She had a sudden thought of what this must look like, and blushed hard, but somehow that sense of inappropriateness, of what it meant to just spread herself open for this man, only added to the thrill of doing it.
And then they were really doing it.
Joel pushed in slowly, his breath coming in deep bursts as he tried to control himself. Nina was braced for discomfort—it had always hurt a little, even after the first time—but there was none. Just a feeling of delicious, full-body satisfaction. Of being touched everywhere she needed it, of the emptiness being filled.
Nina heard herself let out a long, contented groan. Joel looked up at her face and smiled, surprisingly sweet, considering what he was doing.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you like it,” he said.
Nina shook her head, wordless in her satisfaction. Joel settled in, seated fully inside of her, and let out his breath in a long sigh.
“God,” he said. “You feel perfect.”
The words filled her with—what? Something more than what she’d already been feeling. Not just satisfaction, but joy.
Then Joel started to move. And oh God, Nina had thought she’d been feeling pleasure before, but it turned out she’d had no idea.
It was like—when he’d been touching her clit, the pleasure had been intense, but she now realized it had also felt superficial. Surface-level. This was deep, and primal, and real. This, Joel leaning in to kiss her as he thrust deep inside, was everything she needed.
Nina lost track of time. Everything was the rise and fall of pleasure, was Joel’s deep groans and sharp gasps as she shuddered and clenched around him. The way their bodies moved together was the rhythm of her breath, her heartbeat, her entire being.
Gradually, that rhythm increased. The rises were higher, faster, and the falls were shallow and over quickly. Joel thrust in harder, his mouth hot on hers. “Nina,” he groaned. “Nina.”
Nina came for the third time. This was like an earthquake shaking her body, spasms of pleasure rocking her down to her core, spreading out to her fingers and toes. She couldn’t tell up from down, only that Joel was holding her tight, murmuring in her ear as she shuddered and quaked.
Eventually, it lessened, and then subsided, and then she could think again.
Joel was half-over her, half-next to her, propped up on one elbow. When she focused on him, he reached out and ran his knuckles softly down her cheek. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.” Nina blinked. “Did you—”
He chuckled and nodded. “Oh yeah. When you just...when you just came apart like that. I couldn’t hold on any longer. Seeing you, feeling you...” He drifted off, then shook his head. “I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
“Neither have I.” Nina’s body still felt like it was fizzing with the aftermath of what they’d done. “Mmm. I never went to move again.”
“Well, out here no one can make you.” Joel’s hand drifted down from her face to stroke over her side, palming the curve of her hip. “In fact, if you just stay right there, looking like that, I think I’d be the happiest man alive.”
Nina smiled up at him. She felt weirdly...comfortable.
That wasn’t quite the right word, though. The nest of blankets and pillows in front of the fire was comfortable, and her body was still shimmering with the aftermath of pleasure. But it was more than just the physical feeling.
It dawned on her slowly, as she watched Joel watching her. Because inevitably, always, whenever she was happy, she started thinking about what might happen next. And now, she realized...she wasn’t afraid.
She wasn’t worried. She wasn’t anxious. There was no frantic anticipation of what was coming. No conviction that she had to prepare herself.
She felt safe.
And with that, her eyelids started to drift close. “That’s right,” she heard Joel murmur. “Go on and sleep. I’ll be right here.”
Nina knew he was telling the truth. She let herself go, and slept.
***
Joel woke up in a sudden rush, eyes snapping open.
It was morning. The dawn light was filtering in through the cabin’s intact windows, and the fire had died down overnight. Nina breathed softly next to him, her body relaxed in sleep, her eyelashes resting against the delicate skin of her cheek.
Nina.
His mate.
Joel knew it. He knew it down to the very cells of his body: every part of him felt bonded to every part of her.
He’d always wondered if he’d know it when it happened. He shouldn’t have wondered. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life.
It had been there last night, even—that sense of perfect connection, that spark that had ignited inside of him when he’d been inside of her...pure happiness.
The mate-bond.
The happiness was draining away. This was all of his worst fears coming true. And with Nina. Joel wanted to keep her safe, make sure she was happy, and now this?
If he and Nina were mates, they had to be together. That was how it worked. Joel knew it all too well, from his parents’ tragedy.
But what if Nina wanted to leave?
Nina was used to being on the road, and hadn’t told him she’d decided to stay yet. There was no way the mate-bond would allow her to go, though. The very idea filled Joel with a desperate need to hold her tightly, make sure she was still here.
It was strange. He’d always been afraid of how the mate-bond would make him vulnerable, make him weak, give someone else power over him. But now Joel understood that that wasn’t the real problem at all, not with Nina. Nina would never take advantage of the mate-bond, would never try to hurt him. And being close to her would be the opposite of a hardship.
But now she was vulnerable. And Joel had to protect her, no matter what he wanted for himself. Just because some insane genetic predisposition, or some crazy supernatural fate, or whatever the mate-bond was—just because it said that they had to be together, that didn’t erase Nina’s wants or needs.
The mate-bond couldn’t delete Nina’s ability to make decisions. Joel refused to allow that to happen. He’d have to let her go, as much as his whole self screamed that that was impossible.
Then he’d be miserable for the rest of his life.
And she would be, too.
So then: suppose Joel went with her. If she wanted to leave, or if Cal told her she couldn’t stay, but she still wanted Joel along. They’d be on the road together, inseparable.
And then they’d be his parents all over again, living alone, without other shifters, with all of the terrifying possibilities that came with that. They’d be far away from any protection, hiding their true natures.
What if Nina got sick, like his mother had, and they were too isolated from other shifters to learn if there was a cure?
Another scenario struck a chill into his bones. What if Nina had wanted to leave, but the mate-bond forced her to stay? What if it did erase her wants and needs, in favor of making her stay with Joel? Would she even know it was happening?
Joel looked down at Nina again. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms, tell her it was going to be okay, they could figure this out together. Even though inside, he didn’t believe it.
He couldn’t allow the mate-bond to hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt.
So he forced himself to pull away. Slowly, he eased back until they weren’t touching anymore, and then he pushed himself to his feet. He backed away one careful step at a time, so the floorboards wouldn’t creak. He pulled on his clothes swiftly and quietly. When he reached the door, he turned the handle slowly and silently, pulled it open just enough for him to slip through.
Outside, he wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. But he couldn’t, because he was still fighting the mate-bond with all of his strength. It was screaming at him to go back inside, because he’d just left his mate sleeping alone.
Nina, Joel thought. Not some fated compulsion in his brain. A living woman, with an independent mind and needs and desires of her own. And if he wanted to give her a chance to stay that way, he had to get away from her.
He shifted. And discovered that in snow leopard form, it was worse.
Mate! his leopard insisted, straining to go back to the cabin. Our mate is in there! Not out here!
Shut up, Joel told it, and started running, as fast as he could, in the opposite direction.
He wasn’t going to make Nina do anything. She was going to have a choice about what happened, no matter what he had to do.
***
Nina woke up anxious.
She’d been dreaming that she was alone. When she started awake from the dream, her hands flew out to reach for Joel...but it had been true. She was alone.
That realization was quickly overwhelmed by something else. A bolt of truth that she couldn’t deny.
Mate, her leopard exulted. We found our mate.
The thought filled Nina with a stupid sense of bewilderment. How could that be true? She didn’t deserve a mate, did she?
But it was true. She knew it like she knew her own name. Deserved or not, Joel was her mate.
That meant—that meant she could stay, didn’t it? If all of the Glacier leopards were rangers and rangers’ mates, and she was a ranger’s mate, then she could stay. The unknown Cal couldn’t object to her now.
She could stay in town. She could stay with Joel. They could even live in this little cabin together. She didn’t have to quit Oliver’s and give up her paycheck, she didn’t have to shift and start running through the lonely, empty mountains to the next small town. She could stay, work at the diner, and on her days off maybe she could help Joel with the cabin—she didn’t know anything about construction or repair, but she could learn.
And they could run together, and hunt together, and at night they could curl up right here by the fire, and Joel would look at her just like he’d looked at her last night.
Like she was his. Like she belonged here, with him.
Nina felt a strange combination of excitement and contentment spreading through her. She’d found what she’d been looking for at last. A home here, with Joel.
...Where was Joel?
She sat up. It was well into morning, from the quality of the light. The fire was dead, and she was by herself in the pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. There was no sign of Joel.
She touched the blankets next to her. They were cold, so he hadn’t just gotten up.
The anxiety she’d woken up with started creeping back. The happy anticipation receded in the face of worry.
It was silly, she told herself. Joel had to be around somewhere. He’d just stepped out for a moment, or he was in the bathroom, or something.
Nina stood up and quickly got dressed in last night’s clothing, then carefully double-checked the cabin: bathroom, loft, nothing.
She stepped outside and did a circuit of the building. It was a beautiful morning: warm and sunny, and the mountains stretched out in all directions. Nina could easily imagine waking up here every day, and coming out to breathe in the mountain air and look at the view.
But there was no Joel anywhere in sight.
Had something happened to him?
But what? This was his cabin. He had to know the territory around it pretty well. And if anything had gone badly wrong, he could shift. Even a bear or a wolf would have a hard time hurting a snow leopard—especially one that just wanted to get away.
Had he...left?
A cold chill went through Nina at the thought.
He’d said he hated the whole idea of mates, she remembered suddenly. When they’d been talking last night, he’d blamed the mate-bond for his parents’ deaths.
Joel must have woken up to the same bone-deep knowledge that she had, that they were mates. But instead of being happy...he’d left.
Nina shifted immediately. In snow leopard form, she caught Joel’s scent right away—in a straight line out towards the wilder parts of the mountains.
He was trying to get away. It felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. What was she going to do?
But before she could figure that out, she smelled something else.
The wind was carrying in the scent of exhaust. Now that she was paying attention, she could hear engines. At least two cars, coming up the dirt road that led from the main road out toward the cabin.
Who was coming here? What could they want?
Nina retreated behind the cabin so they couldn’t see her, crouching down low and peering around the corner. The two cars pulled up—and out came shifters.
Joel’s brother Zach and his mate. Alethia from the diner and her mate. The woman with the baby, except she didn’t have her baby with her today, and a man Nina didn’t recognize.
Joel had disappeared...and now the rest of the pack had shown up.
There had to be an explanation. Right? It couldn’t be that Joel had changed his mind, had disappeared and called up his pack to run her off the land.
That wasn’t something Joel would do.
Right?
But a cold fear was creeping up. Nina remembered other times when she’d thought she might fit in. When she’d just started to settle down, wondering if maybe this was the place she could stay, finally...and then a group of them would show up.
Look, girl. We put up with you for a week. We don’t want to get a reputation for attacking strange shifters out of hand. But you can’t stay here. We don’t need freeloaders, and we definitely don’t need feral shifters no one else would take. Get out of town.
She couldn’t hear those words, knowing that Joel was the one behind them. Her heart would break in half.
She started backing up slowly. But the movement caught the attention of Alethia’s husband. Nina saw his head snap around and his eyes focus on her.
