Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
She was the prettiest Little he’d ever seen. Her tiny button nose and porcelain skin were mesmerizing. He wanted to see her blue eyes again.
He’d fed her a bottle when they’d first arrived. He’d figured she probably hadn’t eaten much that morning since she’d been so nervous, and he hadn’t wanted her to wake up ravenous.
Luckily she’d taken the bottle without stirring. His sweet Little girl had sucked it down and continued to sleep. Perhaps she also hadn’t slept well last night or even for a week.
None of those things were uncommon. From what he’d heard, every mate felt some level of panic on the day of their ceremony. And who could blame them? They had no idea what to expect. Fated mates spent their entire twenty years protected and coddled more than other females in the valley.
Decades ago, it had been determined that Alpha Protectors would be united with their Fated mates on the female’s twentieth birthday. The age was relatively arbitrary, but the custom had been in place for a long time.
Gavin was thirty-three. Most Alpha Protectors learned of their mate’s birth at some point in their own childhood, but sometimes an Alpha might be even older when his mate was finally born.
Gavin’s brother, Felix, had been twenty-five when his mate, Khloe, had been born. Felix had all but given up on the notion of being matched with a mate. Fate had Her reasons, though. Felix had mated a few months ago. Gavin’s mate had been born three months after Khloe.
Nevertheless, twenty was still very young. Gavin couldn’t blame his precious girl for her anxiety. He would have been far more concerned if she hadn’t been unnerved by the entire process of pomp and circumstance. She’d probably been in a state for weeks or months as her looming mating grew closer.
What she couldn’t have understood was that the two of them would click together instantaneously, which would put all her apprehension to rest in no time. But first she needed to awaken.
Finally Molly whimpered and squirmed in his arms.
He was sitting in the rocking chair in her nursery, and he smiled down at her with all the warmth and promise he felt as she opened her pretty eyes.
“Hey there, Little one,” he whispered.
She blinked several times before licking her plump pink lips. “Are we at your home?”
“Our home, Little one. And yes. We’ve been here a while. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I bet you needed the sleep.”
She slowly pushed herself to sitting. “You were holding me all this time?” Her cheeks turned pink.
“Yes, Baby girl. I enjoyed every moment of it. I will hold you often.”
She frowned adorably.
He chuckled. “You’ll see. Can you feel the bond between us?”
She hesitated and then nodded.
“It’s powerful, and it will continue growing every hour until we can’t stand to be separated.”
Gavin unfastened the cuff on his sleeve and rolled it up to show her the mark on his forearm. It was an exact duplicate of the one she was born with.
“Wow,” she whispered. “I always heard our marks would match, but it’s still strange to see.” She lifted her hand and reached with one finger as if to touch it.
Gavin stopped her with a gentle grip on her wrist. He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed the tips. “The mark is powerful, Little one. When you touch it, it will make you feel things you’ve never experienced. Hell, I haven’t ever felt that way either, of course.”
“Just touching it?” she asked.
Gavin nodded. “That’s what I’m told. And the sensations will increase to proportions we can’t grasp when we align our marks against each other.” He turned her arm over, knowing exactly where her mark was.
She wore a gorgeous ivory dress that had delicate lace at the wrists. The lace was intentionally woven in such a way that he could see her mark through it, and yet it gave her some protection before they were prepared to align their wrists.
“What…” She cleared her throat. “No one told me anything special would happen if our marks touched. I thought their existence was simply a way Fate used to match us up.”
“The reason no one mentioned anything about their power to you is simple. Most citizens of the valley don’t know what happens between an Alpha Protector and his mate. There are many customs we live by in the mountains that are nothing like what you’re accustomed to in the valley.”
Her face paled, and her lips parted, but she didn’t speak.
She’d undoubtedly considered asking him about the local customs and then decided against it. He couldn’t blame her. She was going to suffer from information overload in the coming days.
Suddenly she glanced out the window and stiffened. She surprised him by pushing off his lap to stand in front of him, wringing her hands together, totally flustered.