The skin around his eyes crinkled as he looked at her. Soft, gentle lines that wiped away the harder ones. Then he smiled, a crooked, tentative happiness that caught Sheena by surprise.
She touched his cheek, where the deep line on one side of his mouth had transformed into a dimple.
“If I’m your mate because of what happened then it was all worth it,” he said, his voice shaking. “Becoming a hellhound. Being under Parker’s control. If he’d never turned me, I wouldn’t be here. I would never have met you. I’d rather be this, and yours, than anything else.”
“You’ve only just met me,” she protested. Weakly. Her heart was beating too hard for her to push away his words entirely.
“And I already know you’re brave, and that you’d throw yourself into a burning building to save your family, and that… that you think things through more than you think you do.” He brushed a stray strand of hair off her face and his fingers lingered along her jawline. “The mate bond is magic. It’s incredible. But the fact that it means I get to know you better is the best thing about it.”
Sheena had never wanted to run away more.
It was too much. She wanted to sprint as far as her legs would carry her and find a bush to crouch behind or a hole to fall down and stay hidden until she could deal with everything she was feeling. Fleance wanted to know more about her? He thought she was brave?
All her life she’d been treated as small and unreliable. Helpless people like her didn’t need to be brave, they needed to get out of their own way and let someone else look after them.
She’d wanted to prove for so long that everyone who thought she was small and weak was wrong, but she hadn’t expected it to work. She hadn’t expected anyone to look at her and see that she was more than everyone said.
Even her mate.
To her horror, her eyes welled up.
“Don’t cry,” Fleance said, his own voice wavering. “The idea of me hanging around isn’t that bad, is it?”
The golden thread that Sheena was still holding tight in her heart trembled. He was as scared about this as she was, she realized. The big bad wolf was as anxious to get this right as she was.
God, she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make him rethink that.
Sheena tucked herself closer against him and kissed his collarbone. His arms tightened around her. “At least we know where we stand. Together.”
He lifted one of her hands and his lips grazed her knuckles. A warm hum flooded from them through the rest of Sheena’s body, a long, slow uncoiling so different from other times she’d been turned on that it took her a moment to recognize. When she did, it was like opening the curtains to find the day at full light behind them. No nerves, no anxiety that she was doing the wrong thing or about to make a fool of herself—just longing and a certainty singing bright and gold inside her that that longing was returned. The only wrong note was the lump of silence deep inside her.
“Together,” she said, breathing in his masculine scent. “What the hell was the universe playing at, putting us down on opposite sides of the world?”
“To hell with the universe,” Fleance growled. “I found you. You’re mine.”
Until I turn.
Cold flooded Sheena’s veins. She must have tensed; Fleance went still, his eyes locked on to her. She wet her lips and whispered the words that had appeared like spears of ice in her mind.
“It’s true, isn’t it? We’re just waiting for it to take hold. And then he’ll be able to control me like he controlled you. D-don’t tell me it’s not going to happen,” she forced out as he opened his mouth. “I can feel it. Where my sheep used to be. There’s this… bit of me, inside, that I can’t see into. The edges of it hurt. They’re hot. Like a cut that’s got infected.” She wet her lips. “Which is what it is, right? An infection.”
A virus, taking over her soul and turning her into something else. Taking away a part of her she’d half-tolerated, half-resented for so long that it took her until now to realize what she really felt for it was all love.
Fleance looked as though he was struggling to stay calm. He ran one hand down his face. Fire flared in his eyes, just for a second, and he squeezed them shut. “I know!” he muttered, his voice pained, and Sheena guessed he wasn’t talking to her. Her chest hurt. She’d just as good as told his hellhound it was an illness nobody wanted—which wasn’t true, it was part of Fleance and Fleance was all she wanted, but if who she was changed then what she wanted would change, too…
“I should have known better than to go up against him.” Fleance’s voice was empty of all emotion. “I never escaped. Not truly. And now he’s caught you, too.”
He stood up and took a deep, shaking breath. “You’re right. It’s an infection. We should treat it like one. If there’s any hope you can recover—” He broke off and shook his head, a short, sharp action that tugged at Sheena’s heart. She knew what it meant. Stop. Don’t even think it, in case thinking it tempts fate. “He got me in the neck and I turned quickly, but this is—it’s so small an injury, maybe you can fight it off. You and your sheep together. Rest and liquids. That’s what you need. We wait it out.”
“No.” Sheena’s heart was solidly in her throat. The panic she’d felt at the first moment of realization was gone, replaced by a ferocity that barely felt like her own.
She strode over to Fleance and took his face between her hands. His skin
