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I don’t bother asking how he knew where my parents live, not when the answer is sitting squarely in the center of my chest.

As I walk around the coop, Blair stays right on my heels, apparently content to watch me.

“You’re not going to leave until I hear you out, are you?”

He shakes his head. “No. Or until you tell me you don’t want me here anymore.”

Angrily dumping the rest of the feed into the dirt, I put the can back and start walking away from him.

“Come on,” I shoot back over my shoulder.

I walk past the chicken coop, past the barn where the goats and alpacas are kept, past a couple of other small outbuildings to a stand of trees at the far edge of the property. Dad built mom a gazebo here, and in the height of summer it’s covered in vining plants and hanging flower baskets spilling over with blooms. It’s been one of my favorite spots to sit and read or just enjoy a few minutes of quiet and shade.

Inside the gazebo, there’s a bench swing hanging right in the center. I sink down onto it, but Blair hovers just inside the archway that serves as the door, watching me.

His golden eyes are soft, posture tense, and as I sit and stare at him, I realize I’ve never really seen him like this. Nervous. Uncertain. It’s such a contrast to his usual arrogance or reserve or burning sensuality that it catches me off guard. Not that I can let it. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I make myself remember how mad I am at him.

“Alright. Let’s get this over with. What did you come all this way to tell me?”

“I wanted to start by apologizing again for what I said at the Bureau. I was wrong, and I never should have said it.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he’s not done.

“And for everything that came before it. The way I treated you. The way I kept abandoning you to deal with mistakes that always should have been mine to deal with.”

“Mistakes? So you’re saying we never should have—”

“Gods, no, Kenna,” he says, taking a quick step forward and reaching out like he’s going to take my hand before he thinks better of it and stops just out of reach. “I don’t regret any of the time we spent together.”

“You don’t? Because from where I’m sitting, it seems like we both could have saved ourselves a whole lot of time and stress by never getting involved in the first place.”

I haven’t even finished speaking before Blair starts shaking his head.

“Not a single second,” he says solemnly. “There’s not a single second with you I’d take back.”

God. The way he sounds right now. Did I ever think Ewan Blair would take that tone with me? Soft. Reverent. Almost like he… I have to shake my head to clear away the end of that thought.

“That’s great,” I snap. “Fantastic. But it still doesn’t take away all the reasons this was never going to work out in the long run.”

“All the reasons,” he murmurs. “Like the fact I was so adamant from the beginning you weren’t my mate.”

My mate. The sound of those two words in his deep, graveled voice sends a corresponding jolt through the center of my chest.

“Yup,” I say, wincing internally at the crack in my voice. “Bingo.”

Blair takes a step closer and gestures to the seat next to me. “Can I sit?”

Wordlessly, I nod.

The swing sways as he settles into it. My body does, too, like I’m being tugged on an invisible string toward him. I make myself resist it, keep my back straight and eyes forward, even when I feel his big, warm hand close over mine where it’s resting on the worn wood.

“I was wrong. When I said you weren’t my mate.”

Ten words. It takes ten words to send my entire world spinning end over end. Upside down. Completely thrown out of its orbit.

My heart is hammering in deep, aching beats when I find enough air to answer him. “You already had a mate.”

Blair’s fingers tighten around mine. “I did.”