Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Miranda
The pan hisses when I drop the butter in, a small, angry sound that I find satisfying at seven in the morning. My braid is half-undone from sleep, my borrowed shirt smells like Grayson, and my muscles ache in the most delicious of ways.
He ruined me last night. There is no other word for it.
I crack two eggs against the rim of the pan, and the smell of warm butter rises into the kitchen.
I’m in the middle of reaching for the pepper when two arms slide around my waist from behind.
Grayson’s chest presses warm against my back.
His mouth finds the side of my neck, and a small, startled sound escapes me before I can swallow it.
“What are you doing?”
“Flirting with my fiancée.” His voice is rough with sleep against my skin. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like a man trying to get a second helping before he’s earned the first.”
“I earned plenty last night.” His teeth graze my pulse point. “Twice, if memory serves.”
“Three times,” I mumble before I can stop myself.
I feel him grin against my throat. The hand at my waist drifts lower, fingers slipping under the loose hem of my pajama bottoms, and I crack the wooden spoon against his knuckles without taking my eyes off the eggs.
“Ow.”
“Down, Wolfe.”
“Miranda.” He has the innate ability of sounding so pitiful when he chooses to.
“I can barely walk today,” I tell him, and the smug little hum he makes vibrates through my back into my ribs.
“Tell me more.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
His mouth moves up to the shell of my ear, and his next breath comes out hot enough that I shiver against my own will. “Which head?”
I twist in his arms, wooden spoon raised, and his hands come up in mock surrender, that ridiculous grin still tugging the corner of his mouth. His hair is sticking up on one side. There’s a faint pink mark on his jaw where I bit him last night. He looks indecent.
I lower the spoon. “Out of my kitchen.”
“Our kitchen.”
The word makes my heart skip a beat, but I don’t get the chance to respond because the knock at the front door cuts straight through the conversation.
Grayson’s whole posture changes. The teasing slides off him, and the wolf surfaces a half inch behind his eyes before he tucks it away again. He kisses the top of my head once before he goes to answer.
I hear Coach’s voice in the foyer before I see him. Low, clipped, none of the warmth he usually carries when he comes by the house on a normal morning. The eggs go past golden into the territory of nearly ruined. I slide them off the heat and listen.
“Coach.” Grayson sounds wary. “What’s wrong?”
Footsteps cross the wood and round the corner into the kitchen. Coach takes one look at me standing at the stove in Grayson’s shirt with my hair down and my mouth still red from being kissed, and his jaw tightens.
He looks at Grayson.
“You really didn’t waste any time, did you?”
I freeze with the spoon in my hand.
Grayson rolls his shoulders back. “Coach, come on.”
“Outside with me, Wolfe.”
“She lives here, Coach. You can say what you came to—”
“Outside.”
Grayson looks irritated, but the two of them go through the sliding door onto the patio. He pulls it shut behind him but not all the way. The gap is maybe two inches. I stand at the counter with my heart climbing into my throat, the burned-edge eggs in a pan that I no longer remember caring about.
I pour three cups of coffee, adding cream to Grayson’s, milk to Coach’s. Crossing the kitchen with them on a tray, I push the door wider with my hip.
They both look up.
“Coffee,” I say lightly, holding the mug out to Coach.
He takes it after a beat before looking between me and Grayson. The resignation that crosses his face tells me he was hoping to have this conversation without me in it.
I sit down in the third chair without being invited and tuck my bare feet up under me.
Grayson shoots me an amused look before asking, “You were saying?”
Coach exhales slowly through his nose. “There was a body discovered last night.”
My blood turns cold. “Where?”
He blinks, and I watch the moment when he properly registers that I am sitting here with both of them and Grayson hasn’t sent me back inside. He looks at my fiancé with a disapproving look, but Grayson refuses to budge.
“She knows what I am, Coach.” His voice is tense. “She saw the wolf two nights ago. You can speak in front of her.”
“I would rather not.”
“I can step inside,” I offer. This matter is serious. I’m not going to force myself into something like this.
But Coach is already shaking his head, and his eyes have moved off mine onto Grayson. “How far,” he asks quietly, “have the two of you gone?”
Grayson sets his coffee down.
“Coach.”
“How far, Grayson?”
“It’s none of your damn—”
“You smell like her, you idiot. You smell like her from twenty feet away. You think I came here this morning planning to ask?”
