5
Zoe made it to Robin’s Egg’s sometime around ten, although she wasn’t really certain of the exact minute.
She knew the sun was out, she knew the approaching fall-scent was getting stronger, and she knew her mate put strawberries on her French toast when strawberries were in season.
They weren’t now, but next year Zoe would get her some.
A whole bushel, or whatever it was strawberries came in.
There might be a next year.
The idea was so heady Zoe had nearly walked into a stop sign on her way over.
Zoe had been wooed.
By a non-were, who hadn’t even had to be told about the traditions first.
She had eaten breakfast as neatly as she could, although syrup was probably in her hair, and felt ridiculously proud of herself for bringing so many smiles to her mate’s face simply by accepting her food and staying.
She had learned that her mate normally took long showers but couldn’t that morning because of the time she’d spent cooking and then crowding Zoe against her sink when Zoe had offered to do the dishes and gotten her t-shirt wet.
Her mate only ever loosely made the bed, but couldn’t leave for work if her kitchen was a mess.
She spent ten minutes applying her makeup in smooth, practiced motions, but took longer when she noticed Zoe watching her put on lipstick with hot fascination.
Zoe had put on her wrinkled uniform with a new shirt underneath and a borrowed pair of underwear that she blushed to think about, and then walked alongside her mate in the morning sunlight after remembering she’d left her truck by the Flores.
Then Cleo had kissed her outside the hotel, with people around, looking , her hands urgent on Zoe’s clothes.
Zoe had been too stunned to object, not that she would have.
She felt about as shameless as Little Wolf, although it had only been kissing.
Of course, to any wolf noses, she reeked of sex, which was as close to publicly declaring herself mated as she could dare come yet.
But she came through the gift shop entrance to the café and felt something like fear when she saw Nathaniel with Tim at the counter and then Carl in his usual spot. They all looked up. Nathaniel immediately rubbed his nose.
Zoe gulped a breath, then reminded herself of the months Tim and Nathaniel’s sex smells in her clothes just from being near them. They could deal with a little of her mate’s bloom-scent wafting in the air.
Robin’s Egg floated over to greet her and ask if she had an order, then smiled beatifically at her in a way Zoe didn’t understand.
Although to be honest, fairies always made her nervous.
Creatures who saw the truth when they looked at Zoe and then smiled must know something she didn’t.
But she ordered her coffee, then remembered the vanilla her mate put in her French toast too and changed her mind.
She ordered a latte with low-fat milk and strong, bitter espresso, with a hint of vanilla syrup, like Cleo did.
Robin’s Egg dashed off before Zoe could rethink it.
“Look who didn’t come home last night,”
Little Wolf chirped the moment Egg was gone, a wicked grin on his face. Then he took a breath and wrinkled his nose. “Aw, Zoe. Gross. You smell like girls .”
Nathaniel casually leaned down to whisper something in his mate’s ear. Zoe couldn’t make it out, but it made Tim meet her gaze. “Which is great,”
he added, and briefly closed his eyes in pleasure when Nathaniel gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Well, well,”
Carl commented. He always had been a nosy old man. “I take it you haven’t been home.”
Zoe stopped. She glanced to Nathaniel, who had such a warm look on his face Zoe had to resort to checking with Little Wolf to get some clarity.
His eyes were ferociously blue for a moment. “Tell us about last night, Zoe.”
He might have meant it as a question, but it didn’t come out that way.
Zoe bristled. “No.”
“Then this morning. Tell us about this morning,”
Tim pressed. He was being very Dirus right now, and, unusually, Nathaniel wasn’t reining him in. He wasn’t even trying.
Nathaniel’s eyes were gold. Zoe blinked at him and nearly took a step back as she tried to determine what was going on. “I’m going to go home and shower and change. I know about the marinara on my uniform, and… everything else.”
“Anything else you want to tell us.”
Tim waved off the stains, or stink of girls , as if they’d never really bothered him. He crossed his arms. Zoe crossed hers right back at him. At least until Robin’s Egg came over with her coffee. Then Zoe stood there, inhaling milk and sugar and vanilla and thinking of Cleo.
After a few minutes of a standoff she knew she’d lose, she huffed. “Nothing bad happened. We talked. She wanted me and asked me to stay. She made me breakfast.”
A smile was slowly growing on Nathaniel’s face. “That sounds like wooing to me.”
“Oh my God!”