Nina hesitated. She knew she should just run, but she was still wondering maybe—what if maybe—
“Joel?” one of them called, sounding confused.
“That’s not Joel,” Alethia’s husband said with absolute certainty. “We’ve got a strange leopard in our territory.”
Those words made it clear. Nina whirled and started to run.
It was time to get out of town.
***
Joel had run a long way into the mountains before he felt like he was far enough from Nina for it to be safe to stop.
Or would it ever be safe? Joel still had to fight the tug of the mate-bond. He still felt like he should turn back and go to the cabin, where Nina was probably still sleeping in front of the dark fireplace, unaware of the lightning bolt that was going to hit her when she woke up.
Joel climbed a tree, hauling himself up the bark with his claws, and settled himself into the V between two branches to think.
It was hard, when he was overwhelmed by memories of how wonderful last night had been. The way Nina had tasted, the way she’d arched under him, how her mouth had opened in surprise when she’d come for the first time against his fingers. The impossible heat between them, the silk-smooth feeling of her inside. The painful tenderness he’d felt, which had transformed into white-hot passion.
No. Stop. He had to put all of that from his mind. He couldn’t dwell on how beautiful she’d been or how her hips had tilted for him just so. He had to focus on the future, on how to help Nina going forward, and not be distracted by his own desires.
Staring out over the mountains, he ran over every possible course of action.
Nothing seemed like it would work.
There was no known way to break the mate-bond. So either he and Nina had to surrender to it, and allow that it would control every action they took—unacceptable, in Joel’s mind—or they had to constantly fight it, making themselves miserable every step of the way.
Joel pictured Nina’s life, which had held so much pain and unhappiness already. What would it be like if she were constantly struggling to stay away from Joel, hurting herself to maintain her independence?
Also unacceptable. He couldn’t let Nina suffer like that. And he wouldn’t allow her to become some kind of puppet, forced to be with him no matter what.
But what else could he do? He had to keep fighting. The thought made his soul cry out with anguish. His leopard howled in protest at the idea of losing Nina. It’s not right, he reminded himself. It’s not right. This needs to be a free choice.
Joel leapt down from the tree, full of determination to stand firm. He’d figure this out. He’d make sure that Nina went free. He’d give her the chance that his parents hadn’t had.
Then, just as he was about to head out, he was struck by a sudden bolt of terror.
Nina, his leopard snarled. Nina is in trouble!
Stop it! Joel shouted internally. He couldn’t let the mate-bond force him to do things. He had to stay in control of it, not the other way around.
But if Nina was in trouble, he had to get to her. It didn’t matter if they were mates or not. He wasn’t going to let her get hurt.
Joel started running back toward the cabin. The bond was telling him that Nina was still in that direction.
She would’ve woken up all alone. Had someone—some animal?—snuck up on her?
Joel suddenly remembered what he’d said to her last night as she was falling asleep. Go to sleep. I’ll be right here.
And then he’d run away this morning, because of his own paranoia at what would happen if they looked at each other. What the mate-bond might do.
That didn’t matter much if she was in danger, did it? Joel cursed himself for being an idiot and raced back to the cabin at his top speed, slowing down as he approached so as to be less noticeable.
However, he quickly spotted the vehicles in the driveway—Grey’s truck and Zach’s car. What were they doing here? Their presence was a relief, though; Nina couldn’t be in too much trouble if they were all there.
He saw them standing together next to the cabin. They were mostly in human form, but there was one leopard—Joel recognized him as Grey. There was no sign of Nina.
As he watched, Grey turned to face him; he’d caught Joel’s scent, no doubt. Joel came up to meet him, shifting at the last minute as Grey did the same.
“What happened?” he asked them urgently. “Where’s Nina?”
They all started talking at once, but the loudest was Alethia, who took a step forward as she said, “Nina? The waitress from Oliver’s? Is she the leopard that we saw here when we drove up?”
“Yes, Nina,” Joel said impatiently. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
“She ran away,” said Teri, looking worried. “She was afraid of us, it was obvious. We were just wondering if we should go after her.”
Joel shook his head, not sure if he meant no or just I don’t know what’s happening. “She would’ve been afraid. She would’ve thought—” He didn’t know what she would’ve thought, seeing most of the pack drive up like that. Especially if Joel wasn’t there with her. “I should have been here. What are you all even doing here?”
“We thought,” Teri started, and then bit her lip and looked at Zach.
“It was my idea,” Zach said tentatively. “We were going to come spend the day helping you with the cabin.” He gestured around to Teri, Alethia, Grey, Jeff, and Leah.
It took Joel a minute to process that, a minute he spent just blinking stupidly at his brother.
“We thought you knew about it,” Jeff added, shooting Zach an annoyed look.
“You said it sounded good at dinner last night!” Zach said plaintively. “And then I called you and left a message saying we were heading up this morning. And I texted you about ten times. I thought for sure that if you didn’t want us here, you would’ve told me to stay the hell away.”
“My phone’s back at the house,” Joel said heavily. He’d left it there because he’d shifted to run before he met with Nina at the diner. Objects like phones were much less reliable than clothes, when shifting; you were liable to leave it lying on the ground instead of bringing it with you.
Then he hadn’t gone back to the house at all, too busy with Nina, and they’d come right here to sleep.
“And I didn’t realize you meant today when you were talking about it last night,” he added. “I thought you meant...you know, sometime.”
“By which time your secret snow leopard stowaway would’ve been gone?” Zach asked. “Why is she here? What’s she hiding from?”
“Nothing!” Joel said.
“That’s not true,” Alethia said suddenly. She’d been watching the conversation with an unreadable expression, but now she stepped forward. “She was hiding. She hid when we came up, and she ran when we asked who she was. What’s she afraid of? Did something happen to her?”
The concern in her voice brought Joel’s attention back to her. He didn’t know Alethia very well, but right now, she seemed to be the only person who was more worried about Nina than curious or accusatory.
“She’s been alone for her whole life,” Joel said to her. “She’s had...bad experiences with packs. She might’ve thought you guys were coming to—to hurt her, or something.” What had happened to Nina when she hadn’t fit in with other packs?
Alethia frowned, and stepped away to stare off into the mountains where Nina had gone. After a second, she shifted and started sniffing.
Nina had probably thought that the pack was coming to attack her, or something. And Joel hadn’t been there. He’d run away, thinking he was doing the right thing by separating them before the mate-bond could completely overwhelm their judgment.
But maybe he hadn’t been doing the right thing. Maybe he’d just been a coward, running away from the thing he was most afraid of.
And abandoning Nina in the process.
“I have to go after her,” Joel said. “She’s running away, she’s afraid—I cannot believe you didn’t wait until I told you it was all right to come up here!” he said, whirling on Zach.
“I’m sorry,” Zach said sincerely. “I really thought it would be all right. At worst, I thought you’d tell us to get lost. I didn’t know anyone else was up here.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?” Teri asked, frowning. “We would’ve been happy to meet her.”
“She didn’t want to!” Joel scrubbed his hands through his hair, feeling sick. “She was afraid. I was going to try and introduce her to Cal today, but then—” Then he’d woken up and the mate-bond had chased any plans right out of his head.
Zach was frowning now, too. “Joel, how long have you known her? The other night in the diner—”
Joel shook his head. “I didn’t know her then. We just met.”
Zach looked at him sharply, leaning forward. “I haven’t seen you like this in years. You’re worked up as all get-out. Who is this girl?”
Joel stilled, and then glared at Zach. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
But Zach had seen his reaction. “You’re more upset than I’ve seen you since you were a teenager. Over a woman you met two days ago. Joel—is Nina your mate?”
“Shut up, Zach.” Joel couldn’t deal with this right now. Not until they found Nina. “I’m going to go—” He paused. “Where’s Alethia?”
Grey, standing several feet away, said, “She went after her.” He sounded completely undisturbed. “Said that more people freaking out wasn’t helping a scared woman. She wants to talk to her alone.”
“I want to talk to her alone.” Joel turned to glare at Zach, and the rest of them by association. “You all stay here.”
He shifted. Nina’s scent was as clear as day. He started to run.
***
Nina wasn’t running yet.
It was stupid. She should already be halfway across the mountains. There was no going back after something like that.
But she couldn’t. The thought of leaving Joel, of putting more and more miles between them...
It hurt too much. Even though she knew she had to, it just hurt too much.
She’d get herself together and do it. Soon. Nina knew how to push through pain and heartbreak. She’d done it before, and she could do it again.
Just not yet.
She’d found a little hollow in the forest, and curled up in it in leopard form. She’d give herself just a little while to stay here. An hour, maybe. An hour to huddle into herself, breathe slowly, and get ready to move.
Mate, her leopard was howling. Our mate is out there! Find him!
He doesn’t want us, she told it.
That isn’t right. Her leopard was filled with absolute certainty that that had to be wrong. There was no way their mate couldn’t want them. That was what mate meant. Someone who always wanted you.
I guess our mate isn’t like that, Nina thought, exhausted. She shouldn’t be surprised, maybe. After all, it had turned out that packs weren’t for her. She’d accepted that when she came to Glacier. So it looked like a mate wasn’t for her, either.
We can go on alone, she insisted. We’ve done it for a long time. We’ll be okay.
No. Her leopard was adamant. We’ll be with our mate. We belong with our mate.
The stubborn, animal disbelief was making everything harder. Because that was how it was meant to go. You belonged with your mate.
But apparently Nina didn’t.
She’d tried to come up with some other explanation for what had happened, but she couldn’t. Joel would’ve woken her up if there had been an emergency. His scent hadn’t led toward town, but far away into the wilderness.
Maybe he’d just been hunting? But why wouldn’t he leave her a note? And why would the whole pack show up while he was away?
Joel hated the whole idea of fated mates. So the explanation that made the most sense was that now that he had one, he wanted her as far away as possible.
It just wasn’t fair.
Great, now she was being childish. Nina was glad she was in snow leopard form, or she’d probably be crying like a little kid about this.
Get over it, she thought fiercely. You thought this was going to work out for once? Well, it didn’t. That’s nothing new. It never works out. Get up and move on.
She’d just started to stand up, in preparation for heading...away somewhere, she didn’t know yet, when there was a rustle in the underbrush.
Nina froze, not sure what other animals might be out here with her. A bear?
But no, the movement she saw in the leaves eventually resolved itself into a snow leopard.
Not Joel, she knew immediately; this was a female, and her coat was paler than Joel’s, her markings more subtle. As Nina tried to decide whether to run, fight, or wait to see what happened, the other leopard’s form shimmered, shifted, and became Alethia, from the diner.
Nina hesitated, poised to run. What would Alethia think, now that she knew that Nina was a feral shifter, a loner invading her territory?
But she was wearing the same friendly smile Nina had seen so many times in the diner. “Hi, Nina,” she said calmly. “Can we talk?”
Nina hesitated for another long moment. Then she shifted.
Alethia’s smile brightened as Nina took on human form, and she took a few steps forward, until they were standing close, facing each other.
“Nina," said Alethia. "Hi. I didn’t know you were a shifter.”
