Wild Invitation

treasure every moment of that joy. The pain could wait until after he was gone.

Chapter 10
    A MONTH AFTER he’d first met Annie, Zach sat on one of the car-sized boulders scattered around Yosemite and wondered what the hell he was doing wrong. He’d spent every night since the day of the picnic with her. She was fire in his arms, warm, beautiful, and loving…but she continued to withhold a part of herself.
    Most men wouldn’t have noticed. But he wasn’t most men. Every time she waved off his offer to help her in some way, every time she pulled her independence around her like a shield, he noticed. It wounded the cat, confused the man. “Mercy, I can hear you.”
    A tall redhead jumped down from a branch a few feet in front of him. “Only because I let you.”
    He snorted. “You were making enough noise for a herd of elephants.” He threw the sentinel a spare bottle of water.
    “I didn’t want to bruise your masculine ego by sneaking up,” Mercy said, perching on a boulder opposite him. “Not when you already looked so pathetic.”
    “Gee, so thoughtful of you.”
    “I can be a right peach.” She drank some water. “Let me guess—you’ve mated with the little teacher?”
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “Oh, puhleese,” Mercy drawled. “As if you’d bring anyone but your mate to the Pack Circle.”
    “She’s fighting the bond,” he found himself saying.
    “Why?”
    “You’re the female. You tell me.”
    “Hmm.” Mercy capped the bottle and tapped it against her leg. “Did she say why?”
    He stared at her.
    Mercy rolled her eyes. “You did
tell
her that she’s your mate, didn’t you?”
    “She’s a bit resistant to the idea of commitment.” That resistance frustrated the hell out of him, but he was trying to be patient. Not only did he care about her happiness, he wanted her to trust him enough to make the choice—even though there was only one answer he’d accept. “I don’t think she’d react well to the whole ‘till death
really
does us part’ bit.”
    “So you’re making the choice for her?” She raised an eyebrow. “Arrogant.”
    Anger flared. “I want to give her time to become comfortable with me.”
    “Is it working?”
    “I thought so, but the bond hasn’t snapped into being.” The mating bond was an instinctive thing, but the female usually had to accept it in some way for it to go from possibility to truth. “It’s tearing me up, Mercy.” The leopard was lost, hurt. What was wrong with him that Annie didn’t want him?
    “Talk to her, you idiot.” Mercy shook her head. “Has it crossed your little male mind that maybe she’s protecting herself in case you decide to indulge in some hot sex, then flick her off?”
    He growled. “She knows I’d never do that. It’s about the commitment—she’s scared of trusting someone with her heart.” He couldn’t blame her, not after what he’d seen of her parents’ marriage.
    “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Mercy said, “but haven’t you two been joined at the hip for the past month? Pack grapevine says you’ve all but moved into her place.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    “Geez, Zach, I thought you were smart.” Trapping the bottle between her knees, she raised her hands to redo her ponytail. “Sounds to me like she’s already committed to you.”
    She’d given him a key to her apartment, to the place that was her bolt-hole.
His heart slammed against his ribs. No, hethought, he couldn’t have made that big a mistake. “But the bond—”
    “Okay,” Mercy interrupted. “Maybe you’re right, and your Annie’s going to freak about the mating, but let’s say your amazing Psy mind-reading abilities are wrong—”
    He growled.
    “—and she’s ready to risk everything for you. What would keep her from taking the final step?” She raised an eyebrow. “You know the rep we have. Humans tend to think of leopard changelings as affectionate but casual.”
    “That’s not it,” he insisted. “I told her this was serious right at the start.”
    “Let me share a secret with you, Zach. Men have been telling women things for centuries. Then they’ve been breaking our hearts.”
    Zach’s mind filled with the memory of Kimberly Kildaire’s shattered face as Erik Kildaire walked away. Promises, he thought, lots and lots of broken promises.
    “Only way,” Mercy continued, “for you to gain her trust might be to forget the pride that seems to come embedded in the Y chromosome. You ready to wear your heart on