Tim almost howled. “Not fair. I had to catch this one a rabbit!”
“Yes. That’s what won me over. The rabbit.”
Nathaniel rolled his eyes, but with affection. Hearing him joke like that was still so strange. His tone was mean but kind; Zoe had never understood it, although Tim seemed to.
But Tim pooh-poohed Nathaniel as well for the moment. “It was my very first rabbit. It was special , and he loved it.”
He turned to Zoe. “What did she make you for breakfast?”
“French toast,”
Zoe revealed, hating Tim a lot for how he could ask simple questions and still have her flustered. She hadn’t said anything weird or suggestive, but now he was grinning at her. “And then…”
“Spare me the and then ,”
he interrupted, then glanced to Carl with an offended expression on his face.
So did Nathaniel. He outright scowled. “Not a word, Carl.”
Carl grumbled at him, fearless before that scowl in a way most others weren’t, but didn’t say whatever he’d been planning on saying. He pretended to be reading his paper again.
“But you didn’t tell her?”
Having dealt with the dirty old man, Nathaniel focused on Zoe once more.
Little Wolf snorted. “I keep telling you, the traditions are nice and everything, but waiting for the other person to recognize the bond is a waste of time. It’s already there. She clearly feels it if she’s wooing you.”
“It doesn’t matter if I say it or not, then.”
Zoe stared at Tim as this idea occurred to her, which was right, by his own logic, but which felt wrong, instinctually. She could tell he thought so too, because instead of arguing, he opened his mouth, then closed it. It felt like a lie to keep it from Cleo when there was no reason to. Cleo was the opposite of Little Wolf. She wasn’t afraid.
She had implied she wanted permanent, had sought it with others.
Zoe bit her lip to hold in her growls at the thought. Her instincts, on edge with things still unsettled between them, were somewhat soothed by the realization that Cleo wanted it with Zoe as well, and that Zoe had already done what the others hadn’t.
“I have to tell her before we go any further,”
she announced with a sigh. “She— we do better with truth between us.”
“Truth.”
Nathaniel was dry, the way he usually only was with Tim. “What else have you told her, Zo’? Because she’s telling you something.”
“Huh?”
Zoe frowned, well-fed and semi-caffeinated, but still needing sleep and a shower and another visit from her mate to wake her up.
Clearly enjoying himself, Tim swung a hand dramatically toward the rack of touristy souvenir t-shirts, which had a small mirror at the top. Zoe twisted around to see what he was gesturing to and caught sight of her reflection.
The hickeys at her neck had healed, but Cleo must have remembered Zoe asking for them, just like she’d noticed Zoe drooling over how she put on lipstick. Zoe had been so happy to be kissed outside the hotel she hadn’t thought about what that might mean. No one she’d been with had ever really worn make up or lipstick like Cleo did.
The shape of Cleo’s mouth decorated Zoe’s throat. Pink lips, pink smears, wet and shiny where she’d put each kiss on Zoe, deliberately marked Zoe, in a way even a human would understand. She wanted everyone to know she was allowed to kiss Zoe, maybe because Zoe had told her about claiming, told her it went both ways, and promised to be faithful.
“Oh,”
Zoe said breathlessly, studying the line of kisses along her neck, the stain of pink at her collar, the filthy smudge of it at her mouth. “Oh, she claimed me. She….”
She’d asked Zoe about claiming. She’d hinted this morning about what she wanted. “My mate is brave and magic.” Zoe exhaled shakily. She wanted to touch the marks, but wouldn’t risk smearing them for anything.
Cleo had stopped Zoe by the side of her truck and turned to her in the full light of day and painted a mark on her to show the world Zoe was taken. “Nathaniel, she’s wonderful.”
“Of course she is, Zo’.”
Nathaniel was wonderful too. “She’s your mate.”
“I am?”
In that moment, Cleo’s soft voice was not soothing.
Zoe had been tricked by the vanilla coffee in her hand and too distracted by the bright marks at her throat to notice her mate’s presence behind her.
She went still and stared at Nathaniel in betrayal before she understood what he’d done for her. Then she turned.
Cleo was dressed for work, black pants, black shirt, white and pastel green scarf in her hair. She had reapplied her lipstick, but her gaze went right to Zoe’s neck.
“What are you doing here?”
Zoe didn’t know why she bothered asking. “I thought you were at work.”
“I don’t work the mid-shift today. I go in a little later, which I forgot this morning. I suppose I was distracted.”
