Season of the Witch (Claws Clause 2)

He wanted to bite her. From the heated look he’d given her—not to mention the bulge pushing up against his jeans she couldn’t stop sneaking peeks at—Shea had to wonder if that was all he wanted to do?

He didn’t come out and say it. Feeling uncertain and admittedly a little bit horny, she was too baffled and befuddled to just agree.

“I… I need to think about this. Up until a couple of days ago, you’ve been breathing down my neck, wondering when the bond would be broken. Now you want to keep it? Colt, I don’t know what you want me to do right now.”

“I want forever. My wolf won’t settle for less. But we’ve got time. For now, I just want you to give me a kiss.”

His boyishly handsome face was so pretty that, even when he was wearing such a steadfast, demanding expression, she still had to resist the urge to reach out and touch him to make sure he was real.

And that’s when Shea knew that she needed to put some distance between them. If she didn’t? She’d do more than just give him a kiss.

She’d give him her virginity.

That would be fine. She wasn’t still a virgin because she wanted to be. It was a casualty of not having a romantic relationship since long before her days at the Hex Academy.

Her attraction to Colton had never been in question. Even when he was imposing his decision that they didn’t have to follow fate blindly and accept their mating, Shea would’ve agreed to fuck him just to know what it was like to be with someone she loved.

Because she loved him. Whether it was the bond talking or her contrary nature that had an empathic healer falling for a stubborn shifter with a temper, Shea loved him.

So, yes. She wanted to kiss him. To touch him. To open her vulnerable heart up to him while she took him as her first lover.

It wouldn’t stop at just sex. She didn’t know why, but she was sure of it. Not with Colton. He was a shifter who was adamantly insisting she was his mate. With his instincts and the will of his beast, if she slept with him, she’d lay down Shea Moonshadow, healer, and get up again as Colton Wolfe’s mate.

Forget her promise to Julian for a second. Shea had wanted to become Colton’s mate ever since she knew it was a possibility.

But if he regretted their mating? It wouldn’t just break her heart.

It would obliterate it.

18

Shea was avoiding him.

Colt didn’t blame her. Hearing that she’d pledged herself to the head of the Nightwalker gang he was hunting had been bad enough. Knowing that she was one-third of the way to being his vampire bride had rattled him. Then, after she told him she had to think about accepting him as her mate, that she couldn't even risk giving him a kiss, well… he kind of lost it.

He wolfed out.

Shifting in the middle of her shop, leaving behind the tattered remains of his clothes on her floor, his wolf threw its body against the door. It opened wide enough for it to poke its muzzle through, shoving with its bulk to wriggle the rest of the way out.

It wasn’t until he made it to the Bumptown and Dodge materialized to ask Colt what the hell happened to his truck that Colt realized he’d left it parked outside of the apothecary.

Yeah. That hadn’t been his finest moment.

It only got worse as he finally—finally—started to allow himself to act like a bonded shifter who had found his mate.

She told him she needed space. He understood that.

Unfortunately, his wolf didn’t.

By now, he was probably driving her crazy. Though he promised to let her get used to the idea that he wasn’t going anywhere, to get used to what must’ve seemed like a whiplash-like decision on his part, it wasn’t so easy as that. When he wasn’t going on nightly raids with Wright, he was pacing outside of her window, just to feel some peace of mind that she was near.

She wasn’t ready to key him to her wards, leaving him out on the sidewalk, marveling at the great job Sloane and Ralph did to repair her window. She only answered the phone once a night to assure his frantic wolf that she was safe—and that she still hadn’t heard from her brother.

Colt, meanwhile, was doing the same with his brother. As Maddox continued to keep Evangeline tucked away inside the cabin on pack land, Colt checked in with him occasionally, keeping the topic of conversation solely on his hunt for the Nightwalkers.

If Maddox found out that Colt was acting the same way he had when he first stumbled upon Evangeline reading in a park all those years ago, Colt would never hear the end of it.

If only he had better news. More than a week after Rafe confronted Colt and Shea in front of Moonshadow Apothecary and there still hadn’t been a single credible trail to follow back to the Nightwalker king.