Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Serena.” I hear the blurry edge of his smile. A quiet sigh. “I would throw away my pack, my life, and my entire world for you. Which is the exact reason I cannot have you.”

Serena is the name by which my sister calls me. The name on my diploma. The name Koen whispered in my ear last night. Eva might be what Fiona chose when I was a child, but it belongs to someone who was at the mercy of others, someone who doesn’t exist even in her own memories. Serena was a spur-of-the-moment decision by a nurse, but it’s my name because I made it so. Everything I built is attached to it.

“If someone had given me a piece of paper and asked me to list everything I liked, everything I dreamed of, everything that I was sure would make me happy, you would have been the final product of it.”

I observe him for a while, wondering whether it’s normal, feeling—feeling so much about a single person. Surely, it’s unfair. Surely, a love this deep should be reserved for the universe as a whole.

“You told me that you loved me, Serena,” he says simply. His eyes are earnest, liquid. So profoundly good. “And while I’m willing to resign myself to an existence without the person I love, I refuse to condemn you to it.”