Chapter 34

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Ava said.

She was so tired. The moment they arrived at the cabin, she’d not had the energy to look around and had ended up back in bed. Now, the following morning, she sat with a blanket wrapped around her, feeling the cold.

She’d never felt the cold before.

Across from where she sat, Caspian was in the kitchen, cooking them up a breakfast. The scents coming from him were making her mouth water.

Ava recalled waking up in the middle of the night a few times, only to have Caspian there, his arms wrapped around her. She didn’t want to rely so heavily on him.

“Why wouldn’t I stay with you?” he asked.

“Don’t you have other important things to do?”

He shrugged. “Nothing is more important than spending time with my mate.”

There he went saying that dreaded M-word again.

Mate.

Ava rubbed at her chest as she felt a sharp pain flooding her body.

She didn’t feel … anything.

Arousal, yes.

The mating hormone? Her body was in complete overdrive, but the mating bond?