Chapter 25
When Robin didn’t show up, Shaw knew better than just to call her. Enya had told him about meeting her in the park. She told him how she’d smelled an alpha wolf-shifter on the girl and couldn’t help being curious about the human female.
She’d also told Shaw how she’d let Robin know it was him she came for. He knew why Robin had stayed away. She didn’t have faith in his love for her. And that made Shaw very sad.
He’d tried so damn hard to show her in every way he could how he felt about her. And yet, she stayed away, allowing the other female to make her move.
Robin hadn’t done a thing the way any other female of his kind would have done. Robin didn’t fight for him in any way. She let Enya go, without saying so much as one word about her love for him.
To say Shaw was disappointed was a vast understatement.
It was dark when he got to her apartment. He’d given Robin ample time to come to him. He wasn’t going to leave things the way they were. He had something to tell her.
When he knocked on her door, he heard her sniffling before she came to it. He could smell her tears through the door and hated that she had cried over him.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Shaw,” he said in a quiet voice. “We need to talk.”
On the other side of that door, Robin leaned her forehead against it. ‘We need to talk’ didn’t sound like good words to her. But she unlocked the door and let him in, steadying herself to face what he had to say.
She kept reminding herself that if he picked Enya over her, then he was never hers anyway. But it did nothing to help ease her pain.
Robin couldn’t bring herself to look at the man she loved so desperately as she opened the door, then walked away. Shaw followed her in, not saying a word.
He watched her take a seat, not looking at him and wondered how in the world she could do this. “Robin, why won’t you look at me?”
She mumbled something that was incoherent, and he frowned. After all he’d done, this is what she thought of him?
He went to her, towering over her. “I have to tell you, you’re disappointing me on so many levels, Robin.”
“Don’t, Shaw. Please don’t tell me that I’m not up to your standards and that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing.” Robin felt the sobs welling up in her chest and put her hands over her face.
Shaw got on his knees in front of her, his heart aching more than his disappointment resonated inside of him. He took her wrists, pulling her hands from her face. “Baby, look at me. Why in the world are you crying?”
Robin was breaking down. She couldn’t lose him. She just couldn’t. She jerked her head up and looked him right in the eyes. “I want you. I love you. I know you two make more sense, but dammit, Shaw! You are mine, and I am yours. I know she could so easily kill me, but I’d gladly die rather than lose you to her.”
Shaw smiled. “There’s my girl.” He pulled her up to him and held her tight as he whispered in her ear. “I am yours. You should’ve had more faith in my love for you than that. I explained everything to Enya, and she left, giving us her congratulations. If you ever let me change you, that is.”
Robin’s tears dried up, her crying halted. “You did?” she asked in shock.
“Of course I did. Baby, you hold my heart in the palm of your hands. You have since I first took in your sweet scent. Only you can give my heart away. Well, at least up until you let me bite you and make you into what I am, so we can be mated. After that, we’re stuck with one another. It’s a commitment that surpasses any marriage.” He put his hand in his pocket, pulling out the ring he’d bought for her. “But since we live in a human world, I’d like you to wear this wedding ring. It’ll signify to others that you’re married.”
Robin gulped at the size of the diamond and how beautiful it was. “Shaw!”
“So, will you accept my proposal and let me change you at the stroke of midnight?” He held the ring between his thumb and forefinger, wiggling it like bait. “I’ll give this to you if you say yes, baby.”
Robin ran her hands over his bearded cheeks. “I’d say yes even if you had no ring to give me, Shaw Lykan.”
His eyes lit up. “So, you’re saying yes then?” he had to ask, just to be sure.
Robin nodded. “Yes. I want you to turn me into what you are, and I want to be your mate forever.”
Shaw took her hand and slid the ring on her finger then kissed it. “You’ve made me the happiest creature there ever was or ever will be, Robin Winters.”
Later that night, before the clock struck twelve, the two ventured out into the forest. With only the creatures of the forest to witness their pact, Shaw and Robin joined hands and spoke the words that would bind them for eternity.
Shaw looked into Robin’s green eyes as he said, “Robin, I will devote my life to you and only you. You will be the other part of me, the part I can’t live without.”
Robin tried not to cry but failed. “Shaw, I will devote my life to you and only you. You will be the other part of me, the part I can’t live without.”
Pulling her closer to him, Shaw got ready to give her the bite that would turn her into a shifter. Robin stopped breathing as his mouth touched her neck. He held her tightly so she wouldn’t fall.
“I love you, Robin,” he whispered, his lips grazing her flesh, making her shiver.
She gripped his biceps, holding on, her entire body tense. “I love you, Shaw. I hope I see you again.”
His teeth sunk into her neck and she screamed with the pain and shock. Then everything went black.
Shaw laid her on the snow-covered ground, and fresh flakes began to fall as Robin’s blood spilled over the pristine white underneath her. “Come on, baby. Come back to me. Please, baby.” He held her hand, and he watched her chest for any signs of breath moving in her lungs.
Still, she didn’t move, and Shaw glanced at the place she’d told him to bury her body if she didn’t make it through the process. He closed his eyes as tears began to burn the backs of them.
I’ve lost her.
Too much time had passed.
His love for Robin had killed her.
Shaw couldn’t hold it. He cried and laid his head on her unmoving chest. “I’m so sorry, Robin. My baby girl. Please forgive me. If I knew this would happen, I’d have taken my wolf and me as far away from you as I could get. I’d have shot myself in the heart with a silver bullet to save your precious life.” The sadness took him over, and he couldn’t say anything else.
His tears soaked her red cape that covered her black dress. Then he shivered as something moved up his back. There was one long movement up his back, then he felt something else, fingertips on his neck.
“Shaw,” came his name whispered on the wind.
Moving off her body, Shaw looked down and found Robin’s lips had parted. He kissed them softly and felt her sweet breath move into his mouth.
Shaw had to make himself stop kissing her and pulled back to look at her. “Baby, can you open your eyes for me?”
Her lashes fluttered then she opened her emerald eyes, eyes that now housed a white wolf behind them. “Did I make it?”
All he could do was nod. She’d made it. She was just like him. And now, they could be one forever, until the very end of time.