24. Chapter Twenty-Four
~Felix~
Contented.
No other word adequately described how I felt sitting in the truck with Evalina tucked into my side, fast asleep. Her soft breath warmed my arm, steady and reassuring. We still had problems to deal with, quite a lot of them, but having my mate there beside me, safe and secure, satisfied me on a level I didn’t even know I had.
Kai felt it too. His deep serenity surrounded me, wrapping me up in a cocoon of peace unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
Did all mated wolves get to feel like this every day? No wonder Vaughan never wanted Calista out of his sight. I thought I understood it before but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t truly know it until I felt it for myself.
And she still didn’t have a clue what she meant to me.
I almost told her when she asked if I had a mate. My instincts screamed at me to say the words, to claim her as mine, but my head pushed back against them. What if it was too soon? What if I scared her off? If someone told me I was meant to be with them when I didn’t feel it for myself, it would honestly freak me out. She needed to reach that conclusion by herself, just like Calista had started to with Vaughan even before her wolf resurfaced.
It could happen.
It would happen.
I’d do everything I could to prove myself to her before I put the weight of our bond on her, and hopefully, at that point, it wouldn’t seem like too much of a burden.
The Crimsontooth pack house made for a welcome sight after all the excitement of the last couple of days, and Evalina didn’t even stir when I lifted her out of the truck and carried her into one of the guest room suites while Vaughan and Darius set up her mother in the room next to her.
She still wore her pretty dress, fit for a formal occasion. It didn’t look like the most comfortable attire for sleeping but undressing her in any way without her permission felt wrong, so I simply tucked her into bed as she was.
Should I leave a note for when she wakes up, so she knows where she is? I asked Kai.
Why do you need a note? Just stay here with her.
I snorted softly. Did you miss the part where I’m trying to avoid overstepping the boundaries of our current relationship as she understands it?
Kai growled at me. Then let me stay.
That …
Actually, that wasn’t a terrible idea. It would be easier for us to rest next to her, knowing she was safe and comfortable, and she might freak out less at the sight of Kai when she woke up than if she found a six-foot-tall man in her room.
Alright, but you have to respect her personal space.
Sure. Whatever you say.
He sounded far too smug about getting his way. Why don’t I believe you?
After stripping off in the bathroom and leaving my clothes there so I’d have something to wear in the morning, I shifted to my wolf form and let Kai take control. He jumped up onto the bed and sniffed at Evalina, her caramel and apple scent even stronger and somehow even more appealing through his wolf nose, before he turned in a circle a couple of times and curled up towards the foot of the bed, taking up more than half the bed’s length. It didn’t take long for us to both give in to the exhaustion that had been creeping up on us for hours.
Warm, tingling shivers woke me. I had no idea how much time had passed, but when a soft hand brushed through Kai’s fur, I sighed internally, feeling just as content as I had in the truck the night before.
She’s been petting me for five minutes, Kai said, sounding ready to swoon. You’ve been missing out.
Let me see.
His eyes blinked open lazily, giving me my first glimpse of Evalina in the morning light. Somehow, during the night, she’d shifted down the bed until she curled in almost a semicircle around Kai’s body. Her hand traced lazy circles through the fur on his side but her eyes remained closed.
Is she awake? I whispered in my head, though I didn’t need to bother. She couldn’t hear me anyway.
Not fully. She looks happy though.
She really did. A sweet half-smile skimmed over her lips with none of the tension I’d seen in her bearing during all our previous encounters. Maybe she felt the same contentment I did from the mate bond even if she didn’t know why.
Should I wake her? Kai asked. It’s pretty late. I checked in with Atlas and the others are already up.
Atlas was Vaughan’s wolf, Kai’s Alpha in the same way that Vaughan was mine. Yeah, you probably should. Gently.
Bending his neck, he leaned over and nuzzled the top of his head against Evalina’s face. She let out a soft, sweet snuffle that was so cute, I could barely stand it. He repeated the action, and that time, her eyes fluttered open, and when she saw the wolf’s face mere inches from hers, she did what any reasonable person would do.
She screamed.
Loudly.
Bolting backwards, she tumbled right off the bed and Kai howled in dismay, both from the noise and from the distress our mate was in.
His howl made her shriek again.
This really wasn’t going well.
Bathroom. Now! I ordered him, and reluctantly, he bounded off the bed and into the adjoining room. Inside, I shifted back before calling out to Evalina.
“It’s alright. It’s me. It’s Felix.”
“Oh.” She gasped in breaths of air and I could hear the rustle of sheets as she moved around in the bedroom while I quickly pulled on my clothes, keeping my ears tuned on her through the half-open bathroom door. “I’m sorry. I forgot where I was.”
“It’s alright,” I repeated. “ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Where’s my mother?” she asked.
“She’s still sleeping in the next room.” With my shirt over my head, I opened the door all the way. “You can go see her or you can have something to eat, or both. I can bring some food to her room so you can both eat together. Please, don’t worry about the bed.”
She’d already been halfway through making it, but when I told her to stop, she let her arms drop. Turning to me, her eyes started at my bare feet on the carpeted bedroom floor before slowly travelling up the length of my body until she looked me in the eyes, her cheeks tinted with a pretty pink blush by the time she reached my face. I couldn’t stop the grin that tugged at my lips at the suggestion that she liked what she saw. “I’d… uh… I’d like to eat with her, please.”
“Of course. We have cereal or toast or fruit or yogurt or eggs or sausages or bacon. Whatever you like, really.”
Her lips tightened into an adorable pout. “I have no idea what most of that is.”
“Right.” She literally came from a different world; I had to remember that. “Never mind. I’ll bring you a few things and you can decide when you see it.”
Another door connected her room to the one next to it, and I left her at her mother’s bedside before mind-linking to the kitchen to prepare some food while I went to have a quick shower and put on some clean clothes. For once, I actually hesitated in front of my closet, debating over what to wear since I wanted to look good for my mate. Leo would laugh if he could see me since usually, I was the one teasing him over the care he put into dressing.
Making a good impression mattered, though. Once she healed her mother, Evalina would need to decide whether to return to the fae realm or stay with me. It didn’t give me a lot of time to convince her that with me was exactly where she was meant to be.