Cleo wet the corner of her mouth and reached up, maybe to fiddle with an earring that she wasn’t wearing. “What were you saying as I walked in? What was that?”
She looked Zoe in the eye, but only briefly, and then her attention was back on the lipstick marks on Zoe’s skin.
“You claimed me.”
Zoe wasn’t sure if she was complaining, or asking a question.
“I’m your mate?”
Cleo responded. She brought her gaze up to Zoe’s face and kept it there. “Your mate?”
she repeated, in a high voice.
“If you want to be.”
That wasn’t exactly right. Zoe looked down at the latte she probably shouldn’t have ordered. “You are ,”
she corrected. “But you don’t have to be, if you don’t want to. People don’t usually want me. I’d understand.”
Cleo didn’t move away. Zoe lifted her head in time to watch her glance from Carl to Tim to Nathaniel and then back to Carl. Carl smiled warmly at her.
“Okay,”
she agreed cautiously, as if that had reassured her. She sounded calmer than her heartbeat said she was. Zoe peered up again. Cleo was watching her now. “I’ve seen the movies…”
Nathaniel made that scornful noise he made whenever someone mentioned the human pop culture depictions of mating.
“But I don’t think I really grasp—were you trying to tell me this last night?”
Cleo studied Zoe intently.
“Yes.”
Zoe stared back. “You marked me.”
Her voice was embarrassingly quiet.
“I” –Cleo swallowed— “thought you wanted to be girlfriends.”
“You said that was fast.”
Zoe was practically whispering. She didn’t know why. Cleo wasn’t.
“Because it is!”
Cleo raised her voice, then glanced toward Nathaniel again before refocusing on Zoe. “But also, it isn’t.”
She went quiet too. “I marked you. You asked me to last night, and you’re so incredible, Zoe. I didn’t want anyone else moving in on you.”
Mate . Zoe felt her lips part. “We can be girlfriends.”
“I thought we were mates.”
Cleo shook her head. Her entire posture screamed confused and embarrassed. Zoe didn’t have to smell her, although she did anyway. The rightness of her was breathtaking.
“We can be girlfriends first,”
Zoe assured her. “I didn’t shower so that every were in town would know you’d touched me.”
Somewhere where she didn’t care to look, Tim was making eager gestures, the kind he did when his soap opera was on and he couldn’t contain his excitement.
Cleo’s mouth, shiny and pink again, formed a small ‘O’. “You marked yourself before I could. What if I… what if I hadn’t? Is this like this morning when you thought I wasn’t serious about you, but came up to lick my hand anyway? Is that what it means, mates? I meant to ask you last night, when you asked if I had questions. Oh God, at dinner you asked if I had questions. Zoe .”
Her eyebrows came together. “And you were going to leave?”
She stopped, then swallowed. “Girlfriends?” She hesitated. “Really?”
Zoe thrust the latte at her. “I can provide for you. If you let me, I’ll show you. I’m allowed to try, as we get to know one another. It’s exactly as I told you. I just… left a word out. If you like, we can continue as we were.”
“You were doing a bang-up job so far,”
Tim interjected. Carl actually hissed at him to shut up. Tim was undeterred. “No, really. I think she’s magic, Zoe.”
Nathaniel calmly placed a hand over his mate’s mouth.
Cleo stared at them in wonder. “Magic?”
“I think you’re magic, too,”
Zoe confessed. “You’re wonderful.”
Her mate’s honest, sunshiny pleasure was lighter than the vanilla in her latte. She still hadn’t taken it, but she looked down at the cup as though it held the key to all life’s mysteries.
“I like you, Zoe. Very much.”
She finally took the cup in both hands although she didn’t drink from it. She flicked the plastic lid in a nervous gesture.
“I moved in with my last girlfriend after knowing her a month, and it did not end well. She was… not the settle-down type. You know, I think I was….”
Cleo’s gaze sharpened.
Zoe tried not to look too obviously upset to think of her mate’s broken heart, or of someone touching her who hadn’t appreciated her.
Whoever she was, she had better not ever step foot in Wolf’s Paw.
“I think was treating them—her—like you.
Like I was searching for you with them, and—are you growling?” Cleo came forward, as if a frustrated predator wasn’t in front of her. She put one hand on Zoe’s cheek. Her skin was warm from the coffee and silenced Zoe immediately.
