In his deepest dreams, she had captivated him. She’d been a light in the dark, and he had spent many nights in spirit walk to find her. When finally he had stared into her eyes, he’d known he had found his soul waiting for him there. And it had taken only that one smile to complete him.
Love surged through him, fierce and protective. He would find out what she feared.
And he would show her that together they had the strength and courage enough to face any battle.
41
Nilana has one night to make the choice of a lifetime: Accept the love of two men, or keep hunting-alone. No man has ever tempted Nilana to give up her freedom. Life as a huntress has given this shapeshifter everything she thought s
Chapter Eight
Nilana has one night to make the choice of a lifetime: Accept the love of two men, or keep hunting-alone. No man has ever tempted Nilana to give up her freedom. Life as a huntress has given this shapeshifter everything she thought s
A mating.
Nilana had never thought the choice would come to her. Now she lay in her lodge sheltered between the two most captivating men she’d ever met, filled with a fierce longing for the very thing she feared most.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Tate’s voice washed over her with the warm heat of smoke from a fire. “Having to face the possibilities.”
“I can’t be what you want me to be. Who you need me to be.” Her words were strained. “I am a huntress. I can’t be your mate.” She buried her face in his broad shoulder, wishing she could stop the night from slipping away.
Cheveyo sat up beside her, his hard body leaning over hers. “You are a huntress. No one has denied that. Why do you keep saying it as if it is what holds you back?”
Filled with frustration, Nilana met his gaze. How could he be this dense? “I could never understand how the other women can be content, happy waiting at the camp for the hunters to return. Cooking, tending the lodge, cleaning the kill. That is the life of a woman once mated. I have no skills for such a life! I would be a failure as a mate.”
“You could never be a failure at anything you put your heart to. But no one is asking you to become a cook.”
Tate added his voice to that of his shaman. “Wildcat, we need a mate who is our partner. Someone to bring her strength to our pack, and to our lodge. If we looked only for a cook, or a woman to bear our children, we would not have had the need to travel the long weeks to the harvest hunt.”
She remained still, listening to what they said. Wanting to believe them with all her heart—a heart they had opened to desires she had never thought to discover when the mating hunt had begun. They surrounded her, Cheveyo sitting on one side, Tate still 42
cradling her close from behind. And she felt the beginning of hope spread through her veins.
“We can go back to our tribe unmated.” Tate spoke the words, his voice tight and unhappy behind her. “And our lives will go on. Although they will be darker without you.
Our spirits will miss what they have found in you, the piece that completes our whole.
But we don’t want to. We don’t want to live without you beside us. We want to mate, to join our spirit totems to yours as our flesh merges and binds us into one. We would choose to build our tribe, our future, with you—Nilana, great huntress, who could be our mate.”
“Is it truly hard to accept that you could find happiness with us?” Cheveyo asked at last. “Have we been that unpleasing to your body and spirit?” His lips curved up in a small smile with the last, but his gaze was
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