I wear his steel.

  I have faced dangers in the Forest that would make many women run screaming for the nearest man, and I have stared down beasts with teeth enough to tear me apart. Yet somehow, it seems the most dangerous creature I have ever encountered is the one I chose to love. Scar.

One would think that after all the time I have spent surviving on my own, I might have learned when to keep my mouth shut, but apparently, that particular lesson has escaped me entirely. Either that, or I am simply too stubborn to recognize when I am pushing a man toward the very thing he has been trying to keep at bay. Scar says I did nothing to bring this about, but I know how many questions I have asked and how often I have challenged him. Whatever the reason, I have managed to find myself in a situation I never expected, and I am still trying to decide whether I want to scream, strike something, or sit very quietly until I can make sense of it all. I think I shall sit silently. Yes, that is what I shall do, for I seem to have run out of anything useful to say.

Scar collared me.

There. I have said it, and hearing the words does not make them any easier to believe. I fought him. Of course I fought him. What else would anyone expect of a Panther who has spent her life answering to herself? I fought with every ounce of stubborn pride I possess, convinced that if I fought hard enough, I could make him understand that I was not some helpless female to be caught and claimed. Yet he was every bit as determined as I was, and in the end, today of all days, he pinned me face-forward over the lead sled, dropped his leathers, and took me from behind while fastening a slender steel collar about my neck. A tooth pendant hung from it, a mark meaning his name carved into its surface, and with that final click of steel, everything I thought I understood about the man I love was thrown into question.

“Well, there’s that. I am good with it. You will learn to be,” he said.

I swear by every spirit of the Forest that I wanted to turn around and bite him. Perhaps that is not the most dignified thing to admit, but I have never made a habit of pretending to be something I am not. There he stood, fastening his leathers and perfectly at ease with what he had done, as if he had merely finished some ordinary task that had been waiting too long to be completed. Meanwhile, I was left smoothing my skins down while trying to comprehend how the man who loved me, who had allowed me to remain wild and free, and who had first become my mate, could stand there so certain that this was where I belonged: in his collar.

I asked him why he was doing this to me, and his answer left me with no words at all. He told me it had been a long time coming.

I had believed that whatever struggle existed between us was something we were still working through, never realizing he had considered this from almost the beginning. I had not the slightest clue. Not one. Oh, and I can assure you that being rendered speechless by a man is an experience I do not particularly care to repeat, even if that man is him.

Then, as if he had not done quite enough to leave me standing there with my thoughts in complete disarray, he remarked that I would have plenty to think about now. He said it as casually as one might comment on the weather, and then that was that. He left me standing beside the sled, staring after him, the steel cold against my skin and his mark, his name carved into the tooth, resting against my throat. I could not think of a single clever thing to say. Imagine that. Me, Melete, without a retort.

I do have to admit that Scar also made it clear that, for now, nothing else about my life was to change. Ember could remain with me if she wished, and I would still be permitted to hunt, so long as I pleased him. I have turned those words over in my mind more times than I care to admit. There is reassurance in knowing that he does not intend to strip away everything that makes my life my own, and I would be lying if I said that meant nothing to me. But there is a condition attached to it now, one I cannot simply ignore. I am property, and I am not certain what to do with that knowledge. I suspect it will take more than one quiet evening to figure it out.

I know what the collar means in the world Scar comes from. I know what is expected of a Panther girl caught by a man, and I know that Scar is not a man who follows a belief only when it suits him. He has always been a man of his own convictions, a man who trusts the natural order as he understands it. I have seen that in him from the beginning. What I did not understand was how much he had been holding back, or how long he had been holding it back, because of me.

Because he loved me.

That is the part that keeps returning to me. He loved me enough to hesitate before taking me from the Forest. He loved me enough to struggle with something that, to him, may have seemed as natural as breathing. I had mistaken that hesitation for a settled decision, perhaps because I wanted to believe he could love me without asking me to face this particular truth about his world. I never imagined he had been carrying the thought of a collar since almost the beginning, waiting while I went about being my unsuspecting self.

Then he decided the waiting was over, and that is what I struggle to understand. How can the man who hesitated because he loved me also be the man who finally chose to claim me?

Scar is not a beast to be outmaneuvered, nor is he some man who will simply retreat because I have sharpened my tongue and bared my teeth. I know this. I have always known it, if I am honest with myself. Yet knowing a thing and accepting that it applies to me are two very different matters.

Still, I am Melete. A collar does not erase the years that made me, though legend has it that it erases my past. I refuse to accept that. Nor does steel around my throat suddenly make me forget how to hunt, fight, think, or survive. I am not going to wake tomorrow as some entirely different woman, and I doubt Scar would know what to do with me if I did. The Panther girl in me remains, still watching, still thinking, and very much still capable of being a deadly nuisance when the occasion calls for it.

Whether I shall learn to wear this collar without feeling its weight in every sense of the word remains to be seen. Scar seems confident that I will.

Scar is confident about many things.

I am less certain.

What unsettles me most is not the steel itself, nor even the fact that he made the decision when I had done nothing wrong. It is the knowledge that something has changed between us, and I cannot yet see all the ways it will affect us. I love him. I chose him, and I had already decided that where he leads, I will follow. I had thought that choice would be made one step at a time, with room for my stubborn arguments and my understanding to catch up with his. I had not expected him to draw a line in the Forest and tell me, in his own blunt way, that the matter was settled.

I do not have any answers for myself tonight. I have only the cold touch of steel, the memory of his words, and the maddening certainty that the man who placed his collar around my neck is the same man whose absence can leave a hollow in me that no amount of stubbornness can fill.

He told me I would learn to be good with it. He will teach me how to be pleasing. Pleasing.

What does that even mean?

For now, I am going to sit with my thoughts, try to understand the man I love a little better, and resist the urge to find something heavy to throw at him the next time he looks entirely too pleased with himself. I make no promises regarding that last part. After all, a Panther must retain some of her pride, must she not? And if I am to learn what it means to wear his collar, then I shall have to do so as myself, with all that has always made me who I am; the good and the bad. But can I be all that and be pleasing? Somehow, I do not think so.

I guess I will learn.

So, when he wakes, he can take comfort in knowing that he was right about one thing.

I certainly have plenty to think about now.