She loved him. Kimmie was so right about that. Just hearing Kimmie say it hadn't impacted him as much as realizing it for himself. Jesmind loved him, loved him just like a human woman would love a human man, just like Kimmie said. Jesmind wanted something beyond a simple mating, she wanted something that would last with him. And seeing how her mother and Thean were, she had decided to try that. To create something between them that would draw him back to her again and again after they parted, an endless cycle of parting, reunion, and enjoying it as long as possible before their Were-cat natures drove them apart. He knew that they could never be together all the time like humans, because the nature of the Were-cat would eventually overpower their desire to remain together. And when that happened, they would have to separate for a while, until they spent enough time apart that they were ready to return to one another again.

He closed his eyes and inhaled her scent, felt her in his arms. This was where he wanted to be. This was where he belonged, and it was where he would return when everything was said and done. Jesmind was a part of his life now, a part that could never be replaced. Yes, he had some affection for Mist, and he'd started to feel some interest in Kimmie, but they would never be more than shadows of Jesmind, and would never hold the same place in his heart that she did. And he had the feeling that they both already knew that.

"You're awfully snuggly, my mate," Jesmind told him with an almost childish giggle. "What's gotten into you? And how do I make it happen more often?"

He lifted his head so he could whisper into her cat-ear, which turned towards the sound of his voice. "Have I ever told you, Jesmind, that I love you?" he asked her in a faint whisper.

He could not have produced a more profound reaction in her if he'd have set her hair on fire. He felt her entire body quiver at the sound of those words, and then she seemed to tense, and then to completely relax against him. Then she whirled in his arms so fast he didn't realize it, and kissed him with a ferocity that told him just what she thought about what he said to her.

Strange. It took seeing his mate in a moment of weakness to appreciate exactly what he felt for her, and come to truly understand how she felt about him. He thought about that in the scant moments he was coherent enough to think; Jesmind was the best kisser he'd ever had the pleasure to experience, and trying to form logical thoughts while being branded by her kiss was no mean feat.

Jesmind pulled away and gazed deeply into his eyes, her heart behind hers. "I love you, Tarrin," she told him in a voice charged with emotion. "I have since the day I first saw you." And then she kissed him again with even more fervor, backing up her words in a way that proved beyond any means that she meant every word she said.

Jasana wiped at a little tear in her eyes as she drifted back to Kimmie and Thean, who looked on with glowing smiles. "It's about bloody time," Kimmie chuckled, grabbing Jasana and snuggling her, making her giggle. "It looks like your parents have finally decided to stop dancing around each other and face things, cub," she told her.

"Now we can be the family mama promised we could be," Jasana said with a bright smile. "You think I should go over there and get a hug too?"

"You'd best wait, kitten," Thean told her with a smile, patting her on the shoulder. "Give your parents a few moments to themselves. Then they'll be ready to give you all the hugs you want."

Kimmie looked at Thean. "Alright, that's four days, Thean," she said to him smugly. "I win."

"So you do," he laughed.

"Win what?" Jasana asked.

"The other Were-cats made a bet over how long it would take your parents to admit things," Kimmie winked at her. "I won."

"I should never bet against Kimmie when it comes to things like this," Thean said in a teasing voice at her.

"What did you win?" Jasnana asked curiously.

"Oh, nothing really, cub. Adults like to bet for betting's sake." She looked at Thean. "But I will expect a certain male to pay up when we get to Suld," she said in a commanding tone.

"Yes, Kimmie," Thean chuckled ruefully.

There would always be something quite magical about flying to him now.

Tarrin and the others hovered within the Elemental as it continued towards the west, now towards a setting sun, and he could see the ocean on the horizon. True to Kimmie's observation, the Elemental had been moving at such a speed that it got them to the coast in the span of a single day, and the large city of Suld was just barely discernable below. The Elemental had begun to decelerate and descend, but Tarrin had told it to slow even more, so that they would arrive under the safe cover of darkness.

Then again, the idea of returning to the ground seemed like a sad thing. Tarrin had spent the entire time wrapped up with his mate, and they did nothing but talk. Jesmind told him all about the many things she'd seen in her days, and though the presence of Thean and Kimmie kept her from getting too intimate with her recollections, she still managed to say a great deal that helped him fill in the voids of his knowledge about her. He learned that she loved violets, but hated daisies because their scent was repugnant to her. She adored seafood, and lobster in particular was her favorite. She was something of a connoissour of anything sweet, having quite a sweet tooth, willing to travel quite a distance to find someone that made something sweet. She absolutely adored music, and Tarrin was surprised to find out that she had developed a knack for taking the human form because she had been determined to learn how to play the lute when she was younger, and that required her to take the human shape to learn from the man who taught her without sending him into a panic. And also to allow her to play the lute without destroying it. A Were-cat's paws were incapable of playing such a delicate instrument. She didn't play music much anymore, for reasons that even she seemed to not quite understand, almost as if the magic of the music had escaped her over the long years. She liked to read, despite what her mother thought, but preferred stories of fiction and fantasy over what she called "the dusty old ravings of demented lunatics that passes for historical accountings." Jesmind had been alive during much of the time in which those books were written, and she told him that so much of it was so wrong that it made her laugh. Jesmind had an interest in cooking, something he had already realized, but she tended to concentrate on the things she liked rather than being capable of cooking many different kinds of dishes for other people. "Up to now, I only had to cook for myself," she had told him after telling him about that. "Why remember recipes I'll never cook?"

But she did remember those recipes. Talking to her, he realized that Jesmind was alot smarter than anyone, even Triana, seemed to realize. What made her so much different from Thean or Kimmie or Triana was that she didn't have the same burning desire to expand her education. She had a tremendous amount of common sense, and her ability to reason and see to point of the matter was considerable. Jesmind was a much more elemental personality than the intellectual Were-cats, more grounded in her instincts and her senses than the others. That wildness about her was what disguised her mind, made her so deceptively intelligent. She didn't seem so smart because she was still a rather base woman with simple tastes, simple desires, simple motivations, and simple pleasures. She spoke plainly, spoke her mind, and often her mind framed things in elegantly simple terms. She had a wonderfully polarized way of seeing things that boiled everything down to its most simple elements, and it was on that level that she dealt with things. Where others would try to see things in their totality, Jesmind broke them up into little pieces and sought to understand them bit by bit, then expand her mind out and consider the whole as a sum of the parts she had just examined. Jesmind's mind was a delight to him, and he found himself to be totally engaged by it.