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“My baby is a badass as well as beautiful?” He nodded slowly. “Whatever you want. You know that.”
Because something connected when they touched me like this, something hot and immediate that seemed to pour through me, filling me with their energy and making me feel whole for just a moment.
“I can’t let the four of you slide into the Paul-sized hole left inside me. I can’t hand over the keys of my cage to you, just when I have got them back from Paul. I need to… find my own way.”
“He’ll fucking love that you put him first,” Thorn said with a cheeky grin. “Don’t tell him, though. He’s such an attention whore.”
“You know that’s how this works? Did they get that much out? It must seem like the world’s been turned upside down, but…” She tried to smile but struggled to do it. “Each one of the sleuth would lay his life down for you. That’s why Koda, Thorn and the other two did what they did. They had to make sure you were safe. They always will, no matter what you decide.”
“A quest to fulfil before the men get to claim your hand? That’s always the way of it.
“It’s all part of our lore, the way the bear gods always work. The sleuth has to work to earn the girl and the girl has to decide whether they’re worth the risk.”
“You shouldn’t have done it, Nat, tied yourself to me,” Koda told me. Stung by his words, I tried to pull back, but his grip strengthened. “But I’m fucking glad you did. Whether you want it or not, I’m yours forever now, Nat.”
“Well, if you’re supposed to do things in order to earn the right to call me mate, then I want you better: healed and whole again. You hear me, Koda?”
“Try before you buy, huh?” He smiled down at me, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Well, I support this… cautious approach. Just be prepared for the fact that I will try to provide some very persuasive arguments.”
“Just that… the guys that are supposed to come together for their mate, do. Koda will be the quiet, serious one you can cuddle up to. Alaric will be all responsible and make sure we have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. Lars will be the bossy daddy type…”
“No one inside is going to think poorly of you for that. Everyone here is ready to love you at first sight and this will just seal the deal for them.”
“Sometimes it's hard to know when is the best time to bring something up.
want kids, we’d love to be the fathers of them. If you don’t want to be a mother, then we’ll just have more time and energy to spend on spoiling you. We just want you, in whichever way you feel comfortable with.”
“Whatever you want, love,” he replied, staring down at me. “Just tell us and we’ll tear apart the whole world to get it for you.”
“Eat, love, and be strong, because, no matter how this plays out, you’re gonna need your strength.”
“But you’re one of us now,” Jane said, rubbing my shoulder. “And we’ll do everything in our power to make this transition easy for you. Because, god knows, we’ve seen what can happen if it doesn’t go that way.
word with me last night. “Finding your mate is one thing. Getting her to accept what you are is another. But the biggest thing? Holding back until she’s ready.” “But how do I—?” I began to ask. “You’ll know. She’ll tell you somehow, but you’ll know.”
“Damn girl! You celebrated Paul being in jail with multiple dick? High five!” “No. No high fives.” She reached down, grabbed my hand and slapped it against hers anyway,
pressing her head to mine. “Was it all of them? Please, please tell me it was all of them.” “It wasn’t all of them.” I pulled free of her and smoothed my clothes back into place, before looking away. “Just some of them.”
“Natalie’s your mate. Koda is your sleuth-mate. You need to keep them safe, Ric.”
“Was she cruising for a bruising? Because I’ve got crystals on my rings.” She flashed her big silver gemstone rings. “And I’ve got a mind to rearrange her chakras.”
“So we’re going snooping, bestie?” Holly said, slinging her arm around my shoulders. “Count me the fuck in.”
“This is a covert mission. I’m too pretty to go to jail.”
“And the problem is…” I looked intently at each one in the room. “I think we’re the only ones standing in the way of this.”
Because, while we were in the shit and facing real threats, none of it mattered unless we chose each other.
“If you accept me as your mate, I’m gonna want to look after you, and you’ll need to let me.”
“Yeah? Well, show me what you’ve got, Bear Boy.”
“You want to be my mate.” “Yes, fuck, yes, but—” “Then that means taking orders, not just giving them.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Koda asserted, “not unless she wants to. The last time she lived in the city, it was really hard for her. We’re not forcing that on her again. She doesn’t leave until she’s ready.” “So, we keep your mate and her town safe, until she is,”
Did she know that her eyes lit up every time she saw us?
“Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you have to. That’s the point of having mates. We need to help you just as much as you need to help your friends.”
“I love you like I love double-stuffed Oreos, bitch. But, can I just say, if I ever had the opportunity to throw my knickers in the air and then dive into a veritable pool of hot man flesh, I would. Without a second thought. Soz not soz.”
“You were gonna give up special peen tonight for me?” “Um, well—” “Peen that is guaranteed to give you multiple orgasms?” “Well, yeah, but—”
I mean, damn, girl. You have a freaking harem at your disposal. You have a responsibility to explore this shit—for science.”
A man could dominate his woman under set circumstances: if she was amenable, if she enjoyed it and if he was able to see that incredible gift of trust for what it was and step up and do what was needed to allow her to surrender for just that moment.
“Mine to make delirious with pleasure until you stop thinking about everyone else and only focus on this.’
He showed me that he wanted me, needed me with every breath and that was fucking heady. And something I bloody well deserved.
“You’re mine now, Natalie.” My voice was more bear than man right now and she stared into my eyes as I spoke. “You’ll never get free of me now.” “Who says I want to?”
Every relationship has its obstacles, and in ours, the biggest obstacle was trust. For me to actually trust them: believing them, believing they were as good as they seemed, believing they’d come through for me.
This was the point where I started believing that they were real, started realising that maybe I deserved everything they had to give.
“You raised Natalie to accept less than she deserves.” Alaric came forward to stand beside me. “You made a woman as beautiful, caring and talented as her think that some fucking idiot was worth sharing her life with.”
“Well, I’m about 2.5 seconds away from decking Nat’s mum, so can you go over there? If you lay her out, it won’t look anywhere near as bad as if I do it.”
My mother was a ball buster of the highest order if it was required and we all knew it. I’d unleashed an Intercontinental Ballistic Mother on Nat’s mum and I didn’t care,
Everyone talks: all of the time, about every damn thing, because it relieves the god-awful boredom of living out in the sticks. You can’t ever stop that but you could actually have stepped up and supported your own daughter when things were going to hell for her.”
“What the fuck was that?” she asked excitedly. “Was that a mum-on-mum smack down? Mumaggedon? A mumapocalypse? Damn, Meryl, that deserves the highest of fives because Nat’s mum is such a biii—”
“I’m sticking around because, if you’re going to have the Twilight life we both fantasised about in school, I’m gonna live vicariously through you. Maybe I can use this knowledge to write a best-selling paranormal romance series that will make me megabucks
“You’re an idiot, you know that, right?” I told her. “But I’m your idiot.” She leaned in close and snuggled into my side.
“It goes beyond love, beyond all expectations of other relationships. It never stops and it never dies, not even when we do.”
“They’re gonna imprint on you harder than Jacob did with that weird baby thing in the movie.”
