“I love you too,” she murmured against his lips.
They stripped and he told her to trust herself, to touch the part of herself that was a tigress and let her out.Then he shifted while she watched, his bear enjoying a chance to be with her in the paddock.
“I’ve got this,” she whispered to herself.
He sat on his haunches and watched her close her eyes, and then she purred.
Fur cascaded over her skin and then disappeared, and then she gasped and fell to her knees and shifted.
Her tigress yowled loudly and stretched, claws digging into the ground and tail swishing back and forth.Her whiskers twitched as she sniffed the air and then she purred loudly again and stalked to him, golden eyes glowing.
His bear rumbled as they butted heads and she rubbed her chin along his cheek, her whiskers brushing his thick fur.
A happy yowl came from deeper in the paddock as Fallon bounded back toward them.She and Sunny greeted each other with loud purrs and snuffles, and then the three of them walked around the paddock under the moonlight and stars, sometimes the two females would chase each other with playful growls and tumble together, and sometimes they just walked in quiet communion.
He wished that Sunny could have enjoyed her youth shifting, that her parents hadn’t been taken from her so violently and left her with a group of shifters who never saw her as anything but a burden.
Except for Sera and Fallon, of course.
Those two females were family in his book.And he hoped that someday he’d get to meet Sera and thank her for taking care of his mate until they could find each other.
As the night waned and they were able to shift back to human, they returned to the private living area to head to bed.Fallon seemed happier than she had since she’d arrived, and Sunny was elated that she’d gotten to shift again.
“I knew you could do it,” he said as they climbed into bed after saying goodnight to Fallon.
“I wasn’t so sure, but you made me feel confident.”
“I’m so proud of you.”He drew her close for a kiss and then curled around her, his hand resting on her stomach and her sweet scent in his nose.
“I’m pretty dang proud of myself, actually.I was thinking of my parents, and how much I love you, and how I can feel how much you love me.My tigress was so happy to come out this time.I feel like my parents were looking down on me.”
“I’m sure they were, sweetheart.”
“Mostly, though,” she said with a yawn, “is that my tigress—and I—know that we’re home now.Because of you.You’re my heart and my home.”
“You’re home for me too.”
Saturday afternoon crawled by, the silence of the small home in the bears’ private living area heavy around Fallon.Though she was allowed to leave the area to go to the market whenever she wanted with only a text to Sunny or another bear to let her back into the locked space, she hadn’t had any fresh air since she shifted Wednesday night.It was starting to weigh on her.
Not the safety aspect—she was fairly certain she was safe underground behind so many locked security doors—but feeling trapped and not having any control over when she would be free to roam where she wanted.She didn’t like hiding, and she didn’t like feeling useless.
Yes she cleaned the house and did laundry even though Sunny and Seneca both told her she didn’t need to do that, and she’d even helped out with laundry for some of the other bears who were busy helping with the new security protocols.But she was still feeling kind of trapped and mostly bored.
The front door opened and her heart gave a little clench of longing as Sunny and Seneca walked in after the lunch shift, smiling like they were the only two people on the planet.Fallon had never really thought much about soulmates until she saw how happy Sunny was.Now she wanted that for herself.But she’d never meet her soulmate stuck in a house underground, that was for dang sure.
“Hey, babe,” Sunny said, her smile turning down.“Something happened.”
“Are you okay?”Fallon put down the tablet with the book she hadn’t been able to concentrate on reading and stood.
“Yeah, we’re fine.”She showed Fallon a photo of a dark vase filled with roses that were a deep purple-red on the counter in the security office.The next photo showed the card with only a few words typed and no signature.
I’m not giving up.
Fallon’s mouth went dry.“Otto.”
Sunny nodded.“The flowers were delivered to the front gate by a local florist with no return address or any other information.But it seems pretty damn clear it’s him.”
“So he does know where I am, which means it doesn’t matter that Dario is gone, Otto still thinks that I’m his somehow.”
