“No. Just… stop.”
I’m shaking. Not from cold. From the effort of standing six feet away from him when every cell in my body is screaming at me to close the distance. The bond is fully awake now, thrumming in my chest, and I can feel him through it; his want, his restraint, the iron discipline it’s taking him to stay seated on that riverbank and let me go.
“Okay,” he says. That’s all. Justokay.Accepting. Not pushing.
I hate him for it. I hate that he’s giving me exactly what I need, which is space, when what I want is something I can’t have.
“Goodnight, Merric.” I turn and walk. I don’t run. I want to run. God, how I want to run. But I walk, calm and controlled, up the river path toward the house, and I keep my back straight and my hands at my sides. I don’t look back.
Behind me, the river runs on. He doesn’t follow.
I make it to the porch. Through the kitchen. Up the stairs. Into my room. I close the door and lean against it.
My lips are still warm.
The bond pulses in my chest; persistent, undeniable, a heartbeat that isn’t mine. I can feel him on the riverbank, still sitting, still solid, and the connection is so clear it’s like standing next to him. His calm. His ache. The taste of me on his mouth.
I press my fingers to my lips. Then I pull my hand away, curl it into a fist, and cross to the window.
The yard below is empty. The wards pulse at the boundary. Somewhere past the tree line, a man sits by a river and lets a woman walk away from him for the second time in his life.
The first time, he chose to leave.
This time, he chose to stay.
I don’t know what to do with a Merric Rourke who stays.
I climb into bed and lie in the dark with the bond strung between us like a wire stretched across the valley, and I tell myself it doesn’t change anything.
It changes everything.
I tell myself again. But I’m lying.
Chapter 12
Merric
I don’t sleep. How could I? I sit on the riverbank until the moon sets, then I walk back to the bunkhouse. I lie on the cot and stare at the ceiling while Rook snores and the night thins toward dawn. My body is a mess—the flank wound, the leg, a day of hard walking—and none of it registers because my entire nervous system is tuned to a single frequency.
Her mouth. The way her hand pressed against my chest. The white fire at her fingertips, warm through my shirt. The mate bond snapping awake between us like a live wire hitting water.
And then her walking away. Back stiff. Not looking back.
Okay,I told her. One word. The right word. The only word that wasn’t going to make things worse.
I meant it. I’ll keep meaning it for as long as she needs.
But my wolf is pacing circles inside my chest, and the ghost of her lips is still on mine, andokayis about the furthest thing from what I actually feel.
Dawn comes. I get up, get dressed, drink coffee that tastes like nothing. Walk outside.
Brenna is already in the yard.
She’s talking to Willow near the garden, hands on her hips, head tilted in that way she has when she’s thinking three moves ahead. She’s wearing the same borrowed clothes from yesterday, and her hair is damp. She looks like she slept about as well as I did, which is to say not at all, but she’s carrying it better because she’s had more practice at functioning on empty.
She sees me cross the yard. Our eyes meet for exactly one second.
One second. That’s all. Then she looks away, says something to Willow, and walks toward the main house without breaking stride.
