Even if I couldn’t snarl “mate” like I wanted to in the middle of a battlefield, in wolf form, with blood still dripping from my jaws and enemies still standing between us.
I knew.
It didn’t need confirmation.
It didn’t need logic.
It didn’t need anything but that pull in my chest snapping tight enough to hurt, enough to make everything else feel secondary, distant, irrelevant.
All I could think of—
All I could f*****g think of—
Was the moment I was going to have her in my arms, solid and real and mine, my hands around her waist, pulling her into me like I wasn’t ever letting go, my mouth at her ear, private and soft and rough, when I said it.
Mate.
The word burned through me even if it never left my throat.
These people right now—
Every single one of them still breathing—
The