“Maaaybe don’t mention your exes around her until things are settled between you,”
Tim warned from behind Nathaniel’s palm. “Also, I know you touch people for a living, but until you decide, um, she’s going to be sensitive about it. Growly, you might say.”
“Shut up, Little Wolf.”
Zoe growled again, unintentionally proving him right.
Cleo petted her. “I’ve never slept with anyone after one date, Zoe. Or felt so strong of a need to make sure they knew I wanted them.”
She gently angled Zoe’s head to the side to study her handiwork. Her smile made Zoe want. Her scent was sticky and familiar. “Do you mind them?”
Zoe stared at her with open hunger.
Cleo’s eyes went wide. “But I don’t really know what mate means to you.”
She sighed and let Zoe go. “What happens if I say no? Are you going to sneak away on all fours again?”
“Yes.”
Zoe didn’t explain. The stark silence around her said enough as it was. She wasn’t going to pressure Cleo into staying by mentioning the fate of the Rejected.
“Will I feel it, what you’re saying we are?”
Her mate was so smart, always with direct questions Zoe didn’t have the answer for.
“They say humans do. Magic humans most of all,”
she responded at last.
“You don’t get to take it back, Cleo. You fucking claimed her.”
Tim’s muffled snarl was oddly comforting. “You feel it and you know it.”
“Shut up, Little Wolf,”
Zoe told him a second time, but weaker, softer. He meant well. He was worried. He loved her.
And he was right. Zoe finally believed him. The bond was there no matter what else happened, and they both felt it, even if Cleo felt it differently than Zoe did.
Cleo made a little noise, a gasping, surprised sound Zoe had last heard in her bedroom. She put a hand over her heart. The beat of it was quick, excited. “I felt like I was waiting to meet you,”
she revealed, on a panting, puffing exhale that made Zoe stand up straight. “Every time I saw you, I was waiting for you to look at me. I think I do feel it, and I don’t even know what it means.”
She met Zoe’s eyes. “What does it mean, Zoe?”
Zoe took a deep breath, trying to put into words how Cleo could physically smell like sweat, or detergent, or the coffee in her hand, and yet to Zoe she was a garden.
Weres never had been able to explain it, not even to each other.
To Tim, Nathaniel was a hearth fire—burning, passionate, potentially dangerous, but warmth-giving, life-giving, home.
To Zoe, Nathaniel smelled like home as well, though she had never once thought of his scent as fire-like.
Cleo was freshly tilled earth and pollen, the bright blooms outside the cabin that Zoe had planted. She was spring and sex and life, and meant for Zoe.
Zoe tried to say that, for the third time, and thought Cleo was beginning to understand what Zoe had been trying to express. Cleo was the right one. She was mate. She was….
“Home,”
Zoe murmured, and closed her eyes when even that term didn’t seem enough.
But then Spring-mate’s scent was at her mouth, and her soft skin, and Zoe raised her hands to delicately encircle her mate’s wrist. She opened her eyes to find Cleo smiling at her.
“Home?”
Cleo whispered, over the sound of Little Wolf’s jubilant shouting. “Doesn’t everyone deserve a chance at that?”
Epilogue
Cleo hummed a bit and pressed her face to the back of Zoe’s neck. She was supposed to be holding on to Zoe’s shoulders, but one of her hands kept finding its way to the collar of Zoe’s shirt to tug at it.
Zoe focused on the ground in front of her with determination. Hiking up the old trail had been Cleo’s suggestion, a way for her to learn more about the area around Wolf’s Paw while also getting to know Zoe better.
After several weeks of dating, Zoe wasn’t sure what about her Cleo hoped to learn by walking up a mountain, but she hadn’t been about to turn down the chance to spend more time with her mate either.
Now here they were, almost to the summit, on the first real nippy day of the season. Cleo was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, and Zoe had chosen flannel to keep out the chill. Of course, she hadn’t realized she would be doing most of the work and end up too heated to feel any cold at all. She also hadn’t expected Cleo to be so interested in her choice of shirts.
“Is this Nathaniel’s?”
Cleo nuzzled at the worn fabric in a way practically guaranteed to make Zoe miss a step. She came down hard on her right foot but didn’t lose her balance, thankfully. She would never forgive herself if she dropped her bundle of beloved human.
Cleo was curled around her, piggyback-style, and had been since about halfway up the trail.