“Neither did I,” Nina said softly. “About you, I mean.”
“Hey,” Alethia said, “then it’s a good surprise for both of us. Right?”
Nina couldn’t quite muster a yes, not after everything that had just happened. She shrugged.
Alethia’s smile faded. “Nina, what did you think was happening, back there at the cabin? Why were you afraid?"
That wasn't what Nina had expected to hear. "I thought—I thought you'd come to chase me away," she said haltingly. "I thought you didn't want me in your territory any longer."
"No," Alethia said immediately. "No, that's not it at all. We'd come to see Joel. None of us even knew that you were a shifter, let alone that you were up there. You surprised us as much as we surprised you."
"...Oh." Nina had to reorganize her thoughts. She felt like they were coming too slowly, caught up in all of the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours like mice in a maze.
"Were you looking for other snow leopards? Is that why you came to Glacier?"
Nina shook her head, feeling her cheeks heat at how stupid the whole situation was. "No. It was a coincidence. I was trying to think of the best place to go, a place that'd be good for a leopard to roam, but also had enough people coming and going that I wouldn't stand out. Here seemed like a good bet. I didn't know that there were leopards already here."
Alethia raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like a lucky coincidence to me.”
Nina felt a surge of hope. Maybe she could stay after all, if Alethia was talking about things like good surprises and lucky coincidences. But then she remembered the real problem. "Well—Joel—"
She stopped. She didn't know what to say. Or she did, but she didn't want to say it out loud.
"What's the problem with Joel, Nina?" Alethia asked gently.
She was afraid, she realized. She was afraid of what Alethia would think about her if she knew that Joel didn’t want her.
But Alethia didn’t look like she was ready to judge. She looked kind and compassionate, ready to listen, wanting to help. Nina wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have a close girlfriend. Someone who could make that face when a man hurt her, who would be on her side. Someone she could talk to.
"We're mates," she blurted out.
Alethia's eyebrows shot up. "Really?” She frowned. “Are you okay with that?”
Nina nodded vigorously, started to tear up despite herself. "Yes! I thought since I'm his mate, maybe I could stick around, but he doesn't want a mate. He ran off this morning, and I'm pretty sure he wants me—gone." She swallowed a sob, but it got caught in her throat.
"Oh, honey." Alethia came forward and, without any hesitation, folded Nina up in her arms.
Nina froze stiff at first. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a hug like this, to comfort her when she was sad. Not since before she left home. Years and years.
Alethia's arms were warm, and she smelled like some delicately lovely perfume, and she felt soft and welcoming. Nina couldn't help herself: she melted into the embrace. Tears choked her.
She’d been right. Alethia wasn’t disgusted, she wasn’t judging Nina. She was helping, in a way that Nina hadn’t even realized she wanted.
Alethia made soft shushing noises while Nina sobbed and sniffled and struggled to get herself under control. It took a while.
Finally, she caught her breath and pulled away. "Sorry for that," she mumbled, not meeting Alethia's eyes.
"It's not a problem," Alethia said softly. "Can I ask you something?"
Nina nodded, wiping her eyes. "What?"
"If you're Joel's mate, why did you think we were going to chase you away?"
"He doesn't want a mate," Nina repeated. "I thought maybe he just—wanted me gone."
"So you thought that he called up all of his packmates to come chase you off, while he hid in the woods like a coward?" Alethia asked, with an edge to her voice. "Has he done something like that before?"
Nina shook her head immediately. "No! He's been—nice, and sweet, and just really wonderful. We spent all last night together, and we ran in the mountains, and we talked, and we—" Maybe best not to mention that last part out loud.
"Did the sort of things mates do, yes, I understand," Alethia said dryly. "All right. If he was so nice and sweet to you, why were you so afraid of what he'd do?"
Nina bit her lip. "It's happened before. Not the mate thing, but people trying to chase me off. I didn't want to stick around and let it happen again, not after—" Not after everything they'd shared together, in such a short time.
Alethia’s eyes were gentle. “Who tried to chase you off?”
Nina closed her eyes. “Everyone, really. Even back when I, I had to leave my parents’ house, because I’m adopted.”
And then suddenly, before she knew it, the whole sordid, awful story came pouring out. Nina had never told anyone before last night. Telling Joel had felt like a meeting of minds and hearts, an intimate sharing of something secret with someone she trusted.
Telling Alethia, on the other hand, felt like setting herself free. Like she was taking the secret, this awful secret that had gotten deeper and heavier the longer she carried it around, and letting it just...fly away into the air.
Alethia listened quietly as Nina talked, not interrupting at all. Her face held such a deep compassion that it made Nina want to start to cry again.
Finally, she finished up with, “So then I thought that I might as well give up, and accept that I was going to be alone. So I came here.”
Alethia let out a long breath. “That’s quite a story.”
Nina shrugged. It was hers.
Alethia pressed her lips together, thinking. Finally she said, “Okay. Can I offer you some advice?"
"Please." Nina knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. If there was one thing she needed in this world, it was some sort of guidance in how to navigate it. She'd definitely never managed to do it successfully on her own.
"I can't help you with Joel and his problem with mates. I don't know him that well, and I'm not sure why he feels that way. But I know a thing or two about assuming people are going to hurt you."
Alethia said it easily, as though it wasn't painful to admit. Nina looked at her. She looked serious, like she was talking about something that didn't make her happy, but not like she was hurting.
Not anymore, maybe.
"If you get hurt enough," Alethia went on, "you start to expect it, even from people who've never hurt you. And that's a problem, because it means that you start assuming the worst about people. You start self-sabotaging. You're sure everything's going to go wrong, so you prepare for that to happen. You assume it is happening...even if it isn't."
Nina couldn't laugh, because everything hurt too much. But she let out a sound that was maybe halfway between a chuckle and a sob. "That sounds like me, all right."
"It was me, too, for a long time. It meant I almost screwed up getting together with Grey, which was the best thing that's ever happened to me, just because I couldn't believe it was real."
Nina tried to imagine this confident, beautiful, self-assured woman in the same situation as Nina, broken and hurting and ashamed. She couldn't at all. Could Alethia really have made it, somehow, from that situation to this one?
"It's hard to realize what's happening," Alethia said quietly. "Because you think everyone else is hurting you. But really, you're just hurting yourself. Because that's what you're used to."
Nina swallowed another sob that was trying to work its way up her throat. "Okay," she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Okay. So how do you stop?"
Alethia spread her hands. “Live in the present. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s the best thing. What’s happening to you now? Is anyone hurting you? What do you want now? What do you expect now?”
Nina shook her head, feeling dizzy at all the questions. “I don’t know. It’s too much.”
“If it’s too much, just...breathe. Take a step back. Breathe in, and feel yourself breathing, and breathe out, and let the past go.” Alethia smiled ruefully. “I only just figured that part out a little while ago. Grey’s never had any trouble living in the present. I’m the one who was always stuck in the past. But I’m getting better.”
“Breathe,” Nina said doubtfully.
Alethia nodded. “Try it now. Breathe in, hold it, let it out slow.”
Nina breathed in deep, and held it, thinking about herself. What did she feel?
Loneliness.
She wanted to be with Joel. She wanted to be with her mate, and have a pack.
At that thought, the past welled up in her. It was just like Alethia said—the second she remembered, she started thinking that it was impossible. That she could never have a family again.
She breathed out, and tried to let those clamoring doubts go. It was hard.
“Again,” Alethia said softly.
Nina tried it again. Breathe in. Hold. Was anyone hurting her? Not right now. Right now, she was standing in the forest with Alethia, and nothing was happening. She breathed out, and tried to let go of the memories of pain.
“It’s hard,” she said.
Alethia nodded. “One more time. Just think about yourself this time. How it feels to breathe.”
Nina breathed. Her chest filled, her body expanded with air. She held it. Then she let it out.
It felt like her muscles were uncurling, her anxieties melting away. “It’s working,” she said, surprised.
“There you go,” Alethia said. “Now. What do you want?”
Nina knew the answer to that question. “Joel.”
“Well,” said Alethia, turning to look into the trees, “I think I know where to find him.”
Nina turned too, and saw him. Joel was crouched in leopard form on a rock, looking down at her and Alethia.
“Come down,” Nina called to him. “Please come down.”
Slowly, Joel padded down from the rock. He walked across the forest floor until he was standing in front of Nina and Alethia.
“I need you to talk to me.” Nina stared at him, willing him to shift and explain what had happened. “Joel. I need to hear what you’re thinking.”
There was a long pause...and then Joel shivered and shifted, rising up from his position on all fours to stand as a human in front of her. He was already as familiar to her as her own self—broad shoulders, messy dark hair, troubled silver eyes.
Nina wanted to throw herself into his arms. She wanted him to wrap her up and swear to her that she’d always be safe.
Instead, she stood where she was, and breathed. Joel, her breath seemed to say.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Alethia murmured. “Remember what I said, Nina.”
Nina nodded. Alethia shifted, and slipped away.
“I’m sorry,” Joel said immediately, before Alethia was even out of earshot. “I’m so sorry I left.”
“Where did you go?” Nina demanded. “Why did you go? I thought you wanted me to leave town, but Alethia said no...”
“No!” Joel took a couple of steps forward, then seemed to force himself to stop.
Nina wrapped her own arms around herself to keep from reaching for him. She didn’t need his embrace. She needed his explanation.
“So why, then?” she repeated.
“I woke up and I knew we were mates,” Joel said in a low voice.
Nina nodded. “So did I. But you don’t want to be mates. You said last night how much you hated the idea.”
“Because the mate-bond compels us.” Joel sounded angry, now, even though he wasn’t any louder. “I don’t want some bizarre genetic force, or mystical force, or whatever the hell it is, keeping us leashed to each other. I can’t stand the idea of something forcing you to stay with me.”
Nina flinched. This was hard to hear. "But what if it's—" She couldn't quite bring herself to say what we want, because it was looking more and more like Joel didn't want it, after all. "What if people want to be together anyway?"
"Then they can be together!" Joel said. "Because if they do want to be together, then they don't need some crazy compulsion making them, do they?"
"But what do you want to do, then?" Nina asked helplessly, despair building inside her. "Since we have the crazy compulsion no matter what."
Joel's shoulders slumped. "I don't know. But for now, I think we should stay away from each other.”
An awful feeling pooled in the pit of Nina's stomach. "Stay away," she said stupidly.
Joel nodded, his mouth set in an unhappy frown. “Maybe if we keep away, it’ll lessen somehow, and let us think for ourselves. Decide what we really want.”
What we really want. Because Joel didn’t want the mate-bond, didn’t want her. The knowledge hit her like a knife to the heart. She wanted to melt. She wanted to run away.
She breathed instead. Like Alethia had said. Breathe in, hold it, breathe out. Breathe in, hold it, breathe out.
And after that, she knew what she really wanted.
"I don’t want to," she told Joel, lifting her chin.
He looked startled. "What?"
"I don't want to keep away from each other." She took a deep breath and forced her voice to stay steady. "But if you can't stay—if you have to try and get away—I can't make you and I don't want you to be unhappy."
