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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STONE

“I love you too,” I murmured back to Zuri so naturally.

I didn’t know if she had meant it. She had been too deep in the pleasure from my mark. But I didn’t care either way because I knew exactly what she meant to me, and now, we would forever be together.

She wore my mark.

After a couple of quiet seconds, Zuri stopped trembling and closed her eyes.

I turned onto my side and draped my arm around her waist. “Who were you talking to earlier?” I asked, tucking some coily brown hair behind her pierced ear with small golden studs and wondering why the hell the Moon Goddess had given me a goddess as a mate.

She paused, then glanced over at me while still lying on her back, her lips curled into a soft and satisfied smile and her eyes still glimmering how they had been during her heat. “The Moon Goddess.”

“The Moon Goddess?” I repeated, furrowing my brow and wondering if this pack and I were making her crazy.

Sometimes, I cursed the Moon Goddess out for what my brother and father had done to us, but she had sounded like she was having an entire conversation with her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

After shifting onto her side and scanning my face, she frowned. “I usually see her every week, at least once, which is probably not a lot, compared to you, but I appreciate all the time I have with her.”

“You see her?” I asked. “Like … visually?”

Another quiet moment passed.

“Yes …”

“For how long?”

“Since I was a child. Why?”

“I don’t see her,” I said. “And I don’t know anyone else who does.”

“Oh, come on.” Zuri playfully pushed my shoulder. “You’re lying. Everyone sees her.”

My fingers curled into her wide hips as I attempted to close my mind around this … thought. “The Moon Goddess has never even shown up to me in a dream, and you were straight-up having a real-life conversation with her, Z.”

“Z?” She giggled softly.

The sound was so soft, so harmonic that I almost didn’t believe it was coming from her. Because for as long as I had known her—which wasn’t too long—she had always pushed me away or tried to.

Tonight, she was different. And I didn’t know whether it really was because of the conversation with the Moon Goddess or not, but either way, I could do nothing but thank her for everything she had given me in the past few weeks.

For my mate.

“You’re different tonight,” I whispered. “What’d she say to you?”

Zuri paused. “I told her that you were an asshole.”

My lips dropped into a frown. “Am I really that bad?”

While she didn’t respond right away, her gaze lowered to my tattooed chest, and she curled her fingers into the muscle. “No,” she whispered. “You’re not really that bad. For so long and sometimes even now—and you know this—I think I … I don’t deserve you.”

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you that you’re beauti?—”

“That’s not what it is about,” she murmured.

“At least not all the time.” She leaned forward and rested her forehead against mine, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“My sister, my family, and my pack bullied me for so long because I … I wasn’t like them.

I talked to the Moon Goddess a lot, and people thought I was just talking to myself.

They told me that I would never find a mate, and if I did, he’d think I was weird too.

And from there, it got worse.” She tensed in my arms and pulled me closer, tears spilling down her cheeks. “So much worse.”

I wrapped my arm around her waist and drew her to my chest, brushing her tears off her cheeks as they fell. “You don’t have to tell me about it if it’s too hard,” I whispered, chest tightening. “I don’t want you to cry.”

“I want you to understand,” she said. “I’ve always wanted a mate and tried so hard to be …

normal. I was as nice as I could be to everyone in my pack and my family, hoping that, one day, they would see that I was just like them.

I loved them all so much that I didn’t realize how hard they actually were on me.

And when you came along … when you killed them …

” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I felt so much hatred for you but so much less anxiety.

It was weird. I didn’t—and still don’t—know how I felt about it.

And all your compliments are so foreign to me. I don’t know how to take them.”

“Zuri,” I whispered.

Because I honestly didn’t know what to say to my own mate.

It was obvious that her packmates had bullied her, but I had thought it was because of the way she looked.

Because, fuck, that was why I had gotten so many tattoos—to cover up the blotchy red patches of birthmark left on my skin and the scars my fucking father had given me when I was younger because of them.

“You’re one of us now,” I said, gently taking her chin in my hand. “You’re accepted here.”

“I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that, one day, you’ll think I’m weird, too, for talking to myself, or not being as strong as a true luna can be, or if we have a pup, she’ll experience the same things that I have, and I won’t be able to protect her.”

“Nobody is going to bully you or our pups. Not in this pack.”

“What if they do?”

“I’ll turn them to dust and give you their ashes. Over and over and over again.”

“Stone, you can’t do that,” she said.

“Watch me.”

She gave me that are you serious look, then playfully smiled and swiped at my shoulder. After a second, she bit back a smirk and looked away from me. “You know, the Moon Goddess also told me that you should fuck me in front of the mirror more often.”

I chuckled and pulled her on top of me. “Is that right?”

Another laugh escaped her mouth. “Maybe …”

An easy silence drifted upon us, but I didn’t want to push my luck and breed her tonight.

“When I was a kid, my grandma used to force me to sit in front of the mirror and tell her what I liked about myself,” I whispered, staring up at her. “I hated it so fucking much at first, but I learned to love it, and you will too.”

For the first time, Zuri relaxed on top of me and smiled. “Why’d she have you do that?”

I paused. “The full story will take a while to explain.”

“Well”—she smiled—“we have some time before the Moon Goddess bestows another bout of heat upon me again. Tell me all about it, Stone. About your childhood, your pack, and your father and your brother. I want to know all about you, mate .”