Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen,” he says simply.

But the sallow, emaciated girl blinking at me in the changing room mirror is no one at all.

Because every single thing I glanced at, grazed, examined, eyed, or even considered when we were at the grocery store, every single thing I decided to walk past, every single thing I told myself I didn’t need—every single thing has somehow made it here, inside Koen’s house.

He wants to show her every corner of his territory. The deep blue lakes and the snow-capped peaks. Moss-draped trees and rock spires. He wants to be with her for each marveled intake of breath.

Simply put, he is unwilling to contemplate a universe in which she no longer exists.

“How perfect you are. I spent the last twenty years hoping that if there was a mate for me out there, I’d never come across them. And then I found you, and, Serena…there isn’t one thing I would change about you. Or one single thing I regret about knowing you.”

And when I’m with you, I feel…a little less like half of two things, and a little more whole.

This ain’t my first rodeo—and by rodeo, of course, I mean kidnapping.

“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 forgot what it’s like, not feeling like a box of stale saltines left open in a cupboard in 1947.

I feel close to you. So much so, sometimes I wonder if fate really does exist. When you’re around, the universe feels more bearable.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”