The idea of Joel leaving hurt more than almost anything she could think of. But the one thing that was worse was if he stayed and hated it.
"So if you have to leave, leave. If you have to try and—and lessen the bond, I can't stop you. But I want you to stay, Joel!" Her voice was rising. "I don't want you to talk about this like it’s something to run away from! That feels like—like—" She couldn't think of a comparison awful enough.
She was hoping that Joel would realize he was wrong, or at least that he should think about this some more. She was hoping he'd apologize. But she only got startled silence in response to her outburst. Joel's mouth was open, but nothing was coming out.
Nina glared at him. "So make any plans you want, I guess, but don't include me." She took a step back, and then another, and then she shifted.
"Nina," Joel started, but Nina was already running away.
She crossed a stream to confuse her scent, then found a densely-wooded patch where she could hide among the trees and catch her breath. It took a while to calm herself down, but eventually she managed to slow her breathing, flex her claws in the dirt and do what Alethia had told her. Breathe in, breathe out, focus on what was happening now.
Joel didn’t want the mate-bond. He wanted to break it.
What could she do? She’d told him what she wanted from him. She’d made it clear as day.
So she guessed the rest of it was up to him. Because she couldn’t have that conversation with him again, arguing about whether he wanted her or not. She couldn’t.
So what now?
She wasn't sure where to go, but finally she turned back toward the cabin. The road to town ran by there, at the very least. And maybe Alethia was still there.
It turned out that she was. But it wasn’t just Alethia; the rest of the group was still there with her. Nina hesitated at the opening to the clearing where the cabin stood, not sure if she was welcome.
But Zach, Joel's brother, spotted her and raised his hand. "Nina!" he called. "Nina, come on out. Come say hello."
So she did. She came cautiously forward in her leopard form, and when she was still several yards away, shifted to human. "Hello."
"Nina," said Zach's mate. What was her name? Teri, Nina remembered, Joel had called her Teri. "I'm so glad you came back. Hi. I'm Teri, and this is Joel's brother Zach, and we're so glad to meet you."
Nina looked between them, feeling wary and wrung-out. "You are?"
"Nina, I don't know what Joel's said, or done," Zach said, coming forward a few steps. Nina resisted the urge to retreat. "But if you're his mate, you're part of our family now, and we'd like to get to know you."
"And," Alethia said pointedly from behind him, "we’d like to get to know you for yourself. It would be wonderful to have you stay no matter what your connection to Joel."
The man she didn't recognize came forward. His face was so friendly, his body language so nonthreatening, that he was right up next to her before she even thought about whether she should step back or not. "Alethia's right," he said. "Hi, Nina, I'm Jeff, it's really nice to meet you." He held out his hand.
Nina stared at it for a second, and then remembered her manners. She shook. It all felt very surreal.
"Please stick around at least for a while," Jeff said, smiling at her. "We could really use some more pack members who aren't rangers. Alethia and Leah get sick of us after a while."
"True," said Alethia, straight-faced.
The other woman, the one Nina had seen with a baby in the diner, came up next to Jeff. "I'm not a leopard," she told Nina, "but I'm still an honorary member of the pack, and let me just say that having some more ladies around would be great."
"We're working on it, but it's still a bit of a boys' club," Teri said.
Nina looked around at all of them, feeling overwhelmed. "I don't know what Joel's going to do," she started.
Zach's jaw firmed. "I'm going to have a talk with Joel, I think," he muttered.
Alethia stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Listen," she said. "I won't say it doesn't matter what Joel does. I know that it matters. But that's not part of the consideration for me here, okay? We're inviting you to stick around, and get to know us, because we want to get to know you, Nina, the new leopard in town. Not Joel's Mate, Insert Name Here. Okay?"
"Okay." Nina's voice was thready. She didn't know if she could believe this. She wanted to, but it was just so much.
"Nina," Teri said, "do you want a ride home? Where are you staying?"
Nina felt a flash of shame. Should she lie? But they all lived in town, they knew the place much better than she did after two weeks. She didn't think she could make up a convincing lie.
"I've just been sleeping in the forest," she admitted, feeling her cheeks heat and glad she was too dark-skinned to show a blush. "I have a little cave where I keep my stuff. I shift and sleep there."
Jeff, Zach, and Grey all looked varying degrees of surprised, and...something else. Angry? Upset? Jeff and Zach were definitely upset. Grey's expression was much more subtle, but it seemed similar somehow.
Alethia had the same kind, compassionate look. Teri, though, smiled ruefully and said, "I wish I'd had that solution a little while back. I could've used it for sure."
"Me too," said Leah, startling Nina a bit. "That's smart, knowing how to keep yourself safe and have somewhere to sleep even if you can't pay rent."
Nina had been expecting shock or pity. "Did you—not have somewhere to stay?" she asked them, surprise making her bolder than she would've been otherwise.
Leah nodded. "Kicked out of my apartment, alone with my daughter. Almost froze to death in the snow." She cast a fond look at Jeff. He must be her mate, Nina thought. "Would have, if not for him."
Teri nodded. "For me it wasn't so bad; I had a roof over my head. But it was a pretty awful roof. If I could've slept out in the mountains, I would have, believe me."
"Same, for a while there," added Alethia.
"But now I live in this nice house," Teri continued, "and it has this nice guest room. Would you like to come check it out? You don't have to stay the night if you don't want to, but we could at least feed you lunch or something."
"Joel might show up," Zach added, "since it's technically his home." His expression darkened. "I don't know if that's a pro or a con for you, but it's true."
See Joel's house. Have lunch with his family.
His family, who was welcoming Nina in, and saying that it didn't matter if Joel wanted her or not. They wanted her.
So even though she had a deep hollow in her chest where Joel should be, even though her leopard was snarling at her to run back into the woods, find their mate, and make him come with her, Nina nodded. "All right. Yes. I would be very happy to have lunch with you."
To her own ears, she sounded stilted and strange, like an alien who'd never learned human customs. What did you say when accepting a friendly lunch invitation? And what did you say when accepting an invitation to join someone's family? She couldn’t make it sound natural, even to herself.
The next hour or so was even more surreal. Nina was packed into the car with Zach and Teri. Teri insisted on sitting in the back, and offered her the front seat. On the drive back to town, the two of them chatted about little, inconsequential things, like their respective shifts working at Glacier Park, the work Zach was doing around the house, the schools Teri was thinking of applying to so she could become a park ranger too.
"I want to go somewhere local," she told Nina, "because I don't want to be too far from Zach. But I still want a good education. There are a couple of different options, but I'm not sure what's best yet."
"For the millionth time, you should do whatever gets you the best education," Zach said. "We'll be okay even if we have to be apart for a bit. That's why Skype was invented. Also phones."
"He doesn't want to admit he's going to be lonely without me, because he thinks it'll hold me back from being my best self," Teri told Nina. "I know he's going to be lonely without me. I'm going to be lonely without him, too. It’s with him that I’m my best self."
Zach reached his hand back, resting it on the top of the driver's seat, and Teri leaned forward and gripped it for a long moment. "We'll figure it out," she told Nina. “It’s not forever, no matter what happens.”
Nina took all of this in with a kind of a surprised hunger. They seemed so happy. Even in the face of separation, of hard decisions, they were both loving and kind, and they wanted the best for each other.
Could she ever have that with Joel? Right now, it didn’t look like it at all.
But it seemed to prove that Joel’s theory about the bond being some kind of awful compulsion was wrong. Teri and Zach were happy together. Alethia had said that Grey was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Leah had looked at Jeff with more love and affection than Nina was used to seeing between couples.
If that was what the mate-bond did, then it wasn’t wrong. Nina knew that.
And even more than that, it wasn’t a compulsion. Because having someone look at her with love, having a partner who wanted the best for her, was something she’d wanted for years and years.
And Joel was it. The way he’d rescued her without asking for a thing in return, the way he’d made himself vulnerable to her by telling her about how much he’d been hurt—and the way he’d comforted her when she did the same. Because they were the same, two semi-broken people who wanted to be better.
Teri said that Zach made her better.
Nina suddenly wished she hadn’t run away from Joel earlier. She wanted to hash this out with him. She was afraid of what he’d say, yes—but they needed to talk about it and decide together.
Soon. She’d make sure it happened soon.
They pulled into the driveway to a comfortable-looking house, and Nina got out of the car with a sense of unreality. It had been a long time since she’d even been inside someone’s house.
She followed Teri up the steps, took her shoes off inside the front door because Teri did it first, and then followed her into the kitchen. Teri said, “Have a seat, I’ll get something started.”
“No,” Zach said, coming up behind her, “I’ll cook. You can talk to Nina.”
Teri and Zach exchanged a look that seemed to speak volumes, and then Teri nodded. “Thanks, love,” she said to Zach, and he smiled and dropped a kiss just behind her ear. Nina looked away, full of a hopeless longing. She remembered Joel kissing her softly, just last night. Could it only have been last night? Would it ever happen again?
Teri sat down next to Nina at the kitchen table. “I wanted to ask you something,” she said.
“What?” Nina was nervous, suddenly—what could Teri want to know about her?
“Leaving aside everything we’ve been saying about wanting you to stick around,” Teri said, “and leaving aside whatever Joel’s said to you, I don’t know what any of that was. Leaving all that aside. What do you want?”
“What?” Nina said again, although this time it was fainter, more of a reflex than a real question.
“What do you want?” Teri repeated. “You haven’t been in town for very long, so you probably came here for some kind of reason. I don’t know if you were planning on sticking around before all this happened,” she waved a hand, indicating the whole messed-up situation, “or if you wanted to go somewhere else. We’re happy to have you here, we want to get to know you, but what do you want? What would make you happy, here?”
“Did Alethia tell you to ask me this?” Nina asked, still feeling a little stunned. This was twice in the space of a couple of hours that she’d been asked this question. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had really wanted to know the answer.
Teri shook her head. “Nope. But it sounds like she and I are on the same page. So? What do you want?”
When Alethia had asked her, she’d said Joel. And that was still true, no question. But there was another answer, a larger answer. Part of what her best self would be.
“A family,” Nina breathed out. The answer seemed to hang in the air. Her whole body tensed at the sound of it, like she’d said something dangerous.
But nothing terrible happened. Teri just smiled at her. “I’m glad,” she said. “I hope we can make that happen.”
Me too, Nina thought, but it was too much to say out loud.
They had lunch. Zach moved around the kitchen with confidence, cooking for all three of them without any trouble; they ended up with grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and salads. Comfort food, Nina thought as she ate, trying to ignore the aching hole in her chest where Joel was supposed to be.
Zach and Teri brought the conversation back to light topics, and didn’t pressure Nina to participate, just letting her eat. But it still seemed almost oppressive, the amount of domestic happiness surrounding her. Nina had said she wanted a family, but she tried to imagine living here, in this house, with these people, and just...couldn’t. It seemed impossible.
