When I came back inside and she didn’t say anything snarky to me, I knew she was still feeling pretty awful about it.
I fed her cats and hung around the cottage—trying to offer the comfort of nearness as well as I could without risking upsetting her more.
She’d passed out, though, giving me a chance to check on my arm.
I yanked up the sleeve of my shirt, clenching my jaw to hold in a growl when I brushed the new, black, tattoo-like brand on my bicep—a wolf paw.
Brushing it jolted a deep awareness of my mate through my body, filling my mind with her location, breathing, heartbeat, and more information than my brain could process.
Yes, I had figured out who my mate was, in the middle of the fight with the hunters. I’d been out of my mind with concern for her as the overwhelming sensation of the bond twisted around my heart. Then I’d felt it, the cord of connection between my mate and me. Immediately, every intention I had to reject the bond disappeared.
I grimaced as I mentally reached for the bond, and felt nothing.
There was a black, gaping hole where the connection formed by the bond usually settled in a wolf’s mind—the spot where you could feel the person, to the point where you almost existed in two bodies.
The hole hurt worse than the dull ache the missing mate bond had been in my chest. That I had been able to ignore if I focused. But this…there was no way to ignore what felt like a chunk of my soul missing.
Every breath I took I was painfully aware that while I had solidified the bond, my mate had done no such thing, creating an unbalanced, uneven bond.
I’ll get used to it.
I had no choice.
The pain was never going to lessen.
Hunters were physically incapable of accepting mate bonds. It came with the territory of being immune to Alpha powers, and was also probably the reason why my bond had never settled—it never had a chance to make the connection after I’d set eyes on her.
I had no intention of telling my mate. She already had enough she was dealing with. Adding in a mate bond would only make things worse for her.
Yes, the last thing Pip needed to know was that she was my mate, and that I’d inescapably tied myself to her. Forever.
The End