Chapter Twenty – Spencer
After he’d gotten home from Pine Cottage, he’d tried to work on the window seat. Normally, working with wood soothed him. But not today.
His hands had lost their steadiness. He’d fumbled the chisel twice, and the third time it had slipped, gouging a line across the oak where no line belonged. The wood deserved better than his distracted attention.
Go to her, his bear urged. She’s pulling away. We’re losing her.
“I know,” Spencer said aloud to the empty workshop. “But barging in won’t help.”
His bear disagreed strongly. The animal part of him had never been patient, but now it was relentless, pacing the boundaries of his mind, making Spencer’s muscles twitch with the need for movement.
She’s our mate. She doesn’t know. She’s making decisions without all the truth.
Spencer set down his tools and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
The pressure did nothing to quiet the building tension that had been mounting since he’d left Pine Cottage, since he’d watched Meryl start pulling away, planning her escape, turning the cottage back into just a house she needed to finish.
I can’t force her to stay, Spencer said.
Not force. Show her. Tell her. Let her choose with her eyes open, his bear insisted.
Spencer straightened abruptly, no longer able to ignore the restlessness coursing through him. He paced the length of the workshop, past the half-finished window seat that should have gone into Pine Cottage, past the shelves he’d cut from that honey-colored pine she’d liked so much.
His bear pushed harder against the confines of his human form.
The pressure had been building for days now, through the dinner at the restaurant, through the night they’d spent together, through the moment he’d shown her what he was but not who she was to him.
Each time, he’d held back the final truth, waiting for the right moment.
But the right moment never seemed to come. And now she was slipping away.
Run, his bear urged. Burn off this feeling before it burns us.
For once, Spencer didn’t argue. He strode from the workshop into the cool night air, his skin already prickling with the need to shift. He barely made it to the tree line before he let go of the world to return an instant later on four powerful legs.
The shift was a relief, like exhaling after holding his breath too long.
His senses sharpened, the night opening up around him, the rich scent of pine needles and damp earth, the faint rustling of small creatures in the underbrush, the whisper of wind through the trees.
The bear leaped forward on powerful legs, muscles bunching and releasing with each stride.
He ran without conscious direction, letting instinct guide him. The physical exertion felt good, necessary. His paws struck the earth with satisfying force, each impact driving away some fraction of the tension that had been building inside him.
But even as he ran, Spencer knew where he was heading. The bear had a destination in mind, had always had only one destination. When the familiar sight of Pine Cottage came into view, he wasn’t surprised.
The bear slowed as he approached the edge of the clearing. The cottage stood quiet in the moonlight, its windows glowing softly. Through one of them, he could see her moving about the kitchen, her shadow passing back and forth.
Go to her, his bear insisted.
Spencer hesitated. Coming here like this wasn’t what he’d planned. But nothing about this night had been planned, and the need to see her, to make her understand, had become too powerful to resist.
He moved closer, staying within the shadows of the trees.
The bear’s eyes caught every detail, the way the new lamp cast a warm glow over the porch they’d rebuilt together, the curtains they’d hung moving gently in the breeze from an open window, the freshly painted door that had taken them an entire afternoon.
Suddenly, Meryl appeared at the kitchen window, looking out into the darkness. Spencer went still. Had she sensed him somehow? He watched as she stood there, her hands braced against the counter, her gaze seeming to search the night beyond the glass.
After a long moment, she turned away, disappearing from view. Spencer let out a long breath. He should go. This had been a mistake.
But before he could retreat, the back door opened. Meryl stepped onto the porch, wrapped in a cardigan against the night chill. She didn’t call out or look afraid. She simply stood there, her gaze sweeping across the tree line until it found him.
Their eyes met across the distance.
She knows we’re here, his bear said with quiet certainty.
Spencer couldn’t move, unsure what to do. Then his mate took a single step forward.
“Spencer?” Her voice was soft but clear in the still night.
The sound of his name on her lips sent a jolt through him. She wasn’t calling to a stranger or a wild animal. She was calling to him.
Slowly, cautiously, he moved forward into the moonlight where she could see him clearly. The bear was massive, his dark fur catching silver where the light touched it, but there was nothing threatening in the way he held himself. He stopped a respectful distance from the porch, waiting.
