Page 101 of Magic Betrayed

There was just one problem.

I wasn’t going to do that.

Somewhere in the past twenty-four hours, I’d decided what I wanted.

I wanted kindness, respect, safety, and caring. I wanted to feel seen. Trusted. Needed. And most of all, loved. I wanted everything Callum offered me, and I was not going to give it up just because the Shapeshifter Court sat on an Elayara-sized tack and was looking for someone to blame.

Everything I had now, I had for two reasons—because I’d been willing to fight for it, and because others had chosen to share that fight. And my relationship with Callum would be no different.

I was going to have to fight for it, and he would have to choose to fight alongside me.

I turned to face him.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

My gorgeous dragon looked back at me, his eyes softening as they held mine. “I want to protect shapeshifters and prevent a war,” he said. “I want to see true justice done, and I want to show mercy to those who are innocent. But most of all… I don’t want to do those things alone. I want you to do them with me. I want to hold on to this mate bond with everything I have and swear to never let go.”

It was everything I needed to hear.

“Okay.” I turned back to Angelica. “There’s your answer.”

She scowled at me. “That wasn’t an answer.”

Callum gripped my shoulders and turned me back to face him. He was wearing a stunned expression that inexplicably made me feel like laughing.

“What do you mean,okay?”

“I mean,” I said firmly, “that I want those things too.”

He still looked stunned, but as I gazed up into his amber eyes, I saw a fierce glow flare to life in their depths, and his grip on my shoulders tightened.

“Raine, are you sure? This all happened so fast. I never wanted to pressure you and I understand if you want to take more time to think…”

I reached up and put my hand over his mouth.

Yup, I shushed the king of the shapeshifters, and as I smiled up at him, I heard a tiny, shocked squeak from Angelica.

Deal with it, sweetheart.

“I don’t need to think about it, Callum. I know what I want. Even if I have to fight the entire Shapeshifter Court and a legion of fae mercenaries in order to keep it.”

“Are you sure?” he murmured behind my fingers, suddenly sounding self-conscious, but also painfully hopeful. “Have you somehow managed to forget that I’m bullheaded, impossible to reason with, and often a total pain in the ass? Not to mention paranoid, inflexible, and utterly obsessed with rules?”

“How could I forget?” I said, laughter lurking just behind my words. “Those are my very favorite things about you.”

Angelica made a disgusted sound and stalked off. I thought I heard the front door close, but I ignored it.

“I don’t want to lose you, Callum. I want to fight this fight beside you. I want to protect other people like me, people that the law doesn’t always see. I want to have your back and know that you have mine. And I want…”

The words stuck in my throat. Held back by fear. By the voices that told me I wasn’t good enough. Would never be good enough. Was too broken, too strange, too much of a liability.

But Callum took my face between his hands and gazed down at me without a trace of judgement or doubt. “What do you want?” he asked softly.

The words came out shredded and broken. Wavering, but fighting to be heard. “I want to love you,” I said simply.

The glow in his eyes brightened to a burning flame, and then his lips were on mine.

Softly, so softly, as if he couldn’t believe it was real. I could feel him trembling as my hands came to rest on his chest. Could feel the intensity of his need and desperation, so I slid my hands up to curl around the back of his neck and kissed him back.

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