real jockeying for position begins. And when there are winners, there are losers. I made my mother a loser.”
“Seth...” She edged close enough for their thighs to touch. Heat flashed through him. Her, too, if her sudden intake of breath was an indication. “You’re not responsible for how they treated her. You were just a boy.”
“A boy born wrong,” he said with a growl. “They never let us forget it.”
Lilah slid her arms around his neck, but it wasn’t enough. He dragged her across his lap and wrapped her in as tight of a hug. So close, he could feel her heart pounding away in her chest. So close, she soothed the rumbling discontent sparked by memories of his childhood.
“The first time I ran away,” he said, surprising himself, “she found me shivering against some rocks the next morning. The second wasn’t much different, though she found me quicker. The next day, she came home with some secondhand camping gear and told me if I’m going to sleep under the stars, I might as well know how to do it properly.”
“Is that how Jaime got involved? You running away?”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Not quite. My mother contacted her when I was busted shoplifting at seventeen, going on eighteen. It was a big mess with the local authorities wanting to throw the book at one of our pride. Back then, we weren’t out. We were the weird cult on the edge of town, so I was the excuse for a closer look. Then the alpha wanted a piece of me for fucking with the human population. Jaime offered a way to get out of town and make something of myself, so I jumped at the chance.”
“And now you’re here protecting me.” She eased back and placed her hands on his cheeks. “They were wrong. You’re so much better than they are.”
The flames licked extra specks of color into her eyes, making her look almost like she had the eyes of a shifter. A single image flashed through his head of her with bright gold eyes and a mate mark on her shoulder.
Seth swallowed hard. A dream, only. A gorgeous dream not cemented in reality. “You have too much faith in me.”
She smiled as she slid her lips over his.
His inner sense rolled through him like a cat in a pile of fresh catnip. Addicting and perfect, she stroked against his body and mind at the same time. The hollowed out, empty spaces in his chest opened wide to let her fill them.
He didn’t know what shape the future would take, but he knew he needed Lilah at his side.
His.
“Stay with me,” he murmured as he trailed kisses across her jaw and to her ear. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Lilah pulled back, heart hammering a steady beat to his ears. Hope brightened her eyes. Questions, too, but he had answers. He’d mulled over all the potential ones in the darkness while she slept beside him. And if those weren’t good enough, he’d let her take a turn with the suggestions. Nothing mattered more than keeping her close.
“Are you serious?” she breathed.
He had a joke ready, but that didn’t feel right. Nothing did, actually. Not when she deserved so much more than what he could offer. All he had were the words that had carved themselves a little deeper on his heart with each passing day.
“I haven’t ever felt this way about someone.” He said thickly, meeting her look. “When I think about what life was like before you and going back to that, I hate it. You make me whole, Lilah. I don’t want to say goodbye.”
She ducked her eyes and plucked at his shirt. Her scent spilled over with the light springiness of pure joy.
Awareness brushed against the back of his neck, like the itch he felt in the fighting ring before a fist flew for his face. Seth straightened and cocked his head.
A foot touched down against earth somewhere in the distance.
Lilah stilled in his lap. “What’s going on?” she asked in a whisper.
Her voice was still too loud against the backdrop of the quiet night. He raised a finger to his lips and moved her off his lap, listening hard at the sounds of the night.
Another footfall. He whipped his head to the left and stared into the darkness. Something—someone—moved out there on padded feet.
He raised his lip in a silent snarl, his other half striding through him with shocking weight. He