Fury smiled at the sight of her on his bed. Dark brown with black and red strands running through the wolf’s coat, she was as beautiful in this form as she was in her human one. He ran his hand through her fur. “See, it’s not so bad, is it?”

Can you understand me?

“Of course I can. Just like you can understand me. Now look around the room. See how different things look. How much sharper sounds and scents are.”

She looked up at him.

“You’re still human, Lia. Even as a wolf. You retain all of yourself in this form.”

She flashed back to herself. “Do you – ”

“Yes. What we are in one form, we are in the other. Nothing changes.”

Angelia sat there thinking that over. She’d assumed as a wolf that they became animals with no rational thought at all… but that hadn’t been true. She’d kept all her cognizance. The only difference had been heightened senses.

Gratitude swept through her, and as she went to kiss him, a searing pain tore through her hand. Gasping, she sat back, shaking it to help alleviate the pain.

Fury cursed before he lifted his hand and blew air across it. As he did so, the geometric pattern of his pack appeared on his palm.

It was identical to the one on hers.

Holy shit…

“We’re mates?” Angelia gasped.

Fury looked at her in disbelief. “How?”

She continued staring at her palm. In their world, the Fates determined who they would mate with at their births. The only way to find the mate was to sleep with them and if it was meant to be, they would have matching marks.

Those marks would only appear for three weeks, and if the woman failed to accept her mate within that time, she would be free to live out her life free of him. But she would never be able to have children with anyone else.

The male was left celibate until the day she died. Once mated, he could only sleep with his wife. He would never be able to have an erection for anyone else.

“We were chosen.” She placed her palm to his and smiled. “You are my mate.”

Fury was having a hard time with this. He’d always wondered what it would feel like to be mated. The Dark-Hunter Acheron had told him that he’d already met his mate, but he hadn’t really believed him.

To have it be the one woman he’d always loved…

It just didn’t happen like this.

He looked at Angelia, his heart pounding. “Will you accept me?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. I’m here naked with you because all my clothes fell off by accident and I can’t find them.”

“You’re a sarcastic little critter, aren’t you?”

“I learned it from you.”

Laughing, Fury leaned forward to kiss her, but before he could make contact with her lips, a bright flash exploded. He pulled back and scowled as four lions appeared in his room.

Their expressions were furious as they threw something at him.

Fury caught it and then grimaced before he dropped the jackal’s gruesome head to the floor. “What the hell is this?”

“I’m Paris Sabastienne,” the tallest lion said, “and I’m here to kill the bitch who killed and ruined my brothers.”

5

Angelia used her powers to clothe them as she braced herself for Fury to hand her over to the Litarians for their dinner.

Instead, he rose from the bed with an aura so deadly it gave her chills. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, tree-humper, but you don’t come into my brother’s house with that attitude and tone.” He looked down to the severed head on the floor. “And you damn sure don’t bring filth into the presence of my mate.”

“We’ve tracked her scent here.”

Fury gave him a sinister smirk. “And do you smell it in my room?”

One of the lions moved to grab Fury. Faster than she could blink, he twirled away from the lion and then pinned him against the wall. Hard.

“You really don’t want to test me,” Fury snarled, banging the lion’s head into the wall. “I’m not a gazelle on the savannah, punk. I’ll have your throat faster than you took the jackal’s head.”

Paris stepped forward. “There are four of us and one of you.”

“Two of us,” Angelia corrected, cutting him off from Fury. “And the only thing deadlier than a wolf is his mate when he’s threatened.”

Paris approached her. He sniffed the air around her as he eyed her warily.

“Is it her?” one of the other lions asked him.

“No,” he said disgustedly. “We’ve lost the scent.” He turned toward Fury. “This isn’t over, Wolf. We won’t stop until we’re satisfied. If I find the bitch responsible, I will feast on her entrails.”

Fury shoved the lion he held at Paris. “You’re not welcome here. Really. Get out.”

Paris made a feral growl before they vanished.

“And take your nasty trophy head with you,” Fury snarled as he slung it into the portal with them so that it went wherever it was they were going.

