Mateo Santiago novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Mated

"Then I'll ask," I said.

Mateo's face went completely still.

I stood in the frozen yard, barefoot, wrapped in two coats.

My wolf rose warm under my ribs, and the split skin behind my ear still stung.

I had never asked a man for anything in my life that I did not already expect him to refuse.

"Mateo Santiago," I said.

"You have a ranch, and a seat, and forty people who would die for you."

"You have never once taken anything that wasn't offered."

"I'm offering."

"Be my mate."

"Not because a bond decides it, and not because you owe me, and not because a Council likes the sound of it."

"Because I choose you, with my own wolf standing here."

He didn't move for a moment.

Then he went down on one knee in the lime dust, a six-foot-four rogue Alpha, and he put his forehead against my stomach.

His whole body shook.

"Yes," he said into my coat.

"Say it again."

"Yes, Sofia."

"Yes."

The mating was on the Saturday, and it was the loudest day Santiago's Rest had ever had.

Chela cooked for three days.

Two hundred people sat at the long tables she had dragged out into the yard.

The kitchen could not hold them, and some of them were from Black Lake.

My aunt came in a pressed dress and sat at the head of the second table with her cane across her knees.

The Hondo Alpha brought a case of apple cider.

The Reader came in her gray poncho and ate three plates of red chile without a word.

She left at dusk with a jar of Chela's pickled peppers under her arm.

They had set one chair at the end of the long table, apart from the rest.

It was an old carved chair that Chela had hauled out of the attic and sanded for three nights.

He took me by the hand and sat me down in it.

"It's your chair now," he said.

"Don't let Chela tell you it's too heavy."

"It is too heavy," said Chela.

Nico stood up on a bench with a mug of cider and no boots, because his boots had never been returned.

"I would like to make a toast," he said.

"To Sofia, who walked into a ranch with eleven dollars and a bad attitude."

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