The wind was still up against the tall window, and the house lay quiet under it, with the heating ticking in the walls, the staff moving low on the ground floor, and a heron calling once out on the lake. Roman lay awake in the dark of his own bed. He was happy, and through all of it he could hear her crying down the hall.
It troubled him, and the happiness stayed anyway. She was behind a door with an enormous day on her, and he could do nothing to stop it. What troubled him more was that she had waited until she was alone. She had kept her grief from him, which meant she did not yet trust him, and he minded that more than the sound.
*Mate. Go. There. Mine.*
He got up and went along the hallway, over the carpet and past the lamps, and stood outside her door. He wanted to go in. He wanted to be near her and make it stop.
The crying came through the wood, and he laid one hand flat beside the frame and did not knock. She needed time, and she would come to him when she was ready. He went back to his room and left her door shut.
His phone lit on the bedside table before he had settled. Marcus. He answered lying on his back.
"Still at the office. The press position is set: the Alpha's office confirms a claiming and asks for privacy. That's all that goes out tonight."
Down the hall she cried on, softer now.
"Good. Keep it that short. That is all anyone needs."
He listened past the line for her. Then he said what he had been turning over since the door.
"Marcus. Staff the house full time, from now on. For Elena."
Marcus let his half-second go, and said it would be done. Roman set the phone down and lay in the dark.
The day came back to him, and her crying broke into it twice. The hearing hall, and the moment her scent reached him. The drive, and her at his table. The happiest day of his life, even tonight. He had given her everything: his first name to call him by, his house, his protection, his pack, and a life as the Alpha's mate. Big days were hard. She was his mate, and he was certain of it, but she had yet to feel it. He would give her time and understanding, and he was proud of his patience, because to him it was a kindness.
A mate bond is the deepest connection two people can have. When it forms, their two minds join, and each feels what the other feels, so she would know, past any doubt, that he was the one person meant for her. He had not chosen her, and she could not change it. She was his mate the way she was the person she was born as, whether or not she could feel it yet, and a wolf would have felt it already.
It cannot be forced. It forms only when the other is open to it and lets it in, and a mind closed against it stays closed. A bite forced on a closed mate brings only pain and gives him nothing he wants. Mates most often bond in their most open moments, when neither holds anything back, and there is only one way to reach that: her own yes.
Her crying went on, and he stayed where he was. Once, only once, he let himself think of the bite tonight, of her feeling what he felt and knowing what she was to him, and of the crying and the unease between them ending. But she needed time.
*Go. Now. Mine.*
The wolf went quiet in him, though it still pulled toward her door.
Then the sobs thinned and stopped, and her breath went slow and even, and he knew she had fallen asleep. He lay in the dark, listening, and did not sleep.