Reeve was gone,and Case was her mate.Everything the two of them had been feeling was finally out in the open. They loved each other, and they were meant to be together. And Mountainview was safe. When she added all that up in her head, she couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across her face.
Wendy saw it and grinned back. “Exactly!” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll keep spreading the news, if that’s okay.”
Technically, Lydia should make sure Ruth heard about it before anyone else, but she couldn’t bring herself to dampen Wendy’s exuberance. Proper pack etiquette could take a backseat for once. She’d tell Ruth herself.
“Go ahead,” she said.
Wendy gave a little cheer and took off, clearly enjoying her new and hard-earned role of town crier.
Lydia sat back.
“Reeve’s gone,” she said, trying the words out loud to see how they sounded.
Answer: pretty damn good.
“Gone,” Case repeated, but he sounded more thoughtful than dazed.
Lydia turned to look at him. “You think it’s wishful thinking?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, and honestly, hearing that he’s out of town makes mereallyhappy, even if I don’t know if he’ll stay gone. He tried to kill you. I want him as far away as possible—and my wolf wants him in the ground just to make sure of it. I can believe that he’s the kind of guy who will run away from a fair fight, but on the other hand ....”
Lydia waited, letting him think it through. She trusted his instincts—his human ones and his wolf ones.
“On the other hand, I can also believe he’s the kind of guy who would never make things that easy. Not that it’s been easy on you—”
“No, I know what you mean.” She tucked her head against his shoulder. “Well, this last part’s beenreallyeasy on me. I was prepared to marry whoever I had to, and I wound up with my fated mate.”
Her heightened shifter senses could pick up on the spike of Case’s adrenaline.
“I still hate to think about how close you came to having to do something awful,” he said.
“You stopped me.”
He shook his head. “You stopped yourself by thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I could turn that guy into a werewolf.’”
Lydia laughed softly. “That was my best idea ever.” She breathed in his warm scent—denim, mountain air, and a slight hint of salt and musk—and then reluctantly sat up again. “We should go talk to Ruth. I want to see how she’s doing anyway. Is it okay if I tell her about us?”
Case didn’t even hesitate. “Of course. I’d tell people if I knew anyone who would actually know what it meant. I need to figure out how to tell my family about all this.” He scrubbed at his stubbled cheek, and Lydia realized that they’d had to peel out of the lodge in such a hurry this morning that Case hadn’t had time to shave.
Just time to make me coffee the way I like it, she thought fondly.I’m going to have to make sure to take care of him the way he takes care of me.
“We’ll work it out,” she said. “We can transform in front of them if that will help.”
“We can do that? Do I have to get them to sign a nondisclosure agreement first?”
“Declan would probably say I should say yes, but no. I had to do it with you because I had to basically spring the existence of shifters on you before we really knew each other.” She trailed her fingers up the sheepskin collar of his jacket. “Deep down, I already knew you wouldn’t flip out and reveal our existence to the rest of the world, but—”
“But you still had to be cautious.” Case didn’t sound ruffled by that at all, which she liked. “It wasn’t just your own secret on the line, it waseveryone’s. Don’t worry, I get it. You had to listen to your head—and your lawyer—on that one, not your instincts.”
“Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek. “But I promise that most of the time, deciding whether or not to tell someone isn’t that formal, because you’re only going to want to tell people you already know and trust. You just go for it. And looping in close friends and family is pretty standard.”
“They’re going to ask you a billion questions,” Case said as he climbed out of the truck. “They’re both big on nature documentaries. And horror movies.”
Lydia could handle explaining the ins-and-outs of being a wolf. It would be kind of fun, actually: before Case, she had never gotten to think about her life from the outside.
I’ll have to talk to him about getting his moms to come to us, though,she thought.He might be imagining us taking a road trip, and I don’t think staying away for more than a night or two is ever going to be in the cards. Ruth never acted like it was.
It was an unsettling reminder that even though she might have gotten Reeve out of her life, she hadn’t exactly gotten rid of all her problems.
