RYKER
I did not let him up immediately.
Cole was face down in the grass with my jaws still at the back of his neck and his blood soaking into the ground and I was going to stay exactly where I was until I had worked through what he had just pushed through the bond.
Lila is my fated mate.
I sat with that.
The grass was wet under my paws and his pulse was fast under my teeth and I held him there and let the information settle into me the way bad information always settled, slowly and with full weight, refusing to be hurried.
My fated mate was the woman my father had married. I had kissed Amaris in the rain and pressed her against a tree and taken her apart in the dark and not one moment of any of it had been under my control, not since the bond formed, not for a single day. So I was going to be very careful about the stones I threw right now.
But I was still going to throw some.