I take a deep sip of my coffee because my face is on fire, and there is no graceful way to be present for this conversation.
Coach turns back to me, and his voice gentles like it does when he speaks to Linda. “Forgive me, Miranda. This is not how I wanted to do this.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” His eyes return to Grayson, and the gentleness drops out. “I told you not to do anything stupid. I told you the situation was sensitive. Even if she is your fated mate, you do not move on a human without Council approval. That is the law. You know it is the law.”
I lift my hand from where it has been resting against the arm of the chair.
“I’m sorry. Fated what?”
A pause stretches between the three of us.
Coach’s head turns slowly toward Grayson, and the look on his face has gone past anger into something colder. “You slept with her,” he says quietly. “And you didn’t tell her.”
Grayson at least has the decency to look guilty. He rubs the back of his neck and won’t quite meet my eyes. “We didn’t get around to that part.”
“Get around to what part?” My voice comes out sharper than I intend.
He lifts his head, and it’s obvious he doesn’t want to say the words. They’re forced out of him. “You’re my fated mate, Miranda.”
The morning sounds keep going around us. A bird in the trees, the hum of the refrigerator through the open door behind me.
“I don’t know what that means,” I say slowly. “And I don’t like the sound of it.”
Coach answers before Grayson can. His voice is steady, but the anger in his voice is unmistakable.
“Every shifter has a fated mate, Miranda. One person in the world the bond chooses for them. The connection is physical, emotional, instinctive. Stronger than anything choice alone can build. You can spend your life never meeting yours. Most of us do.”
I look at Grayson. He is watching me with that careful expression he wears when he thinks I am about to walk out the door.
“So you’re saying,” I begin, and my voice is so calm I don’t recognize it, “that the universe paired us off. That what I feel for you, none of it is mine. It’s just biology.”
“No.” Grayson is on his feet before I’ve finished the sentence. “Miranda, that is not it.”
“Sit down.”
He sits.
“You’d better start explaining.”
“The bond doesn’t force feelings,” he says, and his voice is rough now. “It pulls you toward someone. It makes the chemistry between us more intense. That’s it. Everything else between us is what we’ve built.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Miranda.” He gives me a pleading look.
“You knew.” The mug is still warm in my hand, and I’m gripping it hard enough that my knuckles have gone pale. “All of it. Every word in those woods yesterday. The lake. The speech about me being your home. You knew I was your fated mate, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I knew after.”
“After what?”
“After I fell in love with you.”
I stare at him.
“I didn’t know what you were when you stitched up my leg,” he continues, leaning forward, both hands open on his knees.
“I didn’t know when you found Ethan in the woods.
I didn’t know in the parking lot. I knew the night they beat you in your apartment.
I scented your blood through the door, and the bond hit me like a truck. That’s why I tried to push you away.”
I stare at him, trying to process all this. “You had all this time. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
I let out a small laugh that has no humor in it. “Of course you were.”
Coach lifts a hand. “Miranda. Listen to me. Whatever else happens between the two of you, hear me on this. Do not let him give you the mating mark.”
I look at him. “The what now?”
“It’s a bite,” Coach explains tensely. “To the neck or pulse point. It binds you to him permanently and triggers a transformation in a human partner. It cannot be undone. The Accord requires Council approval for any such marking. If he marks you without approval, both your lives are forfeit under pack law. His. Yours. There is no appeal.”
This morning is beginning to suck.
I set the mug on the arm of the chair. My fingers are not quite steady.
“You’re saying they’d execute us.”
“Yes.”
I turn to Grayson. “Were you going to tell me that too? Or is that another detail you were conveniently going to forget?”
“I wasn’t going to mark you.”
“Excuse me?” Why am I so offended?
“I wasn’t going to mark you, Miranda. Ever.” His amber eyes are very steady on mine.
“So what was your plan?”
He hesitates.
“Grayson. What was your plan?”
Coach is also looking at him.
“To marry you under human law. Live with you. Raise Ethan with you. Stay as close as the bond would let me get without crossing the line that puts your life at risk.”
“And the mark?”
“Never.”
The silence that follows that sentence is enormous.
Coach pushes up out of his chair. “I think you two need to talk. I’ll deal with the body myself.” He pauses at the edge of the patio, and something moves behind his eyes that he doesn’t say out loud. “I’ll have people on the site. Don’t get alarmed if you sense intruders.”
“Coach, wait.” Grayson’s voice has gone hoarse.