He picked up a whiff of mouse in one corner. He’d talk to the Owlgard about hunting around the Market Square and the Liaison’s Office more often.
He caught Meg’s scent under the cupboards and spotted the smallest piece of something that wasn’t wood or floor. He whined at it and growled at it and scratched at it until he finally pulled it out.
“That’s it!” Meg said. She bent over and put her hands on the floor. She picked up the card, bracing herself on the side of one hand.
Simon waited, wondering if this three-limbed position was something she had learned in Quiet Mind class.
“I’m stuck,” she growled.
Oh.
He crawled between her hands and her working leg. Then he stood up, lifting her torso until she could grab the table and lift herself the rest of the way. Having seen her sit down on the tall stool they had provided for her, he hurried into the back room, shifted, and pulled on his jeans and shirt before returning to get a look at this card that had to be found.
A man and woman, standing close together in a garden under a full moon.
“Why is the moon shaped like that?” he asked.
“It’s a heart,” Meg replied. “Haven’t you seen this symbol before?”
“Sure. But it’s not the thumpy-thump good-eating kind of heart.”
“It’s a romantic heart.” She looked up and narrowed her eyes. “Is that why you shelved the kissy books with the cookbooks? Because a heart is a heart?”
“Vlad did that,” he said too quickly. Did it really matter that a Sanguinati wouldn’t have any interest in eating either kind of heart?
She looked doubtful, but her attention was drawn back to the card.
“Why is this card so important to you?”
“It’s a constant thing,” she replied softly. “I see this card every time I have one of those episodes where the images from prophecies bleed together until nothing makes sense. But this card doesn’t change.”
“So romance is your constant thing?”
She shook her head. “Love. That’s more than romance.”
You love her, and she loves you. You’re in love, Simon. Was Monty right?
“Meg? Are we mates?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I’m not human. I will never be human. But maybe I can be human enough to be your mate.”
Meg looked at him. “I’m not a Wolf. I can never be a Wolf. I can’t even look like a Wolf. So how could I be your mate?”
Meg didn’t need to shift to be pack, to be his mate. Was that love?
“You’re Wolf enough for me,” he said.
“And you’re human enough for me. But I don’t know about . . .” She waved a hand at her torso.
“Sex?” Judging by her blush, he’d guessed correctly. This form was harder to control because it responded even when a female wasn’t in season, but he shrugged. “Wolves mate once a year.”
“Once a year?” She blinked. “Just once?”
Did she sound disappointed? “Since human females come into season more often, we could try something closer to the human way.” He didn’t need to tell her that he would be able to smell when she was receptive, did he?
She looked scared, confused—and maybe a little hopeful? How could he encourage the hopeful? If he was in Wolf form, he could lick her nose and make her laugh. He wasn’t sure what to do in this form that wouldn’t cause confusion and scare her away.
Meg swallowed. “What will happen if we do become mates officially, like Karl and Ruth or Merri Lee and Michael?”
“Ask.” Simon waved a hand over the prophecy cards and noticed a little fur on his knuckles. Nerves. He wondered what his ears looked like. His teeth . . . Hmm. Well, she’d seen them before.
He helped her stand, kept his arm around her waist for balance while she turned all the cards facedown.
“What will happen if Simon and I become mates?” Meg closed her eyes and moved her hands over the prophecy cards. She picked a card and turned it over without opening her eyes.
Simon looked at the card and laughed softly.
“That bad?” Meg opened her eyes, alarmed. Then she looked at the card. “Oh.”
She had chosen the romance card, the symbol for her constant thing. The symbol for love.
“Before we tell anyone about our decision, I think we should kiss,” Meg said suddenly. “To see if we like it.”
Why wouldn’t they like it? Kissing was similar to licking, and he always liked licking Meg. In fact, the times when he had given her a human kiss, he’d liked that too.
He put his arms around her and brushed his lips against hers once, twice. Then his mouth settled over hers and lingered. As he eased back, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his.
“I think we like it,” Meg breathed.
“I think we should try it again. Just to be sure.”
They tried it several more times, just to be sure, and eventually decided that they did like kissing. They liked it a lot.
Author photo by Merri Lee Debany
New York Times bestselling author Anne Bishop is a winner of the William L. Crawford Memorial Fantasy Award, presented by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, for The Black Jewels Trilogy. She is the author of the Novels of the Others, including Marked in Flesh, Vision in Silver, Murder of Crows, and Written in Red. She lives in upstate New York.
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Anne Bishop, Etched in Bone
(Series: The Others # 5)
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