Showing Harrison what I’d seen in the past three days—what he hadn’t known in his twenty-five years being here—wasn’t easy.

But it had to be done.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” I spoke the words that were truth now. Harrison and I were too deeply bound to be separated now.

He had to know that this seemingly perfect life he had grown up seeing wasn’t real. It was all an elaborate scheme to keep a race of bears under the alpha’s thumb and powerless to stop him.

We were served our drinks by a lithe and lanky fae who introduced himself as Casten. I’d heard there were some Seelie in the world, but had never seen one in person. He smelled like cotton candy and the sweetest caramel apple to me.

Harrison said nothing to me during the hour we were in the bar. Despite his fervor to drink his cares away, my mate mostly kept his face buried in his hands, never touching the drink that was placed on the table in front of us.

“When did you know?” he asked when we got back in the car.

“Oscar approached me the day after our mating. There was no time to waste, Harrison. Do you even know where your father is?”

“He’s at a meeting. He took Dolrich.”

I slapped my hand over my face. He was so blind, it bordered on ridiculous. But under the regime of his father, there was no way for him to know better. That’s what I was there for. My purpose was clear. If nothing else, Harrison Xavier would wake up and know the truth of the masquerade his father conducted.

“Harrison, your father is in Nebraska, securing a containment camp of sorts.” I choked over the word containment. They gave a cage such a pretty name.

“A containment camp? And my mother knows? And Dolrich?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I’m assuming.”

He turned to me, now doing eighty miles an hour on the road to the castle. “Oh? What do you mean? What, four days here and you don’t know every facet of the royal plans?”

I forgave him that one. He was in pain and angry. It was written all over his face, and we were smothering in the scent of it, trapped in this car.

“They are going to put all of the cinnamon bears in one place so your father can control the numbers. That’s the nice version. The not-so-nice version is that he’s going to cage bears like me.” I took his hand off the seat belt, to which he was hanging on for dear life, and put it against my chest. I wanted him to feel the truth inside me. My need was desperate and didn’t make any sense. “They are going to cage us and then starve us to death, Harrison. Do you want that for me? For my mother? For my best friend Sammy?”

Seconds later, we were at a full stop on the side of the road. “How can you say that? I want you with me. I know we started this as an arranged mating, but there’s more here. And I’ll be damned if I let your people suffer. I won’t.”

I shrugged. I needed this flame inside him to grow. He needed to be fueled to full in order to fight his father.

And I needed his strength to build my own.

I needed my mate to fight this tyranny with me.

“But what are you going to do? You don’t want to be alpha. You’ve pretty much set it up where Dolrich is going to be alpha. You think he’ll be any different? You think they’re gonna let us stay together while he plans for my people’s demise? Please. I’ll be in the cage with the rest of them. And by the way, you know your friend Sela?”

He nodded. I suspected he was afraid to interrupt. I would be afraid to interrupt me right in that moment.

“She’s in bed with Dolrich. She’s your new alpha queen, and you don’t even know it.”

His eyebrows bunched in the middle above his nose. “Is that why you growled at her?”

I blushed against my will. “I don’t know.”

“No.” Harrison took my face in his almost burning hands and gently made me face him. “You can’t start being shy now, Atlas. We are thick in this together. You understand? I think I’ve made it clear how I feel about you. Now you tell me why you growled at Sela.”

Ugh. Sela.

“Because she was on you like a wolf on a sheep. And it pissed me off, and possibly she just had more physical contact with you in that moment than I have in a week, and it was killing me.”

With a flick of his wrist, he unbuckled the seatbelt, and his mouth was on mine. Lips that started out as greedy and bordering on violent quickly turned gentle yet passionate. His hands were now on my hips, tugging at them, needing a closeness that the confines of this car just wouldn’t give us. Anger laced his movements, and I took each lashing from him, knowing that his heart was now changed.

“I’m taking us home,” he said, breathless, breaking the kiss for just those four words.

“Fast as you can.”

My head was still spinning with thoughts of what had just happened while he buckled back up and sped to the castle. Servants were in the living quarters, so we had to act normal as Harrison took my hand and led me to the bedroom. Once there, his lips were on mine, leaving them only for the few seconds it took to relieve ourselves of shirts and jeans and shoes.

“This is real, Atlas. Tell me this is real. Everything in my life is a fucking lie except you. Tell me this is real.”

I couldn’t form the words yet, but he needed to know. He needed to realize that this was the beginning of everything that was real for him and for us.

I kissed the mark I’d made on his shoulder as he kneaded my back and skimmed his hands down my sides, gently brushing the sides of my breasts.

“Harrison, you and I are real. I tried to deny you, but I can’t. I won’t anymore. Touch me and know that this mating is real. You are mine.” The word mine was backed by my bear, turning the word into a growl.

“Mine. You are mine and no one else’s, and you will be my queen.” His bear mimicked mine, enforcing those words with his own voice. “You are absolutely stunning, Atlas.” With a finger under my chin, he commanded that I look at him, seeing the raw truth in his almost-black eyes. His other hand pulled down a strap of my copper-colored lace bralette. “We have to say the words, mate, or I can’t go any further. Tell me.”

I whimpered at the thought of him stopping.

“Look at me, Atlas, and say the words.”

Barely able to harness my want enough to speak, I looked into the soft caring eyes of my mate and recited the words I knew. “I take you, Harrison Xavier, as my mate and my other half until my body fails me and death takes me.”

He repeated the words to me, all while doing things with his hands that rendered me putty in his care.

He and I became one.