Protective and caring, loyal, and fiercely territorial.
The ache of spending so long wanting that gnawed at me, and finally pushed me into his embrace.
“I’d prefer your arms over a blanket any day.” The quiet confession slipped out of me. I waited for Mason to tense, to show some way of disliking what I said, but he didn’t. He only tightened his hold on me, skin-to-skin, completely vulnerable.
My head rested on his chest, and I splayed my hand right over where his heart beat strongly. With each beat, I imagined it was a heart I’d been allowed to have. To give me my own in return.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his voice almost too loud in the serene cave.
“You first,” I avoided.
“I’m thinking about if I hadn’t been such an ass all those years ago, I could have spent seven years having this.”
“Sex?”
“Yes, but having you in my arms,” he murmured, “where it feels like you belong. Where you should have always belonged.”
I tried to smile, pressing a kiss onto his chest, but the weight of my own secrets shoved my peace down. They crawled up my throat, suffocating me. I was unfurling, the safety of the moment guiding me.
This was my alpha. I was safe.
“I need to tell you something,” I whispered. “I… Iwantto tell you that. But I don’t know how.”
Mason’s fingers combed through my hair, untangling any knots caused by our intimacy. “I’ll listen. We have plenty of time, right? June’s looking after Cassandra. There’s no rush.”
“You should be calling her Cassie.”
Mason laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest. “After just one time of us getting close like this? I don’t think—”
“You should call her Cassie,” I repeated, “because you’re her father, and a father shouldn’t be made to be as formal as I forced you to be with her. Cassie… she’s yours, Mason.Ours.”
At first, there was no reaction. No stiffening beneath me, no pulling away. I held my breath, my heart hammering in my throat. That was it—I couldn’t take it back now. I could only wait and hope that I hadn’t completely ruined something that was already barely rebuilding.
“Mason?”
Beneath me, he began to move. He didn’t pull away, not fully, but he shifted to look at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was deathly quiet, laced with a threat I hated hearing. Not a threat against me, but a holding back of the anger that I saw flickering in his eyes when I finally looked at him.
My defenses rose, and I couldn’t tamp it down, but Mason was already speaking again. “Cassie was celebrating her seventh birthday when we fought off the ifrit. That means…” His jaw clenched. “Did you know you were carrying my child when you left Honeycreek?”
My child.
The way he said it shuddered through me, not entirely unpleasantly. It was the claim I wanted Cassie’s father to have—the claim and protection she deserved.
“Yes,” I confessed. I wanted every layer pulled back over my body. I wanted to hide, to run, to not have to spill these secrets, knowing Mason would hate me all the more for it.
“Christ, Bryce, what the f—”
“What was I supposed to do?” I snapped, my vulnerability turning me sharp-edged. There was a wolf I had buried deep within me, vicious and ready for her own fight. “You made me feel like nothing—no, not even that. You made me feel so small, Mason, that I felt I was barely better than the shit you wiped off your fucking boot. You and the pack. You let them say such vile things to me; you never stopped them. You preach safety now, yes, embracing and welcoming anything that once wasn’t welcomed, but back then, you were an asshole.”
“I was,” he shouted. “Anger and hurt cracked his voice. And I’ve spent the last seven years hating myself for it, feeling this emptiness ever since you left. Now I know—it was because you took something of ours with you. Cassie isn’t only yours; she’s mine, too. How could you make that decision alone, Bryce?”
“Because I was terrified, Mason!” I shouted right back, pulling away from him. I yanked my sweatshirt to my chest, covering myself. Glaring at me, Mason did the same, tugging on his pants. “I was terrified you’d reject her the same way you rejected me. I didn’t think you would protect her. If you couldn’t protect me, then I had no idea if you would protect her. I couldn’t risk it. Not around you back then, and not aroundthem. It doesn’t matter how many fires they put out, how much good they do around town; they still shunned one of their own. They caused me so much damage, Mason.”
I wanted him to gather me in my arms, to once again acknowledge that his pack had been wrong, that he’d force eachof them to the floor in forgiveness of what they had done to me. I wanted my alpha to make it better. To have his hand take mine, to say that everything would be okay, and he would stay, and we’d figure it out. That he was hurt, but we could talk it through until there was no more anger and resentment between us.
But he didn’t. He only stood up and pulled on his shirt.
“Where are you going?” I asked, the bite gone from my voice. All that was left was a hollow emptiness.
