Perfect Mate Read Online Free PDF

heightening
     as he debated what to do. Cormac held Nell down without quarter, but his hands on
     her wrists were surprisingly gentle.
    “You never knew Magnus,” Nell snapped at him. Her mate had never mentioned anyone
     called Cormac—not that he’d mentioned many people from his past. Magnus had liked
     isolation.
    “I didn’t say I had,” Cormac said. Damn him, he wasn’t even breathing hard. “He was
     of my clan, but he was gone from them by the time I found them. He’d abandoned them.”
    “I know.” Nell couldn’t stop growling.
    Shifters, especially bears, could live apart from their clans, and often did in the
     wild, but they still had deep ties, and the clan leader could call on them when he
     needed to. Clan leaders even had a spell that could drag clan members to him in times
     of desperation—useful in the days before cell phones.
    A Shifter who cut all ties, including the blood bonds that made the spell work, was
     unusual, and the clan declared said Shifter dead to them. Magnus had cut ties, because
     he disagreed with his clan leader’s very old-fashioned and rather severe form of ruling.
    Nell had been young and so soppily in love she’d thought it romantic that he’d decided
     to strike out on his own. She’d had no trouble traveling with him until they’d found
     a place where they could be utterly alone—herself and him—to start a new clan.
    The problem was, when a Shifter severed himself from his clan, he lost part of himself.
     Magnus had regretted his action almost at once, but hadn’t known how to undo it. He’d
     certainly have been punished if he’d gone back, maybe even with death. He hadn’t been
     wrong that his clan leader had a cruel side.
    If Magnus had lived long enough, he might have found a way to reconcile and bring
     Nell with him, but he’d grown more and more remote and depressed. Nell had seen the
     signs, but hadn’t really understood them until too late.
    “They didn’t know about you,” Cormac said. His hands softened on her wrists, his eyes
     returning to the deep blue. “Magnus never told anyone he’d taken a mate or had cubs.
     No one knew until about six months ago. Then I knew I had to find you.”
    “What do you mean, you knew you had to find me? If Magnus never told anyone, how did
you
know?”
    “He wrote a letter before he died, all about you, but it was lost. Not until a Shifter
     I knew in Canada found it, in a museum in Winnipeg of all places, and sent it to me,
     did any of the clan know of your existence. Magnus confessed he’d taken you as mate,
     and asked one of us to look after you when he was gone. So I decided to find you and
     carry out his wishes. Better late than never.”
    “So that bullshit about searching for a mate was just . . . bullshit?”
    “No.” Cormac’s smile came back. “But it was a good excuse to get transferred out here.
     I didn’t tell my clan leader about you or the letter, because he’s still old school.
     Now that Shifters are civilized, he might not try to kill a cast-off Shifter’s cubs
     and mate, but he might make life very hard for you. If I take you under my protection,
     that won’t happen. And I didn’t lie about wanting you as mate. After I read that letter,
     and Magnus’s description of the incredible woman you are, I knew you’d be the perfect
     one for me.”
    “You are so full of . . . Get
off
me.”
    Cormac climbed to his feet so quickly that Nell was left, stunned, in the dirt, on
     her back. Then he reached down with his big hand and pulled her up, strengthening
     the tug at the last minute so she landed against him.
    He was warm, solid, comforting. Her emotions were in turmoil—Magnus, abandoning her
     as he’d abandoned his clan, but permanently. Magnus writing a letter, telling his
     clan all about her, begging someone to come and take her as mate so she’d be cared
     for when he was gone. The letter lost so no one had come, and Nell had been alone.
     Now Cormac