Cassidy and Diego looked at each other a moment longer, then Cassidy turned and walked out of the house. She didn’t bother with shoes; she walked barefoot outside to the swath of grass and brush down the common. She walked past houses of her friends and extended family, and Donovan’s friends and family. She walked all the way to the eight-foot-high cinderblock wall that marked the end of Shiftertown. Why humans had built the wall, she never understood—nothing but scorching desert lay beyond it.

Cassidy leaned on this wall, soaking the cool of it into her bones.

Donovan’s killer. Hers to kill, quickly or slowly. Her right as the mate whose mate bond had been broken by murder. Even Donovan’s mother didn’t have the bond that Cassidy had shared with Donovan. The vengeance kill belonged to the mate.

Cassidy knew that more lay behind her sudden despair besides Reid not being the evil killer she’d wanted him to be. Reid was responsible, but his finger hadn’t pulled the trigger. Those human hunters were still at large, still fair game, still hers.

She knew damn well that part of her grief was for the severing of one mate bond and the beginning of another.

How could this happen so quickly? Eric had lost his mate, Kirsten, when Jace had been born, and Eric had never shown any inclination to mate again. Having offspring lessened the mating instinct, that was true, but though Eric occasionally had casual relationships with females, he hadn’t made another mate-claim, hadn’t even voiced the inclination to.

Cassidy had thought she’d be like him, letting forty years go by before she even declared herself interested again.

Then she’d met Diego, a human who’d bound her and arrested her for little more than being Shifter. But he’d made Cassidy start erasing Donovan from her heart.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

And yet, the mate bond sang.

Cassidy screamed to drown it out. She beat her fists on the wall, the cement grating her skin. She slapped her palms to the stone, over and over, her frustration, fear, and anguish boiling out of her.

“Stop.” Diego’s warm voice was in her ear, his strong hands closing over hers. He pulled her from the wall and gathered her into his arms. “Don’t, amada mia.”

Cassidy turned to the strength of his embrace. “I loved him. I loved him.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want that to go away.”

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” Diego asked.

She nodded, tears flooding her eyes. “Donovan deserves to be avenged. And I couldn’t do it.”

Diego pulled her close. “Don’t, mi ja. We think that if we keep hunting, keep trying to fix what hurt them, they’ll stay alive somehow. But that’s not what keeps them alive. It’s us, remembering the good of them.”

“Oh, Goddess, Diego, I don’t want to forget him.”

“You never have to.”

She looked up at him again. “I’m feeling the mate bond for you. It’s erasing the one I had for him. I don’t want that!”

“Mate bond?”

“It’s what Shifters feel for each other when the mating is right. It’s a magical thing—a Goddess thing.”

Diego’s black brown eyes were as dark as night. “And that’s what you feel for me?”

“Yes.”

Diego gazed down at her, his lips parted. Cassidy cursed herself for babbling it all out to him. He was human—how could he understand? Maybe the last thing he wanted was a Shifter woman confessing she considered herself emotionally bound to him.

The next thing she knew, Diego was crushing her into the wall, his body heat and scent all over her.

“Damn it, Cassidy,” he whispered.

She opened her mouth to explain and found Diego’s mouth silencing her with a strong, hot kiss. The cement wall scraped her back, but Diego was hard against her front, hemming her in, his body so damn hot.

Cassidy wanted him, and she didn’t care who knew it. Her hands went to his bu**ocks, and she pulled him against her.

Diego’s mouth was hot and hard, taking. Gentle fingers wiped away her tears while he kissed her like he couldn’t get enough of her.

He tugged the laces that held up her sweatpants. She wore nothing under them, so when he yanked them down, his fingers could sink right into her heat.

So erotic, to be against the wall while the hottest man she’d ever met started her toward ecstasy.

Cassidy tugged at his belt, then his zipper. Diego almost ripped his pants open, and then she was rising against the wall, Diego holding her firmly. Hard and blunt, he slid into her, high up inside.

As in the shower, he couldn’t move as much in this position, but he was inside her, holding her so tightly against him. The mate bond surged, its warmth starting in the place they joined and entwining her heart.

“Diego.”

He opened his eyes. They were dark, like starless night, and yet warmer than anything she’d ever seen in her life. Cassidy could see all the way inside him, she thought, and he was letting her.

Diego, I’m falling in love with you.

Diego’s head went back as he felt his pleasure, and his eyes closed, but that didn’t shut him off from her. He was giving her everything, all of him. She barely noticed the harsh wall at her back with Diego’s arms around her and his wild heat inside her.

His seed scalded her even as she hit her own climax. Diego opened his eyes again, cupping her face, the liquid sound of his voice pouring over her. He stared right into her heart, and Cassidy, much to her anguish, let him.

Damn, she was so beautiful. Diego eased off his climax by kissing Cassidy’s face, every inch of it. He could have lost her today.

He kissed her again, her lips and chin, while he slowly and reluctantly withdrew. “If this is the mate bond, I like it.”

“It’s more than that.” Cassidy sounded worried about it.

Diego stayed pressed against her, loving the heat of her against his groin. “No problem. We can go out to dinner sometimes too.”

“Diego.” The word ended on a sob.

Diego smoothed her hair, kissed it. He thought he understood what was up with her. Cassidy had lost her mate—her true love. She feared that falling in love again meant she’d not really loved Donovan.

Not true. The heart, the human one at least, could form strong bonds with many people. Diego loved his mother and his brother, and what he’d had with Jobe could be called love—not in a g*y way, the macho side of his brain quickly added, but in a best-friend-a-guy-could-ever-have kind of way.