Well, yes, the fire, her sheep said gently. But also… I told you I could smell something before, didn’t I?
When you took over my eyes and ears so I couldn’t see my way out of here? Sheena felt suddenly exhausted. So what if she burned to death? It seemed inevitable now. She should just lie down right here and prove all her family right.
Yes. Promise you won’t be mad?
Sheena took a deep breath. Why would I be—
A new scent flooded through her. Not the sweet-sick stench from before, or the throat-scorching smell of burning buildings. Something clean and masculine that filled her senses.
Sheena opened her eyes and looked in the direction her sheep was pushing her.
“Oh,” she tried to say, but her whole body was paralyzed by shock and it came out more like “Oaaargh.”
There was a man standing on the road, surrounded by burning buildings. Even through the smoke and heat-shimmer she could see that he was tall and leanly muscled. His black leather jacket and dark glasses made his pale skin and red hair all the more striking. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, but that didn’t matter. He was the whole deal. Everything. So much muchness her mind stuttered over it.
Don’t be mad, her sheep repeated, and Sheena’s mouth dropped open.
I’m not mad, she told it. I mean, I might have gone crazy, but I’m not angry.
Oh, good! Her sheep’s relief was so intense Sheena felt drunk. Or maybe she would have felt drunk anyway. Here was something that made sense. Forget the strange fear, forget jumping at shadows that Sheena-the-human couldn’t explain and her sheep couldn’t even sense, here was something that they both understood bone-deep.
This man was her mate.
He looked as stunned as she felt—for a moment. Before Sheena could even think about what she could say, let alone twist her tongue around the words, he walked towards her, moving with the casual grace of someone who never tripped over their own feet.
She felt dizzy, as though she was standing on the edge of a cliff. Which she was. Metaphorically speaking. Her life was splitting off into before and after and she was teetering on the edge of after. This was it. He was it. This gorgeous stranger whose hair caught the light like a live flame.
She didn’t wait for him to reach her. For one glorious moment, she didn’t even care that she was losing her mind and covered in soot and had probably singed her eyebrows off. Her sheep skipped like a lamb as she half-ran, half-stumbled to meet him.
He stopped in front of her and reached out with one hand, as though he wasn’t sure she was real.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
His voice was like sunlight on her skin. She swallowed, opened her mouth, and absolutely failed to make any words come out. “Hngk?” she managed.
“You’re hurt.” His eyebrows came together above his sunglasses and he hesitated with his hand almost touching her face. “What happened h—”
He didn’t get any further because Sheena threw herself into his arms and kissed him.
It should have been awkward. She barely came up to his collarbone and she’d just lunged at him with no warning but somehow it worked. His arms folded around her like she belonged in them. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her lips against his and, God, he tasted like running wild felt, like tall grass brushing her sides and the sky wide and open above. He kissed her back, tentative until her tongue brushed against his and then he was all hunger.
Sheena’s heart felt like it was going to break out of her chest. The shadowy mental paddock where her sheep spent most of its time filled with light and that light spilled out to fill every part of her. It sang through her veins from her heart to the very tips of her fingers, flaring like the sun.
Magic. Of course, just being a shifter was magic, but it was normal magic. She’d been a shifter all her life. She’d never known anything like this. It felt like she had swallowed the sun and the only thing holding it in was the mental fence she had built in her mind.
Her skin sang where her mate touched it. Her lips tingled with excitement. She felt more alive than she ever had done. For the first time, she wasn’t too small or too weak or too adorable to be taken seriously—she was just herself and herself was enough. If she’d had any doubts about that then the possessive way her mate was crushing her against his chest would have banished them instantly.
So, what the hell did she need those walls inside her mind for? The ones she used to keep everyone out. Right now, they were keeping all that light in, and…
This man was everything she wanted, and she wanted all of him.
She let down her defenses and the light filling her veins poured into him.
3
Fleance
He should have said something.
And then he couldn’t say anything, because her lips were pressed against his with a wild intensity that drove all the words from his mind. There was only her, this woman he knew nothing about but knew in his soul he was meant to be with.
His mate.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him down to her height. He wrapped himself around her, her shudder of breath as their bodies pressed close echoing in his own chest. Her scent overwhelmed him, clover honey and spring blossoms, the promise of long afternoons and longer evenings. Was she a shifter? The moment the question appeared in his mind he knew the answer. Of course she was. He could sense it, a hint of her inner animal twined around everything else he could feel about her. Just as his hellhound was a part of everything that made him who he was, even if it had taken him this long to realize it. He wasn’t a