Maybe she’d been alone for too long. It felt like she’d been starving, and suddenly someone had seated her down at a five-star restaurant and put a seven-course meal in front of her. Nina wanted to say, I can’t eat all of this. My stomach can’t handle it.
But it looked so good.
She remembered thinking that she could see herself living in Joel’s cabin so easily. That small space up in the mountains, with just the two of them alone and wilderness all around, was much easier to imagine than this neighborhood, this house, this family.
If she could live in the cabin with Joel, but visit this house with Teri and Zach...could that happen? That sounded so perfect. A place to get away, to be alone or with her mate, out in the wild where she could be her leopard. But also a family waiting for her, a place to sit in a kitchen and have grilled cheese and soup together, and talk about their lives.
Was it possible? Could something like this ever happen?
Nina’s instinct was no. It felt like she was being given this little tantalizing taste of the future, and waiting for it to be snatched right away again.
But she remembered what Alethia had told her. Just because she’d hoped in the past, and it hadn’t turned out the way she’d wanted, didn’t mean that that would happen again. This was now. This was not then.
It all depended on Joel.
Nina was suddenly, furiously angry with Joel for leaving her without any answers. Why did he have to do this? What was wrong with her—or with him, that he didn’t want this?
But she had to remember what he’d said about his past. How he’d always blamed the mate-bond for keeping his parents away from their families, from any help they might have gotten.
She understood. But it hurt so much.
***
Joel stared at the rangers’ headquarters building, not entirely sure why he was here.
He needed to talk this over with someone. It couldn’t be someone who was mated, because he didn’t trust them to be objective about the situation. So that let out his usual confidant, Zach.
And it couldn’t be Nina, because Joel didn’t trust himself to be objective when he was talking to her.
Every cell of his body longed to take her at her word. She’d said she thought their connection was real and she wanted to stay with him. Joel wanted that too.
But did she really want it?
Nina wanted a place to belong and a family. Joel knew that. So maybe the mate-bond was just latching on to that desire, and putting Joel forward as the way to get that.
After all, why would she want him? They’d only just met. And Joel was an antisocial, angry loner who was essentially married to his job and spent his spare time fixing up a cabin in the middle of nowhere, just so that he could keep being alone.
He’d always told himself that his hatred of the mate-bond was healthy independence, but he was starting to think he’d been wrong. That it was just fear of letting anyone get close to him. That was something he’d always struggled with, whenever he tried to date. Even with his own family.
He wasn’t going to be a good mate to any woman, let alone someone who’d been hurt as much as Nina had. And he refused to be another thing that she had to endure. She deserved a rich, happy life.
So he was going to talk to another loner who was married to his job, to try and figure out how much of this was healthy, and how much of it wasn’t. Because right now, he was caught between something he’d believed wholeheartedly since he was a kid—that the mate-bond ruined lives—and Nina’s heartbreaking, “But I want you to stay, Joel!”
Joel wanted to stay too, more than almost anything. But even more, he didn’t want to ruin her life.
So he went inside the headquarters building, went up to the head ranger’s office, and knocked.
“Come in,” said Cal. When Joel opened the door, his eyebrows went up. “Joel. You’re not working today.”
“I know that,” Joel said. “I’m here for—” God, this sounded awkward—“personal reasons.”
Cal’s eyebrows went up even further. But after a minute, he set his pen down and leaned back in his chair. “All right. Come on in.”
Joel did, shutting the door behind him. He eyed the chairs in front of the desk, but decided he’d rather stand. But then he wasn’t sure where to stand—between the chairs? To one side of them? To the other side?
“I don’t mean to hurry you along,” said Cal after a minute, eyeing him, “but I do have other things that I was planning on doing today.”
"Sorry," Joel said abruptly. He changed his mind about standing—he'd end up pacing a hole in the carpet if he stood. He sat down and said, "I wanted to know your opinion of the mate-bond."
There was a long pause. Then Cal said, "That's a bit out of the blue."
Joel winced. "Not...exactly."
Cal nodded slowly. "I see. All right. I think the mate-bond is good for some."
Joel waited, but that seemed to be it. "Only some?"
Cal shrugged minutely. "Seen it go wrong once or twice. Usually on account of circumstance, not because it was a bad match."
"That's the thing." Joel sat up. "Circumstance. The mate-bond forces people together, no matter what their circumstances. What if something goes wrong? They can't get away. And how are people even supposed to know that their feelings are real, if this mystical bond descends on them before they can really get to know each other?"
He stopped, his breath coming fast. Cal's eyebrows were up again.
"Sounds to me like you've thought about this a bit," was all he said.
Joel nodded. "My parents—it went wrong."
Cal made a thoughtful noise. "All right, Joel. You want my opinion, I'll tell you my opinion. I think whether a mate is good for you or not depends on what you want your life to look like. You want to live alone in your cabin forever, avoid laying eyes on any other living souls, it's going to be a problem. You want to settle down, start a family, it's not so much a problem."
"But even if someone does want to settle down, it can still be a problem," Joel objected. “Being forced to stay together no matter what? That can cause all sorts of problems. Problems that can’t be solved.”
Cal looked at him for a long minute. "You know why Grey and Jeff are my best rangers?" he asked finally.
Joel blinked, not expecting that change of subject. "They know what they're doing," he offered. "They have experience."
"So do lots of other guys, and they're not as good as those two," Cal said. "It's about mindset."
Joel frowned.
"It's true, they're different as night and day," Cal continued, forestalling what Joel had been about to say. "But they've got one thing in common: they don't make trouble for themselves."
"What do you mean by that exactly?" Joel asked cautiously.
"There can be some dangerous situations out in the mountains," said Cal. "A ranger can get himself into some serious trouble. But neither of those two lets that possibility get to them. They're confident in their skills, they work on being capable and prepared, and they know that if something goes wrong, they'll tackle it as best they can."
Joel thought about that. "And I don't do that."
"You're okay out in the Park," Cal said. "You think you know the territory pretty well, and you're right for the most part. But I have a sense that in everything else, there might be some trouble happening that's your own making.”
Joel digested that.
“And one more thing,” Cal added.
“What?”
“If we’re talking about the mate-bond, well, that’s two people, isn’t it? But I only see you in here. You shouldn’t be talking to me about this, you should be talking to your mate, whoever she is. It’s her decision too, not just yours.”
Joel was quiet. After a second, Cal picked up his pen again. “I need to get back to work.”
Joel stood. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. And get yourself sorted out.”
Joel nodded and left the office, thinking.
Cal was right. This wasn’t only Joel’s decision. And Nina didn’t have any trouble with the mate-bond. She wanted it.
Or she thought she did. This was Joel’s biggest fear: that Nina might not know her own mind. What if the mate-bond was messing with her thoughts?
No. No, that didn’t make any sense, he realized.
Because Joel had a problem with the bond, and that problem hadn’t disappeared the second he woke up and knew he was Nina’s mate. The bond couldn’t be brainwashing them, because Joel was still angry about it, still able to question it. Still afraid of what it might do.
If he assumed that Nina couldn’t question it, then he was assuming that she was weaker-minded than he was. Which clearly wasn’t the case, because anyone who could live on their own, with no family and no pack, for years and years and still keep going had one of the toughest minds he’d ever encountered.
Joel couldn’t admire her for her strength and be afraid of her weakness at the same time. That was stupid, and unworthy of her. Nina knew her own mind.
So if Nina knew her own mind...it was time to go talk to her.
***
When he pulled up to the house, intending to see if Zach and Teri knew where Nina was, he came to an abrupt halt, the tires screeching as he stared. Nina was waiting for him right there, standing on the front step with her eyes fixed on him through the car window.
Joel nearly broke a finger trying to turn off the car, get his seatbelt off, and open the door all at once. He ate up the distance to the house in long, quick strides, and caught Nina in his arms, losing himself in the scent of her, the feel of her soft curves, the sweetly surprised noise she made before relaxing into his embrace. Nina.
It was a long moment before he came back to himself and pulled away, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “I came here to talk to you.”
She blinked at him, her eyes hazy for a moment, before visibly remembering where she was. The look solidified into a glare. “You better have. I’ve got some things to say to you.”
Joel breathed out. “Can I go first?”
Before Nina could answer, though, the door opened, revealing Zach, also glaring at him. “Where the hell have you been?”
Joel winced. “I had to get my head on straight.” He looked at Nina. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
Nina looked back at Zach. “I want to do this right now. But we can go on a walk, or...”
Teri appeared behind her mate. “No,” she said, “Zach and I will go for a walk. You two stay here. Take as long as you need, we’ll go on a hiking trail. But,” and she gave Nina a significant look, “I’ll have my phone on me, if you need anything. Anything at all.”
Joel prudently stepped aside to let them leave, not missing the steely look Teri shot him as she went by. It looked like he might have some apologizing to do to his brother and sister-in-law, not just to Nina.
That was for later, though. For now, all of his attention was on her.
They went inside, and ended up standing hesitantly on opposite sides of the living room. Joel was wary of getting too close, in case the desire to hold Nina in his arms overwhelmed any attempts at communicating.
But we can talk while touching, his leopard insisted, wanting nothing more than to nuzzle up to Nina and never leave.
Joel overruled that, though not without a sharp pang of longing. Later, he told his leopard. Maybe.
Even that maybe felt dangerous. Like he was about to let go of a cliff face, a piece of rock he’d been clutching with all his might, and go hurtling out into free-fall, to land God knew where.
“So?” Nina said, when the silence had stretched out. “What did you want to say?”
“I’m sorry,” came out of Joel’s mouth, without decision or permission, just a raw feeling given voice. “For leaving this morning,” he clarified. “For not asking you what you wanted before I decided what was best. I was wrong.”
“You were afraid.” Nina always seemed to look right through him, somehow, and this time was no different. “Right? You looked terrified.”
Joel clenched his fists and nodded. “It’s just—the mate-bond could cause so much trouble. I’ve seen it. I don’t want anything to happen to you...like happened to my mother. I couldn’t live with that.” Like his father hadn’t been able to live with it.
Nina took a slow breath. She looked like she was thinking deeply. Joel waited to hear what she had to say.
“Alethia told me I was living in the past,” she said finally. “Letting stuff that had happened long ago control what I did now. That’s why I was so scared this morning, when your friends came to the cabin. Even though there was nothing to be afraid of.”
Joel hadn’t expected her to hit the nail on the head like that. In retrospect, he wasn’t sure why not. “Yeah. That’s like what Cal said to me just now. That I was making trouble for myself.”
Nina smiled, just a hint of a raised corner of her mouth. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Relief was flooding through him. “Always ready for another catastrophe. That’s us.”
Nina took a step forward, and Joel matched her, until they were standing almost in touching distance. “You know, Zach and Teri made me lunch today,” Nina said.
It sounded like a non sequitur, but Joel trusted Nina to be going somewhere with it. “They did?”
Nina nodded. “And I kept thinking—it’s almost too much, being here. After living the life I’ve lived? Being in this house, eating grilled cheese and soup, watching the two of them...it doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’m watching myself on TV.”
Joel had to close eyes at the rush of pure recognition he felt, hearing that. He nodded.
