For a moment it felt as if we had never been apart. We nipped at one another, playfully testing back and forth, something we'd done many times before. A means of assessing one another's reaction times, I'd told myself. And yet, as his tongue ran across my muzzle, all of the time we'd spent separated seemed to come boiling back to the surface. All the nights I had spent longing to curl up at his side, days when light had streamed into the den and I had wanted nothing more than to run at his side on the slopes. His gesture made my heart stop, this different level of affection that he'd never expressed before.
He breathed my name, the warmth of the air in my ear sending a pleasurable tingling sensation down my spine and the fur rising to attention. There was a heaviness to Vortigern's voice that had me rooted to the spot, not wanting to step away from him and break whatever this was, and in truth completely unable to move. In that moment, his words were all that existed, and I strained to hear every syllable even as he spoke directly into my ear. I've missed you. I pressed the side of my face to his, wanting to be closer to him, afraid and yet eager to hear what he might say next.
As my mate. The word seemed to echo around inside my head as Vortigern pulled back, stepping away from me so that we might look upon each other once more. Looking into those brilliant orange eyes, all of the doubt and questioning of what it all meant faded away. In their place there was certainty and devotion and...love. Of course.
The look of astonishment at his words quickly softened, my eyes unwilling to stray elsewhere, for nothing else in the world existed in this moment.