Blue Moon Brides: The Complete Series by Anne Marsh

between us, chère . That bond is there now.”
    He kept the word forever to himself. She knew. Hell, they both knew. But putting words to what she was feeling made everything too real. He’d been as careful as he could be not to hurt her, but her panic now tore him apart. The wolf was afraid to let her go, but the man knew he had to.
    He could follow. Would follow.
    He’d coax her back into his arms, show her that he could be trusted.
    Then she’d bond with him.
    Then maybe she’d love him.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    When Rafer should have been wrapped around his new mate, skin to skin, he was cooling his heels on her porch. That porch was picture-book pretty, all white picket and wicker furniture. Hell, he had flowered cushions on which to park his sorry ass.
    Dre had taken her back to her farm, and Rafer had followed, shifting to keep pace with her easily. Even more so than on his first visit, Lark’s farm struck him as a feminine lair, filled with warmth and good smells—and he wouldn’t admit how much he wanted her to let him in. He’d been cold for so long. Now his heart beat with hers. He would not be shut out. He’d claimed her. He fought the urge to shift, to run her land and learn it like he’d learned her body last night. In too many ways, it was easier to mark her farm than to mark her.
    The rest of the Pack had come too, hot on his heels, because where one went they all went. But then they’d stopped and waited on the edge of the farm for Rafer to come to them. He’d staked his claim on Lark, mated her whether she accepted that bond or not. That made her farm, her land, his territory now.
    She hadn’t asked him inside, and he hadn’t wanted to push his luck. Not yet. So he’d pulled up a chair on her porch and watched. He should be helping her, he thought, angry with himself and inexplicably hurt that she hadn’t asked him to do so. Taking her away from her human life was necessary, but instead he sat on her porch like a domesticated dog. He didn’t move, though, because clearly this farm mattered to her.
    Before he took her away, he needed to understand what she saw in these fields. That first visit, he’d been focused entirely on the woman walking down the dock to meet him. He hadn’t really checked out her place. Now, he took in the tumbled-down, storm-worn farmhouse with its sagging steps and geraniums in tin cans. Pretty, sure enough. But none of these things would keep her alive if— when —the skin hunters came. Still, he’d give her this handful of hours, let her make her goodbyes. Then he could take her away. He didn’t want to have to force her. He wanted her to choose him, choose the life he had to offer her.
    Not going to happen. Apparently, he had fantasies of his own.
    Her farm was a busy place in the daylight hours. Over the morning’s course, while he'd watched over her working in the yard, he’d seen dozens of humans come in and out of the front yard. Day workers. Men and women loading big plastic buckets of fresh-cut flowers into the back of vans. A few of the farm's other visitors carried traces of her scent, as if she’d shaken hands or brushed past them, but none were marked anywhere near as strongly as he was.
    None of them smelled like her.
    None of them was a lover.
    The newest woman, the one who’d driven up in a beat-up Honda that reeked so strongly of dogs his hackles had risen, looked over at him, shifting a plastic bucket filled with cut flowers to her hip. “Boyfriend?”
    The air lit up with Lark’s hunger now, a blush heating his mate’s face as she denied his presence in her life and lied her sweet little ass off. “Friend of a friend and merely passing through.”
    That pissed him off, that she’d deny the connection between them. She was still human, so he didn’t expect her to use the same words as the Pack did.
    The hell there wasn’t something between them. Whether she was ready to accept him as her mate or not, she’d let him mark her. Let him