Page 79 of Hunting for her Heart
“Fuck, I can’t wait for this to be over,” Bo says, running a frustrated hand down his face. He glances at Willow then smirks. “I can’t wait for my mother to meet you.”
“Do you think she’ll like me?” Willow asks nervously.
Ronan huffs in amusement as Bo grins at her. “Like you? She’s gonnaloveyou. Probably more than she loves me, her own kid.”
“What if she doesn’t think I’m good enough for you?” she asks.
“Nonsense,” Ronan says, squeezing her against him. “Miryam believes in fated mates. The second she sees usreturn with you, she’ll know exactly who you are, and she’ll be thrilled.”
“You just wait,” Bo says with a nod. “She’ll hug you before me.”
Willow doesn’t say anything, but the tension seems to fade as she listens to him talk about his mother. He isn’t lying either; everything he says is absolutely true. His mother is amazing and probably the kindest person in Redmere, always willing to lend a hand to anyone who so much as looks like they need assistance.
She’d probably make a great chief, except for the fact that she can’t say no to anyone, and sometimes a chief needs to make hard decisions.
“Maybe we should do some more testing with the flint rock,” Ronan suggests, bringing me back to the present.
“It might be hard to gauge if it works here now,” Bo says, glancing around the cave. He isn’t wrong. It’d be near impossible to tell if anything new was growing in here.
“We might have to take a chance with the flint rock,” I say, unsure how to test it. “If it’s wrong, we can always come back.”
He presses his lips together in a thin line before nodding. “Alright, well, since we’re staying here for the rest of the day, we need to eat some food, then I think it’s time for Willow’s swimming lesson.”
“Really?” she asks, and I can’t tell if she’s nervous or excited.
“Yes. They’ve both given you a lesson, and it was enough to stop you drowning when the grimclaw attacked, barely. But for my own peace of mind, I need you to be proficient at it. Redmere is an island and has several great swimming spots inland. It’s imperative that you are safe.”
She turns in his arms and smiles up at him. “You’ll teach me this time?”
“I can’t be any worse than them.”
“Hey!” Bo says with mock irritation. “I think I did pretty good.”
“You did.” She glances at me. “You both did.”
We move to sit around the fire, and Ronan insists on feeding her. Ever since the first day, she’s never refused our need to hand-feed her. It’s not necessarily a fated mate thing, but it is a Redmere thing. Or perhaps it’s a warrior thing. The need to protect and take care of her has always been strong.
And now, cementing the bond between us, I can feel a piece of her in my heart. If I think hard about it, I can literally feel it leading me right to where she’s sitting across from me. I’ve felt it since I first met her, but it’s so much more tangible now, almost as if I could reach out with my hand and grab the tether.
When it’s time for the swimming lesson, neither Bo nor I want to be apart from her, so we join them. We quickly realize it’s the way we should have been teaching her from the beginning. With more than enough hands to hold her up while we demonstrate how to move.
It only takes about thirty minutes before she’s able to paddle from one side of the pond to the other. Even if she does look close to going under eighty percent of the time, she still makes it without her head going under.
Bo scoops her up and spins her in a circle as he yells in celebration. “You did it!”
“I swam!” she says excitedly, and I feel a small burst of happiness in my chest. I’m not sure if it’s my own emotion, enjoying seeing her like this, or if the bond is sharing some of what she feels, but either way, it makes me smile.
“Can we go in the hot spring now?” she asks, when their celebration finally stops.
“As you wish, little mate,” Bo says as he sets her on a large rock and hoists himself out of the water. He lifts her back up as Ronan and I follow them toward the hot spring, hanging back a little to talk.
“Do you think we’ll have much trouble tomorrow?” I ask him. “Trying to get her across the finish line?”
He stops walking, but continues to stare at her as his lips press together in a tight line. “We might. A handful of them will be no match for us. But there could be dozens waiting to attack us at once.”
“You think they’d work together? They can’t share their claim.”
“But it’s possible they have a temporary truce to try to dispose of us before they attack one another.”
