Mara
My mate is insane. That much is a given at this point. I walk past the territory line with Aaron’s footsteps picking up behind me, and I don’t turn around. I don’t know what else either of us can say past this.
My tail drags behind me, limp and heavy. My lion has folded herself in so small I can barely feel her inside me. I’m trying to read her when my head snaps up.
Angie’s wrestling against Jacob’s grip on the other side of the territory line, her fists pounding his back. Of course she’s here.
Jacob lets her go the moment Aaron steps up beside me.
I keep my eyes on Angie, refusing to look at him though the mate bond pulls at me.
Angie looks at me like she might skin me where I stand.
Then she turns and marches straight past me without a word, and she reaches up and smacks Aaron across the back of the head with a crack that makes me flinch.
“Ah—Ma, damn!”
“What was that?” She smacks him again, harder, the sound echoing in the clearing.
“Huh? You pissed me off royally.” She’s jabbing her finger at his chest now, backing him up with each jab, fury radiating from her in waves I can almost smell.
“Have you lost your damn mind, boy? What were you thinking?”
Aaron winces and glances at me. I don’t lift my head. I can feel him trying to reach me with his eyes, and I keep mine fixed on the dirt, afraid of what I’ll do if I look at him. Afraid I’ll forgive him too easily. Or worse, that I won’t forgive him at all.
“I needed her back,” he says quietly, his voice breaking on the last word.
The raw pain in those three words slices through me, and my lion whimpers.
Angie lets out a sound that’s half groan, half growl, and turns her face up to the sky like she’s asking Mother Fate for patience. Jacob steps forward.
“I have a bigger question,” he says. “How did you do that?”
I lift my head. Jacob’s scent has something new underneath it, wariness, sharp and unfamiliar.
Aaron frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“The way you crushed Ahmal’s hand. The way the bones gave.” Jacob pauses, his voice dropping lower. “I’ve only ever seen one supernatural do that. Aya Bailey.”
Angie’s brow furrows, the anger giving way to something else. “Wait a minute. Wait.” She looks at Aaron. “You weren’t even there when that happened.”
Aaron falls quiet, and I watch him. He sighs. Every part of him is pulled thin. It’s in the sag at his shoulders, in the way his eyes aren’t quite tracking.
I look up. The light has gone soft at the edges, the trees going black against the sky, the first lamp on the pride’s path coming on behind us.
“Nightfall is here,” I say. My voice comes out flat. Aaron turns toward me, his eyes finding mine, full of so much regret it steals my breath. He opens his mouth. Then he drops.
My arms come up and catch him under the shoulders just as his knees fold, and his weight hits me full, and I stagger a step back and lock my legs and hold him.
“Mara,” he murmurs against my neck, his lips brushing my skin. His arms come up and wrap around me, slow and clumsy. “I’m sorry. I’m so happy I have you back.”
My lion presses up against my ribs, full-bodied and desperate, and my tail lifts off the grass and wraps once around the back of his calf. I hold him tighter, breathing him in, hating myself for how much I’ve missed his scent.
Jacob closes the space in two long steps.
“Here,” he says softly, and his hands come under Aaron’s arms from behind.
He lifts Aaron clear in a single movement and has him over his shoulder before I can protest, one big arm bracing the back of Aaron’s knees.
Aaron’s head hangs. His hand is limp against Jacob’s back, and the sight of him this small in his stepfather’s grip pulls something loose in me, low and aching.
“Let’s get them both to the community lands,” Angie says. The edge is gone from her voice. She’s already lifting her palm, and blue-gold opens in the air in front of her. On the other side I can see the cabin in the clearing, porch lanterns lit, the door dark.
Angie glares at me, but there’s something softer beneath the anger now. “Well. What are you waiting for? You’re partially mated. Teleportation is—“
I step through before she finishes. “I know,” I say on the other side.
Angie steps through last. Jacob is already halfway to the cabin with Aaron slung over his shoulder.
The portal snaps shut behind her and the clearing goes quiet.
She doesn’t move past me, though. She stops right beside me, close enough to feel her body heat, and we both watch Jacob walk across the yard, up the porch steps and through the open door.
“He used a lot of magic tonight,” Angie says without looking at me. “Some of it was very powerful. I don’t even know where he learned some of it, Mara. I don’t even know magic on that level.”
My ears flick. “I didn’t know,” I say, and my voice comes out small, fragile.
“Of course you didn’t know. None of us did.” She exhales long and hard and drags her hand down her face. “Look,” she says. “I have my own personal bone to pick with you.”
I close my eyes and open them, bracing. “I don’t understand why you hate me,” I snap. My tail lifts off the ground, held high and alert, betraying me.
Angie scoffs. “Hate is a bit dramatic, Mara. What I don’t like is how you’re playing this tug-of-war game with my son.”
“I’m not—“
“Oh, yes, you are.” She steps in front of me, blocking my path to the cabin. “Did you, or did you not, tell him you didn’t want a baby on the community lands?”
My ears flatten against my head. My tail stiffens straight out behind me, the tassel rigid, and the heat climbs up the side of my neck, shame burning me from the inside out.
She sees all of it, reads it on my face like an open book. “Mm. Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
“That’s between—“
“I am not defending my son’s actions.” She cuts me off.
