Page 118 of The Last True Hero
Adam had no idea how to answer that. So he simply lay with one hand cupping his head and Mia snuggled in against his side. "I feel like the luckiest man alive today."
"You should get laid more often. It turns you into a teddy bear."
He smiled. For years he hadn't felt like he deserved to feel happy, but there was an incredible lightness in his chest. In his heart. Then reality returned.
This wasn't over. It would never be over for him.
"Mia, I don't know if I can control this... this thing inside me." He shuddered. "That night in the cell was only the third time I've turned. All these years the medallion kept it at bay." Rubbing at his chest, he continued. "I feel it inside me now, all the time. The more I turn, the more it wants out."
"I don't think you'll lose control," she replied. "If it were going to happen it would have been the other night, with all of the blood and violence around you."
"I was distracted the other night."
"With what?"
His voice lowered. "Finding you. That's the one thing the warg and I tend to agree on." He rolled over, sliding his arm around her waist. "Mia.... You.... I—"
"Yeah?"
His heart skipped a beat. "You're everything I ever dreamed about," he blurted. "It scares the fuck out of me that I could lose you."
"You're not going to lose me." Her hand slid up his chest, and that determined look came into her eyes. "You couldn't get rid of me if you tried."
"Will you marry me?" The second he said it, he wished he could take it back. Not because he didn't mean it, but because her eyes nearly leapt out of her head. "I know it's sudden. I know I'm not...."
Not human.
Those fingers curled around his own. Mia shushed him with a kiss, her lips sweet and undemanding. A gentler kiss, one that spoke of something so much more. "Yes," she whispered, drawing back. "I think it's time I finally took something for myself, and I'm claiming you, Adam McClain. All for my own. I love you. I've said that twice now, and I mean it. But it also means that I want a future with you. No matter how bad things get, I know I can face them with you at my side."
He'd faced burning buildings, wargs, and an entire town full of reivers and barely batted an eyelid. Surely he could say this one thing. "You're what I've been looking for all these years, yet never dared hope I'd find."I love you.He'd never dared say that before to her. He'd never really understood the concept, for how could he ask for love when there was so much loathing inside him? But seeing himself through her eyes made it a little easier to accept it. A little easier to allow himself to feel it. "I want you at my side for the rest of my life, and I know I can fight this thing inside me if I have you."
They shared another long kiss before he drew back, content to simply hold her. Simply running his hands through her hair felt amazing. His cock stirred, but it was about more than sex in this moment. And they'd have to get moving soon.
Even if he wanted to stay right here in this moment all day.
"How did it happen?" Mia asked, resting her head on his chest. "Colton said a little bit in the cells, but I wanted to hear it from you."
This was the last thing he ever wanted to talk about, but after all of the secrets between them he didn't dare refuse her. Yet... strangely enough, this was also the first time he'd ever been able to be truly open about his curse. Eden never wanted to hear about it after her ordeal, and he'd always wanted to protect her from the harsh reality of his life.
Adam stroked a hand through Mia's black curls. They were softer than he'd imagined, and he couldn't resist the urge to twist one around his finger. "I was in my early twenties, working as a bounty hunter out on the Rim with a friend of mine, Luc Wade. He had a wife and daughter, with another little one on the way, and one time he stayed behind when I went out hunting.
"There'd been rumors of a warg haunting settlements out to the east, in the no-mans-land near the Great Divide. I met these two men out there who claimed they were looking for the same warg. The older man was Bartholomew Cane. The younger was Johnny Colton."
Mia looked up sharply.
"They wanted to join up with me, to track this warg down. In hindsight there were little signs, but then the moon and the night didn't seem to affect them, so I grew complacent." He tensed a little. "We found a warg—the one we thought was doing the killing—and we put him down. That night we rode back toward my town to celebrate. We were nearly home when Cane pulled out a bottle of gin he'd been saving, for a 'special occasion' he said. I woke up screaming with claws buried in my gut. Cane near ripped me apart...." His voice softened to a whisper as he remembered it. That moment when he'd lost nearly everything in life, but most importantly, he'd lost a future.
Mia stroked his arm. "That bastard."
"He said I was his then. That I belonged to him, and that he'd sired me. Thought we made one hell of a team, and that he wanted one more to ride with us. All I remember is a full day sweating in the dirt, convinced I was going to die. Kind of determined to, actually. But then later in the day I realized that the claw marks were itching like crazy, and that every time I glanced at it, they looked like they were a little less red, a little less inflamed. Healing maybe. That was when I knew.
"Cane said he liked my kind and that he wanted another to ride with him. He offered me the medallion. Colton's grandfather made them or knew something about them, and Cane said that they controlled the beast. I could be a man forever with it, a man with special talents. That was how he described it. But if I accepted the medallion, then I had to get him another man to make into a warg. That was the deal—the price for having something so precious."
The words shriveled up inside him. This was the moment of his deepest shame.
"I'd been talking all trip about my friend, Luc, and Cane wanted him. I couldn't do it. Jesus. I thought about it though. I actually thought about it." He curled his arm around her, his heart beating faster. "In the end I refused. Luc had a wife, and soon-to-be two kids. What kind of monster would I have been if I did that to him?"
Soft fingertips stroked along his arm. "You've never been that kind of man."
