The slight sheen of oil on there made me swoop down and trace my tongue along them.

“Ew,” she grumbled, making me laugh harder because she didn’t push me away, just moved closer to me, settled her greasy palms on my belly, and leaned in.

When her head came to my pec, and her arms slid around my waist, I found myself curiously choked.

She held me with no guile.

Without the thought of seeking anything for herself or for me.

She held me because she could.

Because I was hers and she was mine.

And it was the most powerful, thoughtful, poignant, emotional moment of my life.

“I’m the lucky one,” I rasped, dipping my chin so I could bestow a kiss upon the crown of her head.

She sighed, squeezing me harder. “I like to think that luck is something we make for ourselves, but this entire situation, this whole new world has kind of taught me otherwise.

“How could I say I’m lucky for what I went through at the carnival?” She shuddered. “Yet it led me here. To this moment.”

I didn’t want to spoil our time together, but we had to broach this subject. She’d already spoken about what happened that night at Ollywood’s, but I was curious to know if her new senses helped her, if they, in any way, gave her an insight that she hadn’t had before.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked softly, not changing my tone, just moving my hand up and down her back, soothing her before she could get riled up—the last thing I wanted was for her to get scared.

“Nothing more than I already told you.” She gulped. “Mostly, I just remember being scared.” She pressed her face into me, rolling inward so that she was hiding from the world around us. “I remember thinking how tired I was of running, and how maybe death would bring me freedom.”

“Do you really think your dad is still after you?”

“He’s a bitter, vengeful, twisted man, and he reigns with fear.”

Her words were simple, but all the more effective for it.

There was no emotion in them this time. No fear or worry. She was stating a fact. A hard proof.

Still, the thought of her embracing death, of being in a fucking world without her in it, even for a day, had me tensing up.

My muscles bunched, and my wolf got in on the action. She hushed me, telling me she sensed the beast’s agitation, and I let her. I also let her pet me, stroking her hand over my arm, her fingers trickling down my side to my back. She soothed me as much as I’d soothed her, which was all kinds of wrong when she was the one who’d gone through all this shit.

On her own too.

My anger didn’t abate at that, and I vowed, “I’ll kill him before he even thinks he’s close to you.”

She tensed, then slowly shook her head. “No. I don’t want you to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because my mother, for whatever stupid reason, loves him.” She frowned—I felt the movement against my skin. “I never understood it, but she always supported him, always backed him. And in my culture, what I did was wrong—”

“You can’t run for the rest of your life because you think the boogeyman wants you. Especially when the boogeyman is a dumb fuck.”

“I’m not going to run anymore,” she promised, evidently sensing my root concern there. No way could I survive her leaving us now that she was mine. Before, it would have been impossible. I’d have had no alternative but to follow her, but now? The thought of us being in any way apart was too unbearable for words.

I knew that, at first, after a claiming, the male was always a little heavy handed. Ultra-possessive, a control freak.

But I wasn’t feeling aggressive in that sense.

I just… The way she’d come to us, her threats were real. Living.

Someone had done this to her. Someone had made her this way, and even though I was grateful for her presence in my world, I couldn’t deny that the danger to her brought something out in me that had always been under the surface before.

I was an enforcer for the pack. I was a protector by nature and choice, but this?

Another level.

She was mine.

No one would touch her.

Ever.

Not her father, not a stray alpha who was trying to fuck with the politics in the pack.

No way, no how.

“It’s okay,” she soothed again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It relieved me that she understood, but also, that wasn’t enough. “He hurt you,” I rasped. “He deserves to be punished.”

She gulped. “I don’t want to bring any more shit down on me, Austin. You don’t know how long I’ve been scared, how long I’ve been living with the idea of him catching up with me, and now I’m free of that to a certain extent—”

“That isn’t enough. I want you to be wholeheartedly free of him. To know that he isn’t out there, waiting in the shadows to catch you.”

“But death is so final,” she whispered. “That was what I learned when I was spluttering away on my own blood at Ollywood’s.” Her hand moved up and over my throat, cupping me there. “Then you appeared. You and Ethan, and I knew I was dying, and I had this feeling inside me, a feeling that it was too late to be overjoyed by the sight of you.” She shook her head again. “No, I don’t want to bring bad karma on us. He can stay in the shadows, and if he comes, then I’ll show him just what it means now that I’m a gadji.”

My lips curved despite themselves. “You’d take him down yourself?”

I had to admit to being impressed.

Merinda, Eli’s mom, shit, my mom, hadn’t been that way. She’d been defenseless in some regards, refusing to fight…

Huh.

I figured there was a metaphor there.

She’d refused to fight in all walks of her life.

To the point where she’d given her baby boys over to a woman who wasn’t fit to be a mother, simply to keep the peace.

What the hell kind of peace was it where your sons weren’t under your roof and were in another’s home?

What kind of mother let the man in her life overtake the needs of her children?

“She must have thought she was acting for the best,” Sabina muttered, but I heard her anger and knew she was saying the words simply to make me feel better. However, her words were laced with her dubiousness.

I grunted. “I think it was the wrong choice.”

“Me too.”

“I think she did it because she was ashamed to have twin sons.”

She growled under her breath. “This is so stupid. I’ve never heard anything—”

“What isn’t stupid about hate? How can we hate someone for the color of their skin? For their religion? Even as a shifter, beneath it, I’m still human. That connects us all, unites us. We forget that, and we shouldn’t.”

She huffed under her breath. “My joker’s turning philosophical on me.”

I grinned, loving how she could snap me out of a funk with barely a few words.

Of course, I thought that deserved a reward, and wanting to change the subject to nicer things as well as wanting to forget some others, I gripped her tighter in my arms, and when she squealed, evidently aware of my next move, I laughed as I hurled her into the air so she went flying into the pond.