“What he did was wrong. He should have come to you about it. I will beat his ass about that tomorrow and the day after.” Her finger comes up.
“But you two. You both have communication problems. This is not all my son. Neither of you knows how to talk to each other about what you need, and it is doing more harm than good.”
Something in me goes hot and quiet. My claws push out against the dirt under my feet.
I want to scream at her that she doesn’t understand, that she can’t possibly know what it’s like to be rejected, to build your life around that rejection, to finally have what you want only to discover it was built on lies.
“You spent a whole year with him,” she snarls, her eyes never leaving mine. “And the minute you learn of his mistake, you are out the door.”
I straighten. “My mate bond with your son is none of your business.”
“You are giving my son whiplash, Mara.” She doesn’t even flinch.
“He clearly wants to make you happy. And he’s willing to do some of the dumbest shit to do it.
” Her finger comes up again and this time it’s an inch from my face, her eyes blazing.
“This is the second time I have had to watch my son fight your father.
And the next time, somebody is going to end up—“
“Angie!”
Jacob’s voice cracks across the yard from the porch. He’s standing in the open doorway, one hand on the frame, his head tipped down at her with a look.
Angie’s mouth snaps shut. “Ugh.”
She spins back to me, fury full-body now, and I think she is actually going to put her hands on me, Jacob or not.
“This is why we can’t get along, Mara. You expect me to sit and watch you play with my son like he’s a puppet for your entertainment and say nothing.
Well, you can just call me the shitty mother-in-law, because I am not going to do it. ”
“You are a shitty mother-in-law.”
Silence drops, and then Jacob is already moving.
He leaps from the porch, wolf agility carrying him clear across the yard in one long impossible glide, and he lands between us so cleanly that my breath stops.
He fills the space, broad shoulders squared, and that’s enough. My tail drops and I take a step back.
He turns to Angie first. “Enough.”
“You always have to be the reasonable alpha, Jacob.” She stabs her finger at him. “But let me tell you. If this were Seth out here? You’d have a very different position on—“
He huffs. Then he bends at the knee, ducks his shoulder, and lifts her clean off her feet.
“Jacob—goddammit—put me down!” Her voice rises to a shriek.
He doesn’t. She pounds his back with her fists, her feet kicking in the air. Then he turns to me and bows his head. “I have put your mate in bed,” he says, his voice steady. “He will need some care.”
I bow my head back to him. “Thank you, alpha.”
“Oh, you are pissing me off right now, Jacob—“
He pops her ass. “I will calm Angie,” he says to me, head still slightly bowed. “And we will return tomorrow to help you. In peace.”
“Fuck peace, I’m not done—“
He turns away and walks through the clearing toward the forest. Angie is still kicking. He clears the tree line, ducks under a low branch without breaking stride, and the dark swallows them both.
Angie’s words are sitting on top of me. My claws are still out against the dirt, and I groan because I know she’s right, and the admission tears at me.
I’ve said the exact same thing to Nicole. I huff. Then I hiss. Because why does Angie have to be right all the time? It’s unfair. It’s maddening.
I hang my head, defeat settling over me slow and cold. I think about what Amir said in the clearing, his eyes fixed on me. What you have just done could have ruined everything that Wintermoon stands for. The lioness has started wars before. That isn’t what I was doing.
I pick up my feet and walk across the yard, up the porch steps and through the open door, and I close it behind me with a soft click.
I quickly make my way up the stairs to our bedroom and find Aaron passed out on the bed.
He’s on his back on top of the covers. He’s still wearing his boots.
Of course he is. I sit on the edge of the bed and work his right boot off, slow, careful not to jostle him.
I move to the left one, and I set them side by side on the floor.
Then I walk around to the other side of the bed and crawl in and lie down beside him on my side.
My tail settles slow onto the blanket behind me, flicking once.
His breathing is heavy and even. His mouth is slightly open. There’s a smudge of dirt high on his cheek, and I resist the urge to brush it away. After a moment he moves, a small shift, and winces in his sleep, his face contorting with pain.
I start to sit up, worry rising in me. “Are you hurt?”
His arm shoots out before I can get halfway up, and drags me down hard against his chest. I gasp, the air leaving my lungs in a rush.
“Mara,” he breathes into my hair. He drops his head and rests it on my chest. His hand splays wide across my back and presses.
When he can feel me breathing, his grip loosens and he just holds me.
I don’t know what to do. My arms find their way around him, slowly, uncertainly. I let him hold me.
The royal cabin is two days from now, and I don’t know what I’m going to say about any of it. Aaron has been hesitant to talk about Amir’s offer the whole year we’ve been together. Every time I brought it up, he asked if we could focus on our mate bond instead. There’s no more putting it off.
Aaron nuzzles into me, and I feel my body relax against him. My tail comes up and around and strokes slow and soft against the side of his face, the gesture tender despite my frustration.
“What am I going to do with you?” I whisper, the words catching in my throat.
He nuzzles in harder, seeking my warmth even in his sleep.
His arm tightens across my back like he’s afraid, even in his dreams, that he’s about to lose me.
When he finally wakes up, we’ll have to talk about this.
But a hiss escapes me when I think about it.
Angie will be back tomorrow, and the argument we just had was enough to make me want to claw her eyes out.
Why does it feel like we’ll never get along?