covered, but first I plant on a kiss on her bare skin. It’s a sin to cover her. I crave her skin against mine for as long as I can have it. Until dawn. Until the next day. Until…until I’m forced to go back.
As quickly as I can, I force that thought to fade away. I wish I could stay right here for years, but it’s not possible for a soldier. I’ll allow myself the fantasy a little longer. As her soft hums surround me with tender touches, I do everything I can not to think of what will come.
It’s dark in the cottage, and the sounds outside are those of the deep part of the night. I drift in the peace of the moment, entranced with the softness of Idalis’s skin and the warmth of her body in my arms. She’s not yet fallen asleep and makes no move to get up. I wonder if her thoughts are where mine are. If she has the same feelings I do, even though she’s not a wolf. So many thoughts race in my mind and yet I feel peace with her. Comfort and peace. She lies there with her hair spilling over my chest as I let my fingers slip over her curves. After a while, I thread my fingers through her hair, inhaling the scent of her.
This is how it should be.
She doesn’t seem shocked to find herself as my mate. She doesn’t ask questions. I wonder how much my little witch knows. Perhaps she sensed something in the air the moment our eyes met.
I lose myself in her smallest movements. Every breath she takes. The soft touch of her fingertips on my chest. The heat underneath her palms.
As my head clears from the rush of such intense mating, another desire rises in me.
To allow her to see the parts of me I have guarded for most of my life. It was known in my pack. It was known to some in the army. But someone like Idalis?
I’ve never shared this with someone like her. And it’s clear to me that I should share now. Before the hours tick on. She needs to know of the curse.
“I wasn’t supposed to have a mate.” My voice is more hoarse from the long silence than I anticipated. I clear my throat and peek down at her. Her gaze holds nothing but kindness and understanding. No shock. No judgment.
A weight lifts off me. As she licks her bottom lip, preparing to speak, Idalis repositions her head on my chest.
“You were not?” she asks, softly, as if she does not want to wake me from the spell of the night. She traces another circle on my chest. “Do not all shifters have mates? You didn’t know you’d find me one day?”
With my eyes closed, it could almost be that night again, with the troll who told me I was cursed. Her eyes had burned with a strange light, and I didn’t want her to tell me of my fate. She told me anyway. The words from her lips turned the world dark and empty around me. What she said stripped me of any future I might have hoped for and left me to bear the burden in the privacy of my own mind. I wanted to close my eyes so she could not look into them, but I could not bring myself to do it.
It was a warm night in midsummer until she spoke. Then it was as cold as the dead of winter. Alone in the woods in my teenage years, I’d stumbled upon her. Fear struck me first, but I could have never imagined what she would prophesize.
For years after that, I suffered, hiding it as well as I could. I was angry and resentful, and I couldn’t understand why the troll had done it to me. Of all my pack, I was destined to be alone and they knew it. Never to have purpose or love.
Guilt consumed me whenever I had those thoughts. With every season that passed, the anger inside me burned hotter and hotter until it threatened to burn every relationship I had to the ground.