When he opened them, Nina had taken another step forward. She was so close now, he could reach out and pull her in...
“But,” she continued, and Joel’s focus snapped back to what she was saying, “when I was in the cabin, with you, that felt just right. Someplace I could live. And maybe then I could come here, and eat lunch, and it would be crazy-perfect in kind of a weird way...and then go home, back to where it feels right.”
Joel understood.
He understood what Nina felt, because he felt the same way.
And he understood what she was trying to say.
“The mate-bond recognized that we were the same,” he said slowly. “That’s what you mean. It brought us together because we fit together.”
“Yes.” Nina’s eyes welled up with tears, and she blinked furiously. Joel forced himself to stay where he was, let her finish. “Every moment with you has been so right, Joel! I don’t feel compelled. And I’m not afraid.”
Fear. Fear was that cliff-face he’d been holding onto with both hands. Fear was keeping him from letting go, and falling into—life with Nina.
That was the great unknown, the thing he was afraid of? Life with Nina? Vulnerability to Nina? The close, crazy intimacy of the mate-bond with Nina?
Nina, who understood him better than anyone he knew. Who ran with him through the mountains, who melted in his arms, who looked at his cabin and saw a home. Who would never hurt him, and who stood up and told him what she felt, instead of letting his fears hurt her.
“I’ve been such an idiot,” Joel said all in a rush, and snatched Nina up into his arms.
She let out a startled shriek as her feet left the ground, but clutched him back just as hard, burying her face in his neck.
“Don’t say that,” she murmured. “You’re not an idiot. You’re just like me. Afraid of the past.”
Joel set her down, much more gently. “I love you. I truly do.”
Nina’s face crumpled for a minute, and two tears slipped down her cheeks. Instantly, Joel pulled in her in close again.
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “When you said you hated the idea that we had to be together—”
“No,” he said immediately, pressing a kiss to her damp cheek. “No. I was just afraid that it would hurt you, or that you wouldn’t have a choice. I wanted to be with you more than anything. It just felt awful to think that it might not be because you truly wanted it.”
“I want it.” Her voice was fierce, and Joel couldn’t do anything but believe her.
They held onto each other for a long, long time.
Finally, Joel pulled back and put his hands on her shoulders. “I can’t forget what happened to my parents,” he admitted, needing to be honest with her. “I don’t know if that’s going to go away.”
Nina shrugged, a tiny motion. “I’ll never forget what happened to me. I don’t think we should. I just think we need to remember that it’s the past. After all,” she brightened, “back then, your parents were the only mated couple you knew. What about all the ones you know now? Are they happy?”
Joel thought about Zach and Teri, how they laughed together, how Zach was brighter and more relaxed than Joel had ever known him to be. Grey, so quiet and reserved most of the time, seemed to open up with joy around his vivacious mate. And Jeff and Leah, the way they seemed to give off love, project it onto everyone around them, especially their baby...
“They’re the happiest people I know,” he said softly.
Nina’s face softened. “I want so much to be part of that,” she said.
“You will be. You are, already. You’ve talked more to the rest of the pack today than I probably have in the last week,” Joel pointed out. “Teri and Zach are ready to beat me up because I haven’t been treating you right.”
Nina’s eyes widened. “Oh, no—”
“I deserve it,” Joel told her. “But what I mean is, they want you to be a part of the pack. Didn’t they say that?”
Nina nodded slowly. “I don’t think I was ready to hear it yet. And they said so many things...Teri said something that stuck with me.”
Joel ran his hands down her arms, taking hold of her fingers and twining them together. “What did she say?”
“That with Zach, she was her best self.” Nina looked up at Joel with those grey-green eyes. “I believe that, you know. Since I met you, I feel like I haven’t just been happier, I’ve been—braver. I think if this all had happened a few weeks ago, I would’ve just run away, skipped town. But this connection—” She squeezed his hands. “It makes me stronger.”
Her best self. The mate-bond bringing out someone’s best self.
Making you stronger, not weaker. Because it wasn’t about being independent after all. Joel wouldn’t trade what he was feeling now for independence. It turned out independence hadn’t meant what he’d thought it meant.
“You know,” Joel said with feeling, “normally, I’m a loner. I don’t stick my neck out for other people. Normally I don’t feel this...protective of anyone.” He’d felt something like this fierce, furious storm of emotion before, but it had only been for himself.
“I think you’re right,” he told her. “I think I’m stronger with you than I was before.” Stronger of character. More willing to listen, to talk to others, to admit he’d been wrong, to put Nina’s welfare before his own. So much better than when he’d been independently alone.
Yet another reason to love her. As if he needed any more.
Nina was smiling, and Joel found himself grinning stupidly back. He kissed her fiercely, and then again, and again.
When he finally made himself pull back, she kissed him again. The kiss started out soft and loving, but slowly, as Joel tasted Nina's lips, teased her tongue with his, it grew in intensity, until they were pressed up against each other and panting for breath. The feeling of Nina's body molded to his, the curves of her breasts and hips, was starting to make Joel forget that anyone and anything else existed.
Nina tore her mouth away with a gasp. "You have a room here, right?" she asked breathlessly.
Joel nodded, his body burning with desire...but he needed to make sure of something first. "Are you sure you want to do anything? You were crying just a minute ago."
Nina took his hand and smiled. "From happiness. I was crying because I was overwhelmed by how wonderful everything is turning out. But now I can think of a few more wonderful things we could do.”
So could Joel. "My room's upstairs."
Her smile turned playful, which was all the warning he had before she bolted for the stairs.
They chased each other up the stairs, pausing more than once to tickle or caress. It reminded Joel of how they'd played out in the mountains. They could do that again, now—they could keep doing it for the rest of their lives, forever.
That was something Joel had never thought about, when he thought about the mate-bond. It meant that the best person, the most amazing person, the person you loved more than anything, would be with you forever.
And that was worth anything.
They nearly tripped on the landing, but miraculously made it to Joel's room intact. He shut the door firmly, then tumbled Nina down onto the bed.
"A real bed this time," he told Nina, who was grinning up at him. "We're coming up in the world."
"I'd rather be in the cabin by the fire any day," Nina told him, her grin mellowing into a sincere smile. "But this'll do."
"Same here," Joel admitted, and then turned his attention to getting them naked.
Nina helped as best she could while lying down, and soon all of her fine brown skin was illuminated by the soft light from the window.
"You're so beautiful," Joel said involuntarily, looking down at her stretched out on the bed. "You look like a painting." All of those gorgeous curves, the little Mona Lisa smile on her face as she looked up at him...he could watch her forever.
"You should look in a mirror," she told him, which Joel thought was a bit of an exaggeration, but he was distracted from objecting when she sat up and went for the button of his jeans. "Now it's your turn."
Joel helped her strip off his clothes, and then when they were finally both naked, pushed her gently back onto the bed. "What do you want?" he asked her.
Her eyes went wide at the question. "I...don't know," she admitted. "I'm...not too experienced. Last night was the best I've ever had."
"Me too," Joel said. "So I guess that means there are more bests to come."
Nina smiled. "I believe it. And I want whatever you want. Surprise me."
Joel kissed her. When he pulled back, she was still smiling against his lips. "I hate to break it to you," she said, "but that wasn't that much of a surprise."
"How about this?" Joel asked, and slipped his hand between her legs to catch her clit gently between his fingers.
Nina made a sound best described as a squeak. It was adorable. "I wasn't expecting that," she admitted shakily.
Joel moved his fingers a little. "Good?"
She nodded. "Good." Her voice had gone low.
Joel kept his fingers moving, stroking her clit up and down, and watched her face as he did it. He rubbed her gently at the very top of her clit, stroked down the left side, then up the right, pressed hard down by her entrance, and learned from her reactions what she liked. When he tapped his finger gently, she made a strangled noise, so he did it again, and again, until her hips started lifting to get more pressure. Then he slid his fingers down to play around the opening of her vagina, where she was slick and wet.
Nina's eyes closed, and her beautiful face was caught up in an expression of concentration as Joel learned what gave her pleasure. Her chest heaved as he figured out what she liked best. She started making little breathy moans.
Joel was hard, his dick pulsing with blood and eagerness, but he was enjoying holding himself back. Just like before, he was finding that the more he took care of Nina, the better everything was. He wanted to wait until she'd had all the attention she needed before he focused on his own pleasure.
He had his fingers down at the very base of her clit, rubbing hard, and Nina was gasping in pleasure. Joel leaned in and touched his tongue to one of her hard nipples, and she gave a tiny shriek. He sucked gently, and she writhed.
Then, keeping his thumb moving on her clit, Joel slipped one finger inside of her, finding that slightly rougher patch just a couple inches in, and pressed down.
Nina came with a yell, clenching hard around his fingers, soaking his wrist in her juices. Joel's dick pulsed hard with pleasure, and he lifted his mouth from her breast and kissed her fiercely, swallowing the rest of her noises as he nursed her through the aftershocks with his hand.
Nina clutched frantically at him, her hands sliding over his shoulders and chest. “Inside me,” she gasped. “Now, please.”
Joel couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to be fully joined with Nina. “Yes,” he said, and knelt up over her, catching her thigh in one hand and spreading her legs. Nina shuddered.
“I love you,” Joel said, looking down at her beautiful face, her body glowing with pleasure and exertion, her stunning grey-green eyes looking back up at him.
“I love you.” She smiled, and somehow it made her even more beautiful.
Joel sighed as he slid inside her. She was so slick, hot and tight, and the knowledge that it was Nina he was with, that Nina’s body was taking him in, was enough to drive him almost to the edge already.
He stopped when he was fully sheathed, and breathed deep to pull himself back a little. He wasn’t going to let this end before Nina was fully satisfied.
Nina’s head had tipped back as he pushed inside her, and her inner walls were shivering around him, tiny little twitches of pleasure that were going to drive him insane. Joel inhaled again, and breathed in only the scent of Nina’s sex, thick and intoxicating all around him.
He couldn’t help himself. He started to move.
Nina lifted her hips to meet him, and suddenly they were moving together, making love to each other in this hot, perfect moment. Sweat dampened both their bodies, and the slick slide of sex sounded loud in the empty house. Nina moaned with each thrust, and Joel buried his face in her neck, inhaling her scent and kissing her soft, soft skin.
It couldn’t last. Part of Joel wanted it to go on forever, but another part was caught up in the slow, inevitable build of it, the way it was coalescing into a peak of ecstatic pleasure. He had enough presence of mind to reach down between them, find Nina’s clit and rub hard over it in the way he now knew would bring her to the edge.
He kissed her as she came, driving hard into her, catching the spasms of pleasure and prolonging them. The tight clench of her orgasm was too much, though, and with one last hard thrust, he gave in and came too.
They shuddered together for long moments. It seemed to go on forever—just as Joel thought it must be over, Nina would clench weakly around him one more time, sending an exhausted, almost painful twitch of pleasure through him.
Finally, he pulled out and let himself fall down next to her.
“Wow,” she breathed.
“Wow,” he agreed.