Angelia let out a slow breath in relief. “What just happened? How did they not smell me?”

Fury shrugged. “The one power I did develop was the ability to mask my scent. Since it’s now part of yours, I was able to mask yours, too.”

“That’s why you don’t smell like a Katagari!”

He inclined his head to her in a sarcastic salute.

But that raised another question in her mind. “So how is it Dare found out about your base form if he couldn’t smell it?”

Fury looked away as pain swept through him. To this day, the betrayal of it shredded his soul.

Angelia placed her hand on his cheek where he had his teeth clenched tight. “Tell me.”

He didn’t know why he confided in her when it went against his nature. But before he could stop himself, the truth came pouring out. “We were attacked by a group of outlaw humans in the forest. They shot an arrow. Dare didn’t see it, but I did. I shoved him out of the way and took it for him.”

She winced as she understood what had happened. “The pain made you change forms.”

Fury nodded. “He knew as soon as I fell down. I tried to stop him before he reached the village, but by the time I got there, my mother had already been told.”

The rest she remembered with crystal clarity. She’d heard the shouting and had gone to the main hall where they’d all gathered. Fury had been bleeding, but he was still in human form.

Dare had shoved him at their mother. “He’s a fucking wolf, Mum. I saw it.”

Bryani had grabbed Fury by the hair. “Tell me the truth. Are you a Katagari?”

Fury’s gaze had gone to Angelia’s. Pain, shame, and torment had shone deep in his eyes. But it was the pleading look there that had taken her breath. He’d silently begged her to stand with him.

“Answer me!” His mother had demanded.

“I’m a wolf.”

They’d set on him with a vengeance so fierce that she found it hard to believe that she’d ever taken part in it. But there, in that moment…

She was such a fool.

“Will you ever trust me again?” she asked him.

He took her marked palm into his hand. “Do I have a choice?”

“Yes, you do. This only means I can bear your children. It has nothing to do with our hearts.”

Fury sighed. No, it didn’t. His parents hated one another. Even now all they did was plot each other’s murders.

“If you can lay aside your hatred of my kind, I’m willing to forget the past.”

Angelia looked around the room. “I will have to live here in your time, won’t I?”

“Do you really think you can go home wearing the mark of a Katagari?”

He was right. They’d destroy her.

Fury stepped away to give her space. “You have three weeks to decide if you can live with me.”

“I don’t need three weeks, Fury. I agreed to den down with you, and so I have. I will even bond with you.”

Anger sparked in his eyes at her suggestion. “No, you won’t. I have too many enemies who want me dead. I won’t bond your life force to mine. It’s too dangerous.”

She laughed. “You have enemies? What was that lion tessera that just left? Who were they after?” She cupped his face in her hands. “You and I should have had a lifetime together already. I allowed my stupidity to rob us of four hundred years. I don’t want to lose another minute of being with you.”

“You didn’t feel that way twenty-four hours ago.”

“You’re right. But you’ve opened my eyes. What Dare is trying to do is wrong. I can’t believe I’ve ruined that poor lion’s life. God, how I wish I could go back and shove Dare when he fired the gun so that he’d miss.”

Fury’s face went stark white. “Dare killed an unarmed lion?”

“No, that was the jackal. Dare shot the one who lived.”

“And your part in all this?”

“Stupid onlooker who thought she was going to make the world safe for other little girls so that they wouldn’t have to watch their family get eaten. I didn’t realize that I was fighting for the monsters and not against them.”

Fury sighed. “Dare’s not a monster. He’s just an insecure asshole who wanted his mother to love him.”

“And what about you?”

“I was an insecure asshole who knew he could never get too close to his mother for fear she’d smell the wolf on him and kill him.”

She pulled him into her arms to kiss his lips. “Mate with me, Fury.”

“You’re a bossy thing, aren’t you?”

“Only when there’s something I want.” She looked at the bed. “Shouldn’t we get naked?”

He put his hands on her arms and held her back. “We have to settle this first. I want to make sure that you’re mating with me out of choice and not out of fear.”