My Mate

Chapter 4 — The Lantern

—Kael's POV—

I didn't go back to the den after the festival. I stayed in the tree line behind her cottage all night. I told myself it was because the rogue was still out there and the Blood Moon was tomorrow and the forest was restless. That was part of it.

The real reason was I couldn't make myself leave. Not after she looked at her father's dagger and whispered don't, and she touched my hand.

Varric had taken her inside right after I walked away. I heard him shouting through the cottage walls, even from the trees. I heard Aurora shouting back. I heard a door slam.

Then the light in her upstairs window went on and stayed on for hours.

I sat with my back against an old oak, my father's mantle around me, and I watched that light. My wolf was pacing inside me, whining. Go to her. She is upset. She is ours.

Around midnight, the light went out. I should have left then. Gone back to Joren and the pack and prepared for the Blood Moon rites.

I didn't.

An hour later, the back door of the cottage creaked open.

My whole body went rigid. I smelled her instantly. Wildflowers and honey, and fear, and determination.

Aurora slipped out in her blue festival dress and a dark cloak, holding a small lantern low. She looked over her shoulder once, to make sure her parents were asleep, then she walked straight toward the tree line. Straight toward me.

She was looking for me.

I should have stayed hidden. If Varric woke up and found his daughter sneaking into the Wilds to meet the Nightclaw Alpha, he would kill her himself to save her from me. That's what hunters like him do.

But I stood up. I couldn't help it.

She saw me between the trees and stopped. Her lantern shook a little.

"Kael?" she whispered.

I stepped into the edge of the moonlight so she could see my face. "You shouldn't be out here."

"I know," she said. She took another step closer. She was barefoot in the grass, even though it was cold. "My father said... he said you were a wolf. A Nightclaw. He said you glamoured me."

"And what do you think?" I asked. My voice was hoarse.

"I think my father has called every strange man who talks to me a wolf since I was sixteen," she said, and she sounded angry, but not at me. "I think he sees monsters everywhere because that's his job."

She was only ten feet away now. I could see the moonstone circlet still tangled in her hair from the festival.

"Your eyes," she said softly. "At the stall. They turned silver. I saw it."

I closed my eyes. Selene help me, I wanted to tell her everything. That I am Kael, Alpha of the Nightclaw Pack. That her parents killed my father. That she is my fated mate and the bond is driving me insane.

If I told her, she would run.

"Aurora, go back inside," I said.

"No. Not until you tell me the truth. Are you... are you really what he says?"

Before I could answer, the wind changed.

I smelled it a half second before I heard it. Rot. Blood. That rogue.

It had been circling her cottage all night, drawn by the scent of humans, and now it had found her alone in the grass with a little lantern.

It came out of the bushes to her left, huge and mangy and half mad from the coming Blood Moon. It wasn't even looking at me. It was looking at her.

Aurora turned and saw it and froze. The rogue snarled and lunged. I didn't think. I didn't decide to shift. My wolf ripped out of me.

One second I was standing there in my father's mantle, the next I was a wolf, a massive black wolf bigger than any natural wolf in Eldra, my fur black as night, my eyes burning silver.

I hit the rogue mid air and we crashed into the dirt. It was young and desperate, but I am an Alpha. I ended it in seconds. One bite to the throat. It went still.

I was breathing hard, blood on my muzzle, standing over its body, when I remembered her.

I turned slowly.

She was still standing there, her lantern on the ground where she dropped it, her hands over her mouth, her eyes huge.

She was staring at me.

At the black wolf her parents had told her stories about. I expected her to scream. To run back to her cottage and bring her father with his silver dagger.

She didn't.

She lowered her hands. Her lips were trembling, but she took a small, shaking step toward me.

"Kael?" she whispered.

She knew. Somehow, she knew it was me.

I lowered my head and whined, soft, trying to tell her I would never hurt her.

And then, with the dead rogue at my feet and the Blood Moon rising fat and red over the Whispering Wilds tomorrow, the healer's daughter from Bramble Hollow, the daughter of the hunters who killed my father, reached out her bare human hand and touched the black wolf's nose.

Her hand was shaking.

I could feel it even through my fur. Small, warm, human fingers touching the nose of a wolf that could have bitten her hand clean off a second ago. The rogue's blood was still wet on my muzzle.

Any other human would have screamed, and run back to Bramble Hollow shouting about a monster.

Aurora didn't.

She just stood there in her bare feet in the cold grass, in her blue festival dress, and touched me.

"Kael?" she whispered again, like she was trying to convince herself.

My wolf, who had just torn a rogue's throat out, who had been ready to go to war with the Silver Thorn an hour ago, went completely still under her hand. He pushed his nose harder into her palm and made a soft, pathetic whining sound I have never made in my life.