Mate.
The word kept bouncing around in my head and I couldn't shoo it away. It was so loud that it echoed through every inch of me. It was written into the very marrow of my bones. And it made me itch.
I stood in the center of the room for a full ten minutes after he left, still catching my breath. Trying to convince myself I didn't imagine all of that. I couldn't have imagined the kiss. Goddess, my lips still tingled.
What just happened?
I asked myself that about a dozen different ways. Whispered. Screamed internally. Tried to work it out like a particularly difficult puzzle. But my brain was a traitor tonight. Useless and soft and entirely too focused on the way he'd touched me like I was his to claim.
Which, apparently, I was.
Mate.
He's my mate.
No. No, that couldn't be right. I wasn't ready for that kind of word. I barely knew what to do with my own feelings, let alone whatever magic was out there assigning soul ties to Lycans and fox shifters who didn't even believe in fate.
I caught a glance of myself in the mirror on the vanity. I was pale. Too pale with flaming cheeks. My hair was a tangled wreck that I wasn't even about to start trying to unsnarl. No, I had better things to do.
Like pace. Three steps to the wall, spin. Four steps to the wardrobe, spin again. I didn't stop moving. If I did, I'd have to think too hard, and thinking meant falling into that mess of emotions Tomas had left behind.
Was he my mate?
It was easier to believe I'd imagined the whole thing. That I was losing it. That maybe his voice in my head was just lust. Stress. Some weird hallucination brought on by a dangerous amount of sexual tension and lack of food.
Except it wasn't.
Because it hadn't been my voice. And it wasn't just a word either. There'd been feeling behind it. A claiming. Something that tried to write itself on my heart.
And he knew. He knew.
Which made everything worse.
All this time. While he was pushing me away and pulling me close, while he was invading my room at night and icing me out during the day. When he was asking me to flirt with his guards like it was a test, he knew.
And he said nothing.
I pressed my fingers to my lips. They were still swollen. Still sensitive.
That kiss hadn't been an accident. It hadn't been a slip. That kiss was a storm, and I'd been right in the center of it.
He kissed me like he hated me for it. Like he couldn't help himself.
And then he walked away.
"Don't look at me like that, little fox, or I won't be able to stop."
That's what he said.
But he'd already started.
And then he told me I wasn't ready. Like he got to decide what I could or couldn't handle. Like he could set me on fire and then complain when I burned too bright.
I dropped onto the bed and buried my face in my hands, trying to block out the rest of the world. I didn't cry. I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction, even if he wasn't here. I wouldn't let him know I was rattled.
He'd touched me like I was the only thing that made sense. Kissed me like I was something he'd been waiting his whole life to taste. But the moment I stopped pretending I didn't want him, he pulled away.
Thank the Goddess it wasn't a rejection.
"You're not ready."
Damn right I wasn't. I barely knew him. Just a few weeks out from the most terrifying experience of my life. Of course I wouldn't be ready to be mated to royalty.
But it hadn't been rejection in his voice. It'd been need. And fear.
Tomas was afraid.
Not of me, no. He was afraid of what it meant. Of what I meant. And maybe that made two of us.
I wasn't built for this kind of bond. Not for something ancient and magical and binding. I wasn't raised with that. I didn't grow up waiting for the one person who could complete me. I grew up surviving.
Now I had a King blowing right into my life like a whirlwind, kissing me like a curse, and whispering mine like he could carve it into my skin.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
I needed to be angry. Anger was easier than this hurricane of confusion. Anger made sense. And I had plenty to be angry about.
Like the fact that Tomas let me go to dinner tonight with full intent to flirt. Encouraged it, even.
Then threw a tantrum in my room the second it actually worked.
And now this?
Was the kiss just another way to control me? Another way to own me?
Was the mate bond a leash he planned to use?
Or worse, was he trying to fight it?
The idea ripped my chest wide open. What if he knew we were mates and hated the idea? What if he didn't want a mate, especially not one like me?
Not a fox shifter with no clan. Not a nobody with a sharp tongue and hidden scars. Not someone who didn't belong in ballrooms or beside kings.
Maybe I'd broken him. Maybe he broke himself.
Maybe we were breaking each other and didn't know how to stop.
The wind curled through the open window, brushing over my heated skin, soothing me. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the storm in my chest.
I didn't know what tomorrow would bring. If he'd look at me like nothing happened. If he'd keep coming to my room at night, or avoid me like I was something dangerous.
But I knew one thing for certain.
He was my mate.
And no matter how much either of us wanted to deny it, that was going to change everything.