“I think that was a new best,” she said, after another long pause, catching her breath.
“I think so.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I’m looking forward to moving that bar up a lot.”
He could feel her cheek move outward in a smile. “Me, too.”
Joel kissed her mouth, and then got caught up in the sweetness of her skin and started kissing her all over.
“Mmm,” Nina said after a few minutes. “This feels so good. Like sex, but...softer.”
Joel smiled against her wrist and moved onto the palm of her hand. She shivered under his mouth, and he smiled some more.
After a long time, he made it back up to her lips, and then tugged her into his body and lay next to her, breathing her in.
“Joel,” she said after a minute.
“Hmm?”
“Are you really all right with this? Being mates? Because I don’t want you to feel like you’re being pressured into anything that you don’t want...”
Joel cursed himself for spending so long being an idiot, and wrapped her up tight in his arms. “I have never,” he said into her ear, “felt as happy as I do right now. I have never loved anyone as much as I love you. And I never imagined that finding a mate could be the thing that solved everyone’s problems, instead of causing them...but that’s what’s happening. So there’s no reason in the world for me to regret this, or feel pressured, all right? No reason in the world.”
Nina sighed at that. “Good. That’s good.” She relaxed into his arms, and her eyes drifted closed.
Joel waited until she was softly asleep, and then pulled gently away to go look for his phone. He texted Cal.
Nina was going to be officially a member of this pack by the end of the day, and then neither of them would have anything to worry about any longer.
When he’d gotten his reply, he slipped back into his bed and pulled Nina close. She wasn’t waking up alone again.
***
Nina drifted into consciousness with the greatest sense of well-being she’d ever felt. Her entire body felt flushed with warm happiness. She didn’t want to open her eyes and end the illusion.
Then she felt an arm tighten around her.
Hardly believing it could be real, she opened her eyes.
Joel was smiling down at her. “Good morning,” he said. “Have a good nap?”
It was real.
Nina lifted her chin, and before she could even go for a kiss herself, Joel took the cue and dropped one on her lips. He tasted like wildness and man, and she couldn’t help going back for seconds.
Seconds stretched into minutes, until finally she pulled back with a gasp. “What time is it?” It wasn’t dark yet. She felt like this day was a thousand years long.
Joel glanced over his shoulder. “Four-thirty. We’re meeting Cal at the diner at six, if that’s all right.”
Nina was struck by a cold sense of apprehension—familiar, but unwelcome after such a delicious little vacation. “What if he doesn’t like me?”
“He’s not the sort of person who...likes people,” Joel said, looking thoughtful. “He’s mostly gruff at them. He won’t cause you any trouble, I promise.”
“All right,” Nina said, although she still felt worried.
Joel seemed to sense it, because he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Hey. It’s going to be fine. I promise you. It really is.”
Nina felt warmth flood her body. This was so strange. She wasn’t used to having anyone tell her things were going to be all right. She was used to worrying about the future, and then just having to set that worry aside because other things were more important right now.
Instead, that worry was being calmed. Joel kissed her forehead again, softly, and just his confidence, his presence, was enough to relax her muscles. She could feel the tension in her neck just...unwinding.
Joel believed it would be okay, so Nina believed it would be okay.
This was so much better than being alone. Nina had fantasized about having someone, about having a mate or a pack or a family or anything, but the fantasy hadn’t even come close to the reality of this.
She smiled up at Joel, and pushed herself up to sit. “I’d better get in the shower if we’re going to be meeting the leader of the pack,” she said.
Joel grinned at her. “Second door on the right,” he said, and Nina walked off with a spring in her step.
***
Her anxiety started creeping back as they approached Oliver’s. She really wasn’t sure what to expect, and what if Cal was awful? What if he was creepy, and Joel didn’t realize because he was a man?
Alethia was part of this pack, Nina reminded herself. Alethia, and Teri, and the woman with the baby. Leah. Surely they wouldn’t all seem so happy if the pack leader was a creep.
Joel draped his arm over her shoulders as they started walking from the car to the door, and once again, Nina felt all the tension begin to melt away.
It was weird. It was like, as long as she was with Joel, it wouldn’t matter what the problems were, what the world threw at her. At them. She truly believed that they could handle it together.
She pushed the door open firmly, and stepped inside the diner.
“Hey there, Nina,” said Patsy, one of the other waitresses. “Eating where you work tonight?”
“We’re meeting someone,” Joel told her, and nodded over at a booth. Patsy nodded, snapping her gum, and stood aside as Joel steered Nina over to the booth with a hand on the small of her back.
The man in the booth was about forty, with short brown hair going grey at the temples, a weathered face, and iron-gray eyes. He stood up as they approached, and looked her over. But it wasn’t a creepy look; there was nothing sexual about it at all. It was like he was just...getting her measure.
When she was close enough, he held out his hand. “Cal,” he said.
Nina shook. “Nina.”
“Nina’s my mate,” Joel put in.
“Huh,” said Cal, giving Joel that same measuring look. “So you listened to me and got it sorted out, then, I take it.”
“Sure did,” said Joel.
“All right, then,” said Cal. “You two have a seat, we’ll get some dinner.”
Nina sat down tentatively, heartened by Joel’s solid form sliding into the booth next to her. They ordered, and then Cal, glancing between the two of them, started talking about summer in the Park and what the mountains did to the climate.
Slowly, Nina relaxed. The topic was about as innocuous as it could be, and she actually had a few things to contribute, since she’d been living out on the mountains for a while now, on and off, even before she came to Glacier.
Cal, it turned out, was just like Joel had described him: gruff and a bit abrupt, and not the sort of man who relaxed and talked about himself. He was polite enough to Nina, but he interspersed his discussion of the weather with sharp comments at Joel about what the rangers needed to watch out for. He was clearly a man who was dedicated to his job.
Nina wondered if he had a mate at home himself, or if all of his attention was reserved for the Park. She suspected the latter.
“Sounds like you know your way around the territory, Nina,” Cal said, after they’d gotten most of the way through their food. “You thinking about sticking around, then?”
Nina nodded cautiously. “If that’s all right. I’ve got a good job here,” she waved a hand, indicating the diner, “and Joel and I...”
“Makes sense,” Cal said. “We’re pretty casual around here. No formal pack meetings or anything like that. There won’t be much interference with your business; I mind my own and I expect everyone else to do the same.”
Nina thought about Zach and Teri, and wondered if other pack members might be taking it into their own hands to change that a little bit. “That’s just fine,” she said truthfully.
Cal set down his fork and nodded, looking between them. “Well,” he said, “glad to see it all working out for you, Joel. Don’t let any of this new mates business interfere with your work.”
“I won’t,” Joel promised.
“Good to hear it.” Cal pulled out his wallet and dropped enough money on the table to cover everyone’s bill, over their protests, and stood up. “Good to meet you, Nina.” He headed for the door.
Wow. That had been surprisingly...easy. Even pleasant.
Beside her, Joel let out a breath. “Well, looks like you’re welcomed into the pack,” he said to Nina. “In Cal’s signature style.”
Nina was watching Cal get into his truck through the window. “He wasn’t what I was expecting.”
“He’s not really what anyone expects out of an alpha, I don’t think. I don’t have any experience with packs, and I was still surprised at how hands-off he is. I think he’d be happy to—well, maybe not.”
Nina looked back at Joel. “What?”
Joel had an abstracted look on his face. “I was going to say, I think he’d be happy to just live alone in the Park, without anyone bothering him, but that’s just what he told me to avoid, not too long ago. So I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t have a mate?”
Joel shook his head. “Or any family, as far as I know. Although he never talks about himself, so he could have a whole pack of relatives hidden away somewhere and I’d have no idea.”
“Huh.” Out in the parking lot, Cal’s truck pulled out and headed for the road. “I wonder if he’s lonely.”
Joel shrugged. “Teri and the other girls keep inviting him to things, but he never comes. I don’t know if he doesn’t like us, doesn’t think it’s right to hang out with people who work under him, or if he’d really just rather be alone. I mean, I can sympathize; I mostly don’t come, either.”
“Why not?” Nina asked. “You said you had a hard time with Zach and Teri being mates...”
Joel was quiet for a minute. “Yeah, it’s mostly been that,” he said finally. “I don’t like crowds of people, and I wouldn’t want to hang out with all of them every night, but once a week or so would’ve been okay, if it wasn’t for...that.”
“So now that we’re together—”
Joel was looking at her. “Is that something you’d like? Spending time with Zach and Teri, and Grey and Alethia and Jeff and all of them?”
Nina pictured spending a Saturday night having dinner with Alethia and Teri and Zach and everyone else, laughing like she’d seen Alethia laugh with her friends before. She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“Then we should do that,” Joel said softly. “I haven’t been a very good brother to Zach lately, anyway. I should step it up a little. Maybe start helping him out with that deck. Get to know Teri a little better. She wishes we could be better friends, you know? But I never could before.”
“I understand,” Nina said. She cleared her throat. “But even if we spent the evening with them sometimes...then we could go back to the cabin when it was all done. So it’d be fun for a while, but not—overwhelming.”
They smiled at each other for a long moment, caught in a moment of understanding each other perfectly. But then they were interrupted by a shout echoing across the diner. "Nina!"
Nina twisted in her seat, startled. Then she froze, utterly shocked.
Standing at the hostess' stand, staring over at her, were her mother and father. Here at Oliver’s. What?
"Nina!" Her mother came running over. "It's really you! It is you!"
Joel, sitting on the outside, looked from her mother to her. "Nina? What's up?" He frowned at her expression. "Is everything okay?"
Her mother had paused by the table, and was staring at her. She looked so different to how she'd been seven years ago when Nina had left. Her face was more lined, her hair cut short, her clothes darker than the colorful outfits Nina remembered her always wearing. She looked older, and sadder.
"Nina?" she whispered.
"Um," Nina said. "Can I...get out?"
Joel shifted immediately, standing up from the booth and allowing Nina to slide out and get up herself. Her mom immediately folded Nina into her arms, hugging her tight.
She smelled just the same. Nina inhaled, overwhelmed by the flood of memories the scent evoked.
"My baby," her mother was whispering. "My precious baby. All alone for so long. I couldn't believe it when we got that letter. I had no idea it was you when I opened it. But it had a return address! I left right away, got on a plane and came here. I've missed you so much. I love you, baby, and I'm so sorry."
Her mother sounded choked with emotion, almost sobbing the words. Tears had risen to Nina's eyes also, and slowly, she brought her arms up to come around her mother and hug her back. "Hi, Mom," she whispered.
Her mom pulled back and looked her in the eye. "Nina," she said. "I stood by your father all those years ago, and let him tell you to leave, and I have regretted it ever sense. I’m so sorry. I just want my daughter back. I want you in my life, and I want to know you again."
The tears spilled out of Nina's eyes and down her cheeks.
Then a large form moved into view. Her dad.
"Mavis," said her dad, "let's take this more slowly. Figure out the situation before we commit to anything, all right? Remember, we talked about this on the plane."
