I frowned. “Why not? We’re each other’s soulmatches. That’s more binding than a normal binding ceremony. Ours can’t even be broken like those can.” In our world binding ceremonies were like weddings on Sutiner. You combined your magic, but they could be broken, and the magic was severed between the couple.
“We’ve just met!” he stomped his foot in the cutest way, and it took all I had in me not to hug him.
“Fine, then we wait, but the longer we wait, the longer until we can get our magic, help the others, and get our revenge on the council of mages. Except my mom. She didn’t want me to get shunned.”
“Wait, she didn’t?”
“What? No! She’s my mother. Why would she want to get rid of me?” His eyes dimmed and I realized the horrible truth.
“Oh,” I said, hating myself. “Yours didn’t fight it?”
He shook his head. “They wanted me gone from the day I got the first letter. I was fourteen.” I couldn’t contain myself any longer.I hugged his body against mine, letting the scent of cheap detergent and something entirely Niam, hit my nostrils as he tensed against me, before slumping into my arms, letting me comfort him.
When we parted, he looked at the ground. “That was my first hug in over four years,” he admitted, sounding so small I just wanted to hug him against me again and never let him go.
“You might as well get used to them,” I said, tipping his chin up with my hand. “I love giving hugs. And when you’re ready for it, I will snuggle up to you every night and protect you as you sleep.” He swallowed as he met my gaze. I’d been waiting for him for five years. He had no idea how badly I wanted to love him, protect him, care for him. I had all this love inside of me that was waiting just for him.
“I, um, I’ll look forward to it,” he replied, blushing, then looked away and cleared his throat. “We should try different things then, to, you know, try to bond ourselves.”
I smiled but just as I opened my mouth, he held his hand up. “Non-sexual things first.” I pouted, but he just rolled his eyes and pretended not to blush again.
“Fine, we’ll save the fun stuff for last then,” I amended.
“You had five years to get that out of your system,” he sassed back.
I looked at him confused. “You think I slept with someone while I waited for you?”
“Well, yeah?”
“I’ve been waiting for you, Niam. Why would I sleep with someone when I knew my soulmatch wasn’t them?”
He blinked. “You, you haven’t been with anyone? Really?” Was that excitement I heard in his voice? Was my man pleased I’d waited?
“No one,” I stated, preening inside when he fought a smile. My soulmatch was too precious. I couldn’t wait to unravel every part of him.
Niam had left a note for Jerry before we headed into the forest. We needed privacy and somewhere with space around us. I was so glad he’d agreed to help me out, and a part of me hoped he truly was in this for life. I couldn’t bear the thought of binding myself to him, onlyfor him to leave me someday. He might’ve acted like he was doing this just to get his power, but I liked to believe he wanted me, too, and he was just afraid to admit it. Too shy to admit it even to himself.
“This should do,” Niam said, looking around the open space we’d found. “Do you see any signs of bears?”
“Bears?” I asked, looking around worriedly.
“Yeah, the mama bears are extra protective and I don’t want to deal with those today.” Great, now I had to worry about getting killed by bears, too.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” I assured him, pushing my chest out. I would protect him if it came to that. I just really hoped it wouldn’t.
“First things first would be touch. We never use words so I highly doubt that’ll be something we need. We should also be able to do it without using extra stuff,” Niam continued.
“Extra stuff?” I questioned.
“Yeah, you know ingredients and such. A binding is always just between the two who want to bond, no other items needed.” I was grateful he knew about this stuff. I had zero clue, since my mothers hadn’t told me how to bond, so I would gladly let him pick what we needed.
“So, we just need the two of us. Would sunlight be a factor?” I asked. I knew some magic worked better with sunlight and moonlight. Water magic worked best infused with moonlight and earth best with sunlight.
“Hmm, I doubt it. Bindings would have to be made whenever and wherever.”
I just nodded, trusting his wisdom on this. “We already tried hugging,” I reminded him, mentally tucking that away.
He shook his head. “Maybe we need to do that but skin to skin.” I perked up. “But let’s save that for later,” he continued and I suppressed the urge to pout. I would get my hands on him some day. I could be patient.