“I don’t remember hiking being this exhausting,”
she’d grumbled after collapsing on a log to rest. Zoe had stood there, a touch guilty about the strength that allowed her to keep going without the breaks that humans needed. So she’d made the offer and bent down, and flushed at the delighted laughter from her mate at being carried.
Zoe was, to be honest, finally starting to feel tired, but she wasn’t going to put Cleo down. Not for anything.
Cleo kissed her shoulder. “Zoe? Is this shirt Nathaniel’s?”
“So?”
Zoe answered after a while. She was wearing his old plaid shirt. He’d never worn it more than once, and it was comfortable, even if she had to roll up the sleeves.
“I like you in it.”
Cleo apparently accurately interpreted how defensive Zoe was about it, because she kissed Zoe’s shoulder again. “Of course, you’re one of those redheads who can wear red.”
Her fingertips traced circles at Zoe’s nape, making Zoe shiver. “But did you ever think of buying your own clothes?” She pressed closer when Zoe stiffened. “Buy all the flannel you want,” she whispered soothingly. “Be my comfortable werewolf lumberjack fantasy.” Her kisses felt like smiles. “I just worried, I guess, that you don’t seem to think of those things for yourself.”
She touched on subjects Zoe had never talked about with anyone else. But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Cleopatra Jones Goodwin, and in two days, Zoe was going to meet her mother.
Zoe frowned at the rough ground of the trail. “I’m not good at those things. Shopping for clothes. That stuff. Whatever fits is fine. Unless you think…”
“I like you.”
Cleo kissed her ear. “And I like how you have no idea how well you fill out your clothing, even your hand-me-downs.”
She was making it hard for Zoe to think. “But if you want me to help you ever, for anything, just ask, okay?”
“Okay,”
Zoe agreed with a small breath of relief and surprise, and continued up higher. The trail was steep, but she held tight to Cleo’s legs.
Cleo squirmed a bit and took one hand from Zoe’s shoulders. Zoe heard the zipper of Cleo’s small backpack and then crinkling foil. A moment later a piece of a granola bar was held out for her. Zoe bent her head to take it from her mate’s fingers and eat it, although she was not a dog and it was not a treat. When she swallowed, Cleo offered her more, as if she’d noticed Zoe’s energy was finally flagging.
She put her face to Zoe’s neck. “You could always put me down,”
she pointed out, her tone soft and sweet.
Zoe stubbornly shook her head, which earned her a laugh and another piece of granola. Now her mouth was dry. As if she knew that too, Cleo held out the water bottle next. Zoe had to stop to take a drink, but then she was right back at it a minute later. The summit was in sight.
“You know,”
Cleo mused, so much contentment in her tone Zoe didn’t need to smell it. “You’re carrying me up a mountain. I think that says all that needs to be said.”
Zoe considered that. Maybe it was all the hiking, or the growing crispness in the air, but she didn’t follow. “What do you mean?”
Cleo tugged the flannel shirt away again, this time pressing a long, lingering kiss to Zoe’s nape that made Zoe gasp. Her mate had to be testing her. Why else would she do this when Zoe was trying to hold her up?
Zoe growled, not amused, but she must have been wrong about Cleo’s motives, because Cleo kissed her again. Zoe was going to smell like her lip balm for the rest of the day.
“Zoe,”
Cleo spoke slowly, with fondness. “I’m telling you I’m very happy you’re my mate.”
My mate . Hearing the words aloud for the first time made Zoe stop dead in her tracks.
She swallowed. “Yeah?”
Cleo nodded against her skin, although for a moment her hold on Zoe was alarmingly tight, as if she was more nervous than she seemed.
She’d acknowledged the bond. Of course she was nervous. There was no going back now. This was them, forever.
“I’m happy too,”
Zoe told her. She was quiet, which was strange when the rest of her wanted to howl to share her joy.
Cleo released a pleased sigh. “Then wanna step off the trail and go make out in the woods for a while? Your display of strength is doing things to my ability to think rationally.”
Her kisses had Zoe shivering. “Come on, Zoe. It’s my turn to take care of you.”
“I, uh….”
Zoe couldn’t think anymore either. “The summit is right there.”
She did not care about the summit. Yet she heard herself saying that, of all the dumb things.
Cleo nibbled at her ear. “It will still be there when we’re done,”
she pointed out. And she was right. Zoe’s mate was very smart.
Zoe took them off the trail without another word.
Cleo hummed happily in approval.
The End