“Let’s call it a tie?” he said, mimicking back what I’d said a hundred times to him over the years. My heart swelled at the love that laced his words.

“I promise I won’t threaten your friends without running it by your first. But if I think they don’t have pure and honorable intentions, I will destroy them. Do you understand me? There is only so much I can tolerate, Jess, and you have to understand that you are it for me. You are it.” He was fierce. “There is no other, and there will be no other. So I will fight to the death and beyond to keep you.”

My legs trembled, just the slightest motion, but he saw. His words were like lava, flowing through my body and into my soul. The jump from friends to lovers had been a quick progression, but in reality, we’d been moving this way for a long time. I’d just been too pigheaded to see it. Braxton had been patiently waiting for me. I knew I never saw him with other women because he’d never wanted me to.

“How long have you loved me for?” I couldn’t hide my honest curiosity.

Louis laughed again. “You’re cute. Obtuse, but cute.”

I flipped him off. “Shut it, sorcerer, you don’t get to butt in here.”

Braxton reached out and captured my hand, his thumb rubbing over the soft, fleshy part of my palm. “I’ve loved you since we were children, but as a mate since we were about sixteen.” His eyes held me captive. “Do you remember that season we both came into our powers? We’d just learned to shift and the emotions were so overwhelming. Dealing with new energies, our animals, it was a crazy time.”

I nodded, that was not an experience I imagined I’d ever forget.

“We’d just come back from running in the forest, all of us and you. You shifted to human and were standing in the vines, naked, dirt all over you. You threw back your head and laughed at whatever moronic thing Jake had said.” Braxton’s voice was huskier now. “Seeing you there hit me like never before. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t take my eyes from you. Fuck… I was slammed by my feelings. I don’t know why it was that moment, I’d seen you that way a million times, but I knew then that you were mine.”

I stepped closer, my right hand rising to rest over his heart. “I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up.”

Every part of me was filled with emotion. I remembered what Louis had told me long ago, that without the lows you couldn’t really feel the highs.  I couldn’t imagine anything higher.