Page 140 of My Broken Mate

“You are back, finally!” Joel exclaims as we run towards them. “I can’t believe you went hiking. Of all the things.”

“Yeah, we can’t believe it either,” Kata chuckles. “Sorry, I just took off. I had no time to notify you. You must have been worried.”

“Not at all,” Joel reassures her.

Sean snorts. “Yeah, right. I had to use my power and knowledge to stop them from driving here immediately,” he tells us.

“You didn’t tell them where we were?” Kata asks.

“No, you wanted to do this alone, and there was no reason not to let you,” he says.

“I knew you would understand where I was, and what I was doing,” I admit.

The others look rather chill, too. It looks like they used their trip to relax a bit as well, and they definitely all needed it. Both our packs have been swamped with work recently, and with quite some drama.

Sean’s eyes move over me first, a thoughtful expression on his face, then he looks at Kata. He furrows his brows before realization settles in. “She is marked,” he says.

“What?” Joel exclaims. “By the goddess, I didn’t even notice!”

“Really?” Gabriel stares at us, his eyes wide.

“Man, that must have been a good trip,” Joel mutters. “I am getting envious.”

Evander sends him a deathly glare, which he ignores, as usual.

While the others begin to congratulate us and voice their joy, Sean’s mind seems to wander further. “You marked her,” he says. “This means…”

Can you hear my voice?He links me.

It feels weird to suddenly have another foreign presence in my mind. I figure that for all other shifters, it comes naturally, but as usual, I am a few steps behind. I don’t mind, though, not anymore.

Loud and clear. Though, it’s still a bit weird to suddenly have all my senses heightened.

We will work on it,he assures me.

“I guess that meditative hike up the mountain was a success,” Gabriel mutters. “Maybe I should do that too, eventually.”

“Yeah, it was good,” Kata says, her voice dead serious. “But Remus and I decided that next time we would go paragliding.”

“What?” Evander blurts out.

“It’s too exhausting to walk,” she says.

“But paragliding… of all things?”

Joel grins but lets Kata have her fun.

Eventually, Sean puts a stop to it by suggesting what Kata and I had wanted since being halfway down the mountain. “Do you want to eat? Let’s go for lunch.”

I nod. “Awesome, we are starving.”

“The plan is for us to drive back later this afternoon, so that we will be home in the early hours,” Gabriel explains. “Are you coming with us or staying longer?”

“We have done everything we came here for,” I say, looking at Kata. She nods. “We will return home with you.”

Chapter forty-four

Strength