Apprehended By My Mate novel Chapter 58

He places his hands on my shoulders and we look at the mirror watching each other. He moves his hands and I watch as he runs them up and down my arms stopping when he gets to my wrist. I feel him fingering each pale, pink, raised skin that covers my wrist and forearm. I close my eyes as strong emotions crash through my body.

"Are you ashamed and disgusted by what I have done?" I re-open my eyes and look into Conner's blues one through the mirror. He doesn't say anything as he slowly turns me around to face him.

"No Clare, I am not ashamed or disgusted. You were in pain, pain I couldn't take away and you did it the only way that saw plausible to you. You see it as a weakness but I see it as a strength of everything you have gone through."

"You have held it together for such a long time, I don't think many women would have been able to hold it together for as long as you did. It shows that you are strong Clare, you may not see it but I do and so do the people around you. Your strength is as strong and as beautiful as you are on the inside and out. Clare the strength you possess is true beauty and something many do not have."

He lifts my wrist and kisses each individual scar causing me to sob softy at his words and the soft way he cares for me. I don't see what he sees. I see someone who is weak and incapable of doing anything. It is like he knows my thoughts because he turns me back around to face the mirror. I look away knowing after his words I will never be able to look at myself again.

"Clare look at yourself and see what I see." I shake my head as tears freely fall down my face.

"I can't Conner. I am not strong or beautiful." I guess even after a month of help that Derek's lessons are still drilled inside my head.

"Just take a look. It will be ok, I will be here with you." His hands are back on my shoulders and I slowly lift my head and look at myself in the mirror. All I see is a weak and tear faced women.

"To be able to survive a mark being burnt away and losing the mate connection shows a special strength, but to be able to burn your own mark away knowing you are the cause of the pain and losing your connection, I cannot even express the bravery and strength that shows in a person." I reach up and touch the mark never thinking of it that way.

Conner moves to the other side of my and brushes a spot right between my shoulder and neck causing me to shiver.

"Here Clare is where I am going to place a new mark. A mark that shows that you are mine and shows you how much I care for you, a bond that will never be broken. I will not mark you until you are ready whether that is today and five years from now because I know when I do mark you I want there to be no doubt Clare. I will wait and if you never want me to mark or mate with you than I am fine with that as long as I have you in my arms than everything will be alright."

I am filled with so emotions that I don't know how to sort out. So I do the only thing that I know, I turn around and press my lips against Conner's. I kiss him softly trying to express all the emotions he is making me feel into the kiss. Conner returns the kiss and the way he his kissing me I know he knows what I am trying to say.