Page 8 of Witch Untold
We want you to be happy. We need you to be happy,Rune said.
Tor fixed his steel-gray eyes on me. “If Jasper makes you happy, then he can hang around. But you need to promise to be careful. To keep the boundaries that have been set for us all. If youcan’tdo that, then you and Jasper”—his mouth turned down—“it’ll have to end. We’ll find a way to get rid of him and protect the seal.”
The warm, fuzzy feeling Leif’s words had elicited were burned away by the heat of anger.
I leaned across the table. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You want Jasper gone. You want me all to yourself.”
He sat back, exhaling sharply before letting out a bark of derisive laughter. “Fuck, Cora, that’s not news. It’s my nature to want my mate to myself. To want the woman I l—” He pressed his lips together and looked away, chest heaving. “I’m fighting my nature every fucking day. We all are.”
I glanced at Leif, who had his gaze fixed on the table.
We share a mate because we have to,Rune said.
I looked down into his golden eyes.
We’ve conditioned ourselves to share with each other, but Jasper’s an outsider. This isn’t easy for us, Cora.
Pain lanced through my chest. Their pain. Their confusion. Their…love? My chest was suddenly hollow, aching with empathy for them and something more, something deep, warm, and eternal. The thing I didn’t want to feel for them, but the emotion had been creeping up on me slowly the past few weeks.
There was no denying that I was falling for them too.
I couldn’t hurt them. I wouldn’t. “I’m sorry.” I stroked Rune’s head and turned to face Tor and Leif. “I didn’t think about how hard this must be for you guys. I care about you…more and more each day. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Leif reached for my hand. “You’re not. You won’t. We don’t expect our feelings to be reciprocated.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong, that I was falling for them too, but my words were cut off by the angry scrape of Tor’s chair on linoleum.
He strode from the room.
Fuck.
Leif squeezed my hand. “Tor always struggled with this concept. More than Rune and me. The idea of sharing a mate never sat easy with him. It’ll take time for him to accept Jasper.”
Pfft, at least he isn’t stuck in wolf form. My chances of Cora falling in love with me are severely reduced while I’m in hairy mode.
There was humor in his tone, and it softened the desolation of his words, but still…His concern was sincere, and honestly, I had no clue if it was possible for me to fall in love with Rune in wolf form. Love him, yeah, sure, butin love…I didn’t know.
The pain in my chest intensified and my breath caught. Shit, had Rune sensed my thoughts?
The huge golden wolf padded for the back door.I’m going for a run.
My heart sank. Yep. He totally had.
Leif picked up my plate and stood. “Go have your bath and I’ll set up a movie.”
He busied himself at the sink, and for a moment there was only the gush of water and the clatter of dishes. His tone had been relaxed, and he was acting as if he was all cool, but there was no missing the tension in his body as he worked.
What they’d just done, the things they’d said, the way they’d opened their hearts to me…none of that could have been easy. I’d wanted this…Love. Now I had it. I needed to drop the walls and let it in.
I pushed back my chair and joined him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my cheek to his back. “Thank you for being honest and understanding.”
His heart beat steadily against my cheek. “I think you should know that I’ll do most anything for you, Cora.”
Oh, God, my heart. “In that case, I’ll have to resign myself to having my heart broken sometime in the future, because I’m just not strong enough to stop myself from falling in love with you guys.”
Leif stilled.
I kissed his back through his tee, released him, and headed for the door. “Make sure the bed you ordered for the main house is big enough for the four of us.”
