Shame pulled at me, the dereliction of my duty to someone who’d been nothing but loyal to me like a crushing weight over the fragile high of shifting with my mate. Everything with Dirge felt fragile. We had no mating signs, not truly, and if he couldn’t shift, we might never.
The sorrow of that realization gutted me worse than any bullet, and I sank to my haunches, right there in the middle of the village.
Violent sobs racked me, and Dirge tried to push in, lick my face, but I shoved him away. He wasn’t what I needed, couldn’t be what I needed. Leigh’s arms came around me in a tight hug, and she rocked me right there in the grass, on the cold ground under the waning moon.
Only after the tears stopped did Leigh’s words come. “She’s not angry at you, Shay. She’s thrilled. Thrilled, do you