Meryl descended the steps carefully and then strode toward him. She stopped a few feet away, close enough that he could catch her familiar scent.
“I didn’t expect to see you tonight... after...” her voice trailed off.
His bear wanted desperately to move closer, to press against her hand, to feel her touch, to offer her comfort. But he stood still, waiting for her to make the next move.
To his astonishment, she took another step toward him. Then another. Until she was close enough to touch him if she reached out.
“I’m so happy you came back,” she said simply.
Spencer took a step back, letting the shift take him. The air crackled with that familiar static electricity, his form gone for a moment before his human form appeared.
Meryl’s eyes widened, but she didn’t retreat. She stood her ground as Spencer stood before her.
“I had to come back,” he said, his voice rough. “I couldn’t leave things like that.”
They stood facing each other in the moonlight, the cottage a silent witness behind them. So many words formed in Spencer’s mind, but he forced himself to wait, to let her speak first.
“Meryl, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you before.”
Meryl wrapped her arms around herself, but her gaze remained steady on his face. “There’s more?”
“Just a little.” Spencer took a deep breath. “You’re my mate, Meryl.”
She blinked. “Your... mate?”
“Yes.” He stepped closer, needing her to understand. “For shifters like me, there’s someone. One person who... fits. Who belongs with us in a way no one else ever could. I knew the moment I first sensed you.”
Meryl’s expression shifted, realization dawning. “You knew? All this time?”
“Yes.” The admission felt like stepping off a cliff. “I’ve known since that first day on the porch.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question wasn’t accusatory, just bewildered.
This was the heart of it. The truth he needed her to understand more than anything else.
“Because I wanted it to be your choice,” Spencer said.
“The mate bond... It’s powerful. It pulls at both of us.
I know you feel it too, although not as strongly.
But I didn’t want to tell you the truth.
Not then. Because I wanted you to get to know me first.” He gave her a crooked smile.
“I wanted you to choose freely, not because you think some instinct told you to.”
Meryl was very still. “So when you helped with the cottage...”
“I wanted to help,” he said immediately. “That was real. All of it was real. I just... I didn’t want the mate bond to decide for you.”
She looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable in the moonlight. “And now? Why tell me now?”
Spencer’s chest tightened. “Because you’re making decisions. About the cottage. About staying or going. And you deserve to make them with all the facts.” He swallowed hard. “Even if knowing doesn’t change anything.”
“Doesn’t change anything?” Meryl repeated. “How could it not change everything?”
“It doesn’t have to,” Spencer said, though the words cost him. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Being my mate doesn’t obligate you to anything. It’s just... It’s the truth. And you deserved to know it.”
Meryl turned slightly, looking back at Pine Cottage. Its windows glowed warm against the night, like a beacon in the darkness. When she faced him again, her expression had softened into something he couldn’t quite read.
“All this time,” she said quietly. “All this time, working together, rebuilding the cottage, and you kept this to yourself.”
Spencer nodded, unable to speak past the tightness in his throat.
“And you would still let me leave?” she asked.
“It had to be your choice,” he repeated. “Not mine. Not fate’s. Yours.”
Meryl took a step toward him, close enough now that he could see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. “And if I choose to stay?”
Hope flared in his chest, bright and dangerous. “Then you stay because you want to. Because this place matters to you. Because...” He hesitated. “Because I matter to you.”
“And if I choose to go?”
The question hit him like a physical blow, but he made himself answer it honestly. “Then you go. And I...” His voice roughened. “I learn to live with it. Or I come with you. If you’ll have me.”
Meryl searched his face, her own expression a complex mixture of emotions he couldn’t begin to untangle. “That’s a lot of power to give someone.”
“I know.” Spencer’s hands opened at his sides, empty, offering nothing but the truth. “But it’s yours. It always has been.”
Spencer had said everything he needed to say, laid bare the secret he’d been keeping since the moment he sensed her on that broken porch. There was nothing left to do. Nothing more to say.
For the first time in his life, the future he wanted most was entirely in someone else’s hands.