That wasn’t a good enough word for any of this, but especially not for this last part. He must have felt like his body was being torn apart sinew by sinew.
“Your wolf should never have agreed to it,” Lydia said fiercely. “I can’t believe it let you down like that. It’s still a part of you, even if it hadn’t manifested all the way back then. I know you have trouble putting yourself first, but yoursubconsciousshould at least do it. It’s a survival instinct!”
Case didn’t think his own survival mattered as much as she did, apparently. He only shrugged again. “It was on my side. It warned me it would probably hurt, but I told it to go ahead, and it did. It wanted to protect you too.”
It didn’t make any sense. Your wolf was your instincts and your senses and your primal needs. Those things usually weren’t all that altruistic. They couldn’t afford to be: no species could live very long if its members didn’t do their best to stay alive.
There were complications, obviously. Lydia’s wolf recognized and respected the pack structure, like she did. It was willing to follow Ruth’s orders, even to its own detriment, and if she ever needed to trade her life for the safety of the pack, it would never force her to hesitate. But that was about survival too. It was about knowing that her people came first and that her self-respect would never last if she shoved them all aside to save herself.
But other than that ... well, Lydia would still run into a burning house to save a stranger’s child in danger. But it would be hard to get her wolf to cooperate with her on it. It would have an animal’s instinctive fear of fire without enough biological incentive to override it. Going ahead with that kind of risk would mean bottling her wolf up until she could finish the job. At best, she would have convince it, using a lifetime’s worth of practice.
That was fine and normal. Humans had to do the same thing in that kind of situation; they just thought of it as overcoming their own terror or anxiety.
But somehow, even Case’s primitive instincts had said that saving her life was worth all the pain and risk. He hadn’t pushedhis wolf aside to do what he’d needed to do, because then he would never have turned in the first place. His wolf had gone along with the plan completely, hurling itself fully into him and taking over, all to save her life.
Why?She didn’t understand it at all. Case’s wolf hadn’t even met her at that point! There hadn’t been any burgeoning sense of pack loyalty to deal with.
He had been in unimaginable pain, and both he and his wolf had agreed to make it worse, because that meant there was a chance they could help her.
“That’s not how it works,” Lydia said. She couldn’t explain why the idea left her feeling so tumultuous and unsettled, like there was some huge idea she wasn’t getting. “You shouldn’t have been able to get it to do that. It shouldn’t have wanted to.”
Case frowned. “Is it bad? Does it mean something’s wrong?”
“No! God, no. But it’s like ... lifting up a car to save someone trapped underneath. I’m surprised it was even possible.”
“People do that sometimes.”
Lydia waved her hand. “Sure, to save their wives or their kids, maybe. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing it to save a stranger.”
To her surprise, he stiffened, and he took a few quick steps ahead. All she could see was the suddenly rigid line of his back.
“Well, you’re not a stranger, are you?” he said without looking back at her. “We’re married now, even if we weren’t then. We’re ... mated. That seems like a pretty good reason to override a survival instinct.”
Dammit, she’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to, but she clearly had. It was one thing to be stunned or confused that he’d managed to fly in the face of nature to save her life, and it was another thing entirely to imply that they couldn’t possibly mean enough to each other for that to happen.
Yes, that was stupid, her wolf said.
Thanks for chiming in,Lydia thought in what was barely short of a snarl.You know you’re a little late, right?
It flicked its ears at her, annoyed.I would have done what his wolf did. You would have wanted me to.
Of course I would have wanted you to! But I want you to do lots of things you don’t want to do, like—
It cut her off.This is different, it said firmly.Don’t you realize that?He’sdifferent.
I do realize that. The words sank in, along with a fresh and sickening realization of how badly she’d messed up.I guess I didn’t realize that you knew it too.
In retrospect, though, she didn’t know how she could have missed it. Her wolf didn’t usually show that much interest in the people around her, but it had paid attention to Case from the start, even when he’d still been human. Lydia had taken it for granted that her wolf had been focused on how Case could help her protect the pack from Reeve, but now she thought it was more than that.
Maybe alotmore than that.
She and Case had been attracted to each other right away. He was exactly who she wanted and who she needed, even in the weirdest and most desperate of circumstances. They wanted to help each other. They couldn’t get enough of each other. Spending time with him was easy. Lydia’s world had always been hard and demanding, but Case was restful and kind and exciting all at once. He made her feel better by being near her.
And he had already taken crazy chances for her. He’d agreed to get turned into a werewolf and have a shotgun wedding! He’d gone through hell for her! He’d given her more than her fair share of the macarons!
There were some things in life that Lydia had never even let herself think about. They were so farfetched, so impossible for someone in her position, that they would be like wistfullydaydreaming about living in a castle in the clouds. And one in particular had seemedespeciallyunreachable since she’d reluctantly decided that she would have to marry any werewolf even remotely willing to help her face down Reeve. She hadn’t even let herself think thewordin question. It was too ridiculous. Too unbelievable.
They say your inner animal realizes it, and usually sooner rather than later. It takes it a little time, but when it knows, it knows.