Slowly, Nina pulled back from her mom and turned to face her dad. "What do you mean?"
"How about we take this outside," her father said. "See, everyone's watching."
Everyone was watching. And this was her job, after all. She didn't need to be coming in here and making a scene on her night off. Thank God Ethel wasn't here right now.
"That's a good idea," Nina said. She felt shaky and strange, and she reached instinctively for Joel. He put his arm around her instantly, and Nina felt as though a sudden well of strength had come over her.
"Are you okay?" Joel asked her. He was watching her parents suspiciously, she realized suddenly—feeling protective of her.
His presence dispelled some of the anxiety she was feeling. She had a sinking feeling that she knew why her father was hesitating.
But she had Joel with her, so she could weather anything. Especially something she’d gone through once before already, when she was so much younger and alone. She nodded. "Let's step outside. We can talk out there."
It was a warm night, and they gathered in the parking lot, out of the way of the restaurant's windows.
Nina’s mother hugged her again once they were outside, but Nina backed away a few steps and she let go.
Nina wanted her mother to take her in her arms again, say that she was sorry and that everything was okay. She’d been wanting that for seven years now, even if she’d pushed the desire so far down that she hardly ever thought of it before.
But she was an adult now, and there were other things she wanted. And she knew the look on her father’s face. She’d seen it back when she was sixteen.
“Dad,” she said steadily, “why don’t you say what you were about to say back in the restaurant.”
“Nina,” her father said, “or—or whoever you are. Your mother has missed you so much that it doesn’t matter to her what sort of unnatural creature you’ve become. But I came to see for myself whether you’re a human or you’re truly—something else.”
Nina looked him in the eye, surprised at how unafraid she was. “Dad,” she said, “I’m truly something else. I’m a shapeshifter. I have a human side and an animal side, and that’s always been true of me, and it always will be true.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tear trickle down her mother’s cheek. Something inside her despaired.
“Then we’ll be going,” her father said.
That was when Joel took a step forward.
“You sorry excuse for a father,” he said.
Her father looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“How dare you abandon your daughter like that,” Joel said, getting fired up. “Kicking her out of the house for who she was? At sixteen? Coming all this way only to reject her again? What sort of man are you, to do something like that to your child?”
“A man who knows what’s right and what isn’t!” her father shouted. “People turning into animals isn’t right. It isn’t natural, and it’s dangerous. I love my daughter, but she’s turned into something I don’t recognize. I have to protect myself and my wife from it.”
Joel looked furious. “You can take your protection and—”
“Joel!” Nina stepped forward, and Joel fell silent, tugging her into his side. She could feel him shaking with rage. “Dad,” she said, “I haven’t turned into anything. This is what I was always like. And—” she couldn’t believe she was saying this, but the words felt so right in her mouth. “And if you can’t handle that, then that’s okay, because I don’t need you anymore. So you can turn around and go home, and we never have to look at you again.” She slipped her arm around Joel’s waist.
“I was hoping for a different outcome to this trip,” her father said heavily, “but I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting it. Come on, Mavis.” He started to turn away.
Nina’s mother stayed standing where she was.
Her father looked over his shoulder. “Mavis, come on. We’re leaving.”
“No,” said Nina’s mother.
Her father turned back, frowning. “Mavis. We agreed that if it turned out that Nina was still some kind of monster—”
“Darryl, stop it,” her mother snapped.
Her father’s face turned angry. “Mavis, you aren’t going to keep insisting that—”
“I am going to keep insisting!” Her mother stepped forward, standing between Nina and her father. “We agreed on nothing. You dictated what was going to happen, even when I explained that I felt differently. Well, guess what, Darryl: you can’t force me to leave if I don’t want to.”
Nina’s heart was beating fast. She clutched hard at Joel, who leaned down to kiss her on the top of the head. Could this be happening?
Her mother turned back. “Honey, please believe me—I was shocked when we learned what—what you are. I was afraid of what it might mean—for you, for us. But I would never have wanted you to be gone for so long. I looked for you after you left, but I could never find you. I just wanted you back. All of you. I feel differently now, and I want to learn better.”
“Mavis,” her father ground out.
Her mom shot a look over her shoulder. “But he hasn’t changed his mind one bit in seven years, and in my mind, that’s no kind of father. So, Darryl, if you’re insisting that I choose between you and our daughter, I choose Nina.” Her eyes teared up, but she blinked them away. “You’ve turned into a hard and bitter man, and I don’t want to live with someone like that anymore. So go home. I’m staying with Nina.”
Her father glared. Joel took a step forward.
“You heard them,” he said, and his voice was hard and implacable. “Your daughter doesn’t want you here. Your wife doesn’t want you here. So get out, and don’t come back.”
The glare transferred to Joel. “I suppose you’re one of those unnatural beasts, too.”
“That’s right.” Joel’s voice had gone low and dangerous. “So it’s not the smartest idea to get me angry, now, is it?”
Nina saw fear dawn on her father’s face. She wondered if that fear was what was fueling all of this anger and hatred, if he was just scared of something he didn’t understand.
It was a sad thing to think about her father, that he might just be a scared man who didn’t know how to deal with being afraid.
“Dad,” she said, “if you ever want to come back, and get to know me, and learn about what I am, you should. I’d like that. But if you can’t do it, then you should leave now.”
Her father stared at her. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Nina. “I’ve always been like this. Or, if you’d rather a different answer: I grew up. Goodbye.”
Her father shook his head. Her mother watched him with an implacable face.
“She said goodbye,” Joel said.
“I’m not leaving without my wife,” her dad said.
Joel stepped up to him. “I’m afraid you are.”
***
Joel thought he might never in his life been as angry with anyone as he was with Nina’s father right now.
That man was no kind of father. He couldn’t imagine a situation in which he’d abandon Zach like that, call him an unnatural monster and never want to see him again. And Zach wasn’t his responsibility like a child was.
As he stepped up to the man, he saw the same fear in his eyes that had been there when he looked at his daughter. This man was terrified of what he thought Nina was, and now Joel too.
And fear was making him cruel. It was overwhelming any human feeling he might have had, in the desperate desire to get away from the thing that scared him.
Joel felt a flash of understanding. He’d been overwhelmed by fear today, too. He’d behaved like a coward, running from Nina because he couldn’t face the idea that they really were mates, and that might be a good thing for them.
But Joel had stopped. He’d turned himself around, faced his fear like a man. He’d stepped up, taken responsibility, treated Nina with respect, and now he was happier than he’d ever been.
Nina’s father, on the other hand, had let fear turn him into an ugly excuse for a person.
“I don’t see what you think you can do,” Joel told him. “Your wife has said she’s not going with you. I’m not going to let you touch either her or Nina. You can leave while I’m still in human form, or you can refuse, and see what I look like when I’m shifted.”
The fear in Nina’s dad’s eyes expanded. Joel could almost see it take over, leaving no room for any other thought.
“A—all right,” he said finally. He tried to look past Joel at his wife, but Joel stepped aside so he was fully between them.
“Go,” he said. “Get out. Now. This is the last time I ask in words.”
Finally, Nina’s dad turned away. Joel watched narrowly as he went to his car, got in, and pulled away. “And stay away,” he muttered as the taillights disappeared down the road.
When Joel turned back, Nina and her mother were talking softly again. “I knew he’d never change his mind,” Nina’s mother was saying sadly. “I was just going to come alone, but he wouldn’t stand for the idea.”
“You don’t have to worry about what he’d stand for anymore,” Joel said grimly.
“Mom,” said Nina. “Did you really mean all that? You didn’t want me to leave?”
Her mother shook her head, tears coming once again. “No, baby. I wanted you back so bad.” She hugged her again, and Nina wrapped her arms around her mom and cried.
Joel smiled at the sight of them together. Nina deserved this. After so many years of no family at all, to get her mother back...that was worth being thankful for.
And no one else had to matter.
Nina pulled back suddenly. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “If you’ve really left Dad—you’re out here with nothing. I—” she looked at Joel. “Maybe she could....stay with us?”
Joel had about an instant to contemplate living with his mother-in-law before Nina’s mom shook her head firmly.
“Absolutely not, baby! Like I said, I thought it would go this way. I have a savings account that’s completely separate, all mine, and I’ve got twenty years’ experience in sales. I’ve got plenty of time before my money runs out, and I’m sure I can find a job, no trouble.” She looked around. “Goodness, it’s beautiful out here. You know, I wanted to move out of the city for years, but I was afraid to leave in case you ever came back and we weren’t there anymore.”
“But Dad—” Nina said haltingly. “You must be—I mean, he’s your husband.”
Her mother shook her head sadly. “Honey. I’ve been watching him slip further and further away from the man I thought I married for years. And it started when I realized he truly could abandon his own child. It’s been over for a while. He just didn’t know it until today.” She hugged Nina again. “The only reason I didn’t leave him before now is that I wanted us to be in that house in case you came back.”
“You’re not—you really don’t mind? That I’m a...shapeshifter?” Nina looked fragile, like the wrong answer would shatter her. Joel stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve had a long time to get used to it,” said Nina’s mother sadly. “I wondered, I prayed, I researched...and I still don’t know what it is that you are, except it’s something magical.” She looked at Joel. “Your young man here, he’s the same thing?”
Nina nodded. “Mom, this is Joel.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” said Joel, holding out his hand. “I’m truly grateful that you’ve come to see Nina.”
She shook, looking him up and down. “Polite. I like that in a boy. And you can thank Nina, for writing us that letter.”
Joel glanced at Nina. “I wrote a lot of letters,” she whispered, looking away. “That was the first one I sent.”
“Then I’m grateful you sent it,” said her mom firmly. “Now, honey, do you need anything? Money, clothes, a place to stay? You said you’re living with Joel here, is that a long-term thing?” Her eyes pinned Joel with a considering look.
“Yes, it’s long-term,” said Nina, and a thrill went through Joel, hearing her say it. “We’re—we’re fixing up a cabin together.”
“But we also have a house, until it’s finished,” Joel interposed quickly, not wanting Nina’s mother to think that he was housing her daughter in some broken-down cabin. “My brother and his fiancée live there too.”
The considering look softened a bit—but didn’t go away. “And what do you do, Joel?”
Joel was proud that he could confidently say, “I’m a ranger at Glacier Park.”
Nina’s mother’s eyebrows went up. “A ranger, really? Well. That’s a good job.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Joel. “Nina’s not going to want for anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Nina was watching this exchange with her brows furrowed. “I lived on my own for seven years,” she pointed out.
“But now you don’t have to,” her mother said, turning to her. “You should do whatever you want, honey, but—I don’t want you to have to be alone. You understand?”
Nina blinked quickly. “Yes, Mom,” she said in a husky voice. “And I’m really, really happy about it.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and her mother pulled her into a hug again.
Joel was struck again by how happy he was to be able to help someone else. To not be in the role of the person who needed supporting, Zach’s little brother who wanted to be alone but couldn’t be alone, and bounced around not sure what he wanted.
Instead, he was Nina’s mate, a man with a good job who was building them a home. And that was what he wanted to be.