Tied With a Bow

her tears were falling faster now.
    “Come on.” Lifting her in his arms he cradled her against his chest as Emma stood more slowly, her shoulders slumped, her expression tight with grief.
    “She always said she would die young,” Emma whispered roughly, the tears she couldn’t shed rasping in her throat. “The little bitch. Now, she’s going to make the coya cry and Del-Rey is going to get all arrogant and protective, and I . . .” She broke off as a sob escaped. “I won’t know how to survive without Ashley,” she whispered before turning to run back up the stairs.
    Malachi followed more slowly.
    Emma was young, and many of the things she had scented or sensed she had no idea what they meant. Malachi did. Ashley was alive, and she was fighting to stay that way, that was all they could ask for.
    His arms tightened around his mate as she settled her head on his chest and wrapped her arms tight around his neck.
    “Who is Gideon?” she asked, refusing to let herself believe that anything could possibly happen to take Ashley out of their world. She was too vital, too much a part of the lives of those she loved, and those who loved her.
    “A part of the past,” he answered her softly, and Isabelle had a feeling the past was where Gideon probably should have stayed.
    “Then why is he here now?”
    To that, Malachi grimaced. “To open old wounds,” he said with an edge of regret. “That’s the only reason he’s here, Isabelle. That’s the only reason any of us came here. To open old wounds.”
    She laid her head back on his chest as Emma opened the stairwell door to the floor their rooms were on.
    “We’ll stay in your room,” he told her as the other girl headed for the door of the room Isabelle had stayed in her first night.
    Carrying her in, he didn’t lay her on the bed, he didn’t sit her in a chair alone. As Emma closed the door behind them rather than joining them, Malachi sank into one of the chairs, holding her close, his face buried against her neck.
    “I would have died without you,” he suddenly whispered, the muscles of his arms contracting as he fought not to hold her too close. As he fought to not pull her into his skin, to drag her straight down to the depths of his soul.
    “Don’t say that.” Holding on to him, Isabelle knew it was true, just as she knew she would give her life for him, she knew without him, her life would lose hope.
    It had only been days since her eyes had met his across that bar. Less than forty-eight hours, yet just as her grandfather had once warned her, when she found her true love she would know it in an instant, and she would face death to hold on to it.
    She was holding on tight.
    “Don’t leave me,” she needed him. She needed his touch, his kiss, but more than anything, she needed the knowledge that nothing, no one could reach out to nearly separate them again.
    Rising to his feet and stepping to the bed Malachi laid her down gently before stretching out beside her and taking her in his arms in again.
    Simply to hold her.
    “Our doctors were already flying in for our tests, so they’re likely already with Ashley,” he told her as she lay as close to him as clothes would allow. “The mating heat was different with us than with others, and our scientists have been working desperately to figure out what causes it and how to ease it.”
    Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t want to know.” And she didn’t. Staring up at him, feeling the warmth of him, allowing herself to believe that she was really here with him, that she was really in his arms rather than facing the fate Holden would have sent her to. “I don’t want to know, Malachi. I waited for you. All these years I watched and I waited, knowing, somehow, that what we would have would be different. That it would be worth the lonely nights and the fears that I had missed you somewhere.” She gave a brief shake of her head. “I don’t want to lose that.”
    What had drawn them together, the mating heat, as they called it. Was it really so different, so unique from what it was with those who didn’t have Breed genetics? Or was it merely an amplified form that took out the process of waiting, denying, or turning away out of fear as many people did? As technology seemed to advance, so did the fears and the roadblocks that stood against love.
    “I don’t want to lose a second of what we are, Malachi,” she told him as his head lowered, as his lips touched hers. “Not even a