“I can’t believe it’s you talking like this.” Aaron yawned. His eyelids were too heavy. He couldn’t manage any more discussion, yet the discussion went on. “Look, none of this means she’ll stay, Mal. She’s got no reason to stay.”
“Have you given her one?”
It didn’t work that way.
“Aaron.” Mal’s voice was quiet. “Please. Tell me what this is.”
“It’s nothing. It’s life.” His leg throbbed, his head ached, and his heart hurt deep down to the smallest boy that still lived in there, the boy with the oldest memories. “Leave my dad out of this.”
“Ah,” Malachi said.
“No.”
“Do I have to quote you back to yourself? Camping by the waterfall when we were pups?”
“No.” He wouldn’t forget his own words, the relief that flooded in when he finally spoke them aloud to someone who cared enough to listen.“I heard them say they loved each other, so I guess love doesn’t always mean staying.”
“She is your mate; therefore, she will stay,” Malachi said slowly, and the growl that laced the words held not the alpha’s authority but instead the patient concern of a friend.
“Kelsey left Trevor. So no, mates aren’t special. If fate ever picked anybody for each other, it was the two of them. Kelsey’s love for that wolf…” Aaron pushed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. He let the couch take his whole weight. He was too tired, and this topic hurt too much. “Ember called me out tonight.”
“Did she?” That was a smile.
“Said my attempts so far have been platonic.”
Now a rumble of mirth.
“Go ahead. I just…” He forced his eyes open, found Malachi sitting close, hands loosely laced between his knees, watching Aaron with studious care. “Mal, I don’t know what to do.”
“Kelsey wasn’t Trevor’s mate.”
He’d heard wrong. He was finally out of his head with exhaustion. “What?”
“He recovered from her loss unscarred. I know, we all thought—” Malachi shook his head. The memories of fear for Trevor were nine years old now, yet they still bit hard for each of the wolves in their generation, the ones who had run together as pups with Trevor on their heels as the youngest, most annoying, most beloved. The ones who had prepared for the kind of grief they didn’t know how to survive. “It was bad at first, but he’s fine now. If he weren’t, we would know.Iwould know. And the lore is clear: if Kelsey were his mate, he wouldn’t be fine without her. So she wasn’t, despite what we thought.”
“You don’t know that. Not for sure.”
Malachi leaned forward and gripped his knees. “If she’s yours, letting Ember go won’t protect you.”
Better than being the one let go and left. “It won’t kill me either.”
He gave a low growl, not quite disagreement, more like discomfort with Aaron’s words.
“Oh, come on, Mal. That’s a myth.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s not even a credible myth. Some vanilla made it up three hundred years ago and stuck it into some bad fiction. You’ve never in your life met a wolf who died of unrequited love.”
“No,” he said. He stretched his limbs, dwarfing the chair, and pushed to his feet. “But if it’s a myth, it’s only hyperbole, and no vanilla had a hand in it. We attach hard and grieve hard, and the lore confirms this again and again.”
Aaron kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t argue with his alpha’s knowledge of the lore. He’d already admitted Ember was his. He had nothing else left to reveal or to debate.
“I’m not going to convince you,” Malachi said. “So talk to Trevor, and stop using Kelsey as your out.”
If Kelsey wasn’t Trevor’s mate, if the two of them hadn’t defied fate after all, would that prove anything? Would it bring Aaron the safety he couldn’t find, to risk pitchingplatonicoff the nearest cliff and pursuing with his whole wolf’s heart the woman who said she wanted him too? A growl of longing escaped him. If he were free to pursue her…free of the razor-edged reality that dadsdidleave moms. Matesdidleave their wolves. It happened, and you couldn’t do enough or be enough to stop it….
Malachi scrubbed both hands down his face. “We need to sleep.”
