He was also looking at the blood on the blanket. Without fear, but rather the cool evaluation of a bad situation she’d heard in his voice when they’d been in combat together, he said, “I think I’m going to die if I don’t get help.”
Wild ideas raced through her mind. “I could carry you to the Apex base and break in—”
“Destiny.” He had to stop to catch his breath before he went on. “I won’t make it. But shifters heal better. Bite me.”
Never bite anyone who isn’t already a shifter had been so ingrained into her that it hadn’t even occurred to her to try it until he’d mentioned it. Cold fear struck deep into her heart at the thought of it. “Ethan, no! I’ll kill you!”
With that same detached calm as when he’d mentioned it, he said, “You said that was rare.” He pulled in a labored breath. “I hate to make you risk it. But it’s my only chance.”
Destiny felt paralyzed. If she bit him, she might kill the man she loved. If she didn’t, she’d be letting him die through inaction.
Her tiger surged up, trying to force her to shift. Destiny pushed back. There was a brief but fierce inner battle. To Destiny’s own surprise, she won.
He wants to be a tiger, said the big cat inside her. He needs to be a tiger. Set me free. He will recover, and we will all be free to hunt together, as we should.
Destiny looked into Ethan’s eyes, and saw the predator within him. Her tiger was right; all she needed to do was set his own beast free.
“You sure, jarhead?”
“I’m sure, mudpuppy.”
She helped him sit up in bed, propped against the headboard and some pillows. Then she stepped back and pulled off her shirt—his shirt. It still smelled like him. She stood naked before him, the jungle air warm on her body and his regard hot on her skin.
When she reached into herself to become a tiger, she found that doing so felt different than it ever had before. When she’d been a child, it had always been completely involuntary and, once she understood that she should only do it when she intended to, a shameful p
roof of her weakness. Later, after she’d started using the pills, it felt like a simple physical action, like drawing her gun, with no sense of connection to the big cat within her.
Destiny had always known that her tiger was a part of herself. But she’d never truly felt it. First she’d fought her tiger, then she’d built a wall between them, and then, when she’d lost her pills, she’d fought her inner beast again. But now she felt attuned to that other self. She was her tiger.
When she’d been a child, her tiger cub had contained the full force of a strong-willed child’s anger and frustration. The little girl trying to suppress those feelings had never had a chance against the part of herself that expressed them.
But now she was an adult, and so was her tiger. She didn’t have to fight herself in a desperate battle for control or lock up her feelings in separate boxes. She could accept all of herself, and just be herself.
I never got to grow up, her tiger said. Those herbs kept me too quiet to grow or learn. I was always a cub at heart. Until you stopped taking them, and I began making up for lost time.
Her tiger had been acting like a rebellious teenager, ever since she’d stopped the pills. No wonder she’d been so much trouble!
And now? Destiny asked, though she already knew the answer.
Now we are one, her tiger purred.
The shift felt as natural as breathing. Destiny avoided looking at Ethan’s face; she was afraid that if she did, her terror of him dying would come rushing back. It was best to simply act, and do it quickly and without thought. She lowered her muzzle to the bed and bit his forearm just deep enough to draw blood.
Destiny became a woman again. She pulled her shirt back on with shaking hands, and turned back to Ethan. If anything was going to—to go wrong—it would happen very quickly. Her gaze focused first on the trickle of blood from his bitten arm, then moved to his chest. He was breathing. And he kept breathing. Was it her imagination, or were the harsh gasps of his breath softening?
“You did it.” There was no mistaking it: his voice was stronger. “Destiny, you saved me.”
The force of her relief made her weak at the knees. She dropped down beside the bed, laid her head on his chest, and let her tears flow. For the first time, she cried in front of another person and felt no shame. She had no need to put up a bright front of strength and cheer. Ethan would understand; Ethan loved her; Ethan would live.
He didn’t tell her to stop crying. He didn’t speak at all. He just held her, stroking her back and hair, while she let herself feel all the pent-up emotion of everything that had happened that day. Everything that had happened since she’d first met him, and turned him away for reasons that now seemed absurd. Who cared about mates when she could have Ethan?
She wept until her tears dried up, replaced with a deep sense of inner peace. At long last, she lifted her head, and looked into the blue-green ocean of his eyes without fear.
Mine, her tiger purred with immense satisfaction and absolute certainty. Our mate.
“What?!” Destiny burst out. “Now you tell me?”
Ethan looked equally amazed and baffled. “Is your tiger saying we’re mates? Because mine is sure of it.”