“Not true. Hurts hurt, that’s all. Okay?”
He ducked his head, his thumb still running over her hand. At last he said, “Okay.”
“We both learned heavy things too early. If you’re willing to deal with my complications, I’ll do the same with yours.”
He slowly took her into his arms again, and Ember allowed herself to rest against him. Rest with all the stories inside she didn’t want to tell. Rest while he held her. In Aaron’s arms she wondered if she could stop pushing, if she could simply rest and be. She closed her eyes, a test. It didn’t feel risky.
They were quiet a long time. What a pair they made, a fatherless pup and a foster kid. But pasts that shaped didn’t have to dictate. She wouldn’t leave him with his fear of hoping. She would stick close until he could face her with a wildflower bouquet in his hands and hold it out to her.
“Will you need anything tomorrow, before the moon?” she said quietly when both of them had grown sleepy. “Will you want dinner at the house?”
“We’ll leave around five. Do you mind having it ready early?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
His arm tightened around her. “Thank you.”
“Will you have nothing there to eat?”
He flinched. He said nothing.
Back to this. After all his openness tonight, back to this. A warning whispered in her head. Quinn couldn’t talk about it either. Quinn had wanted her gone from the Lane by now. Was it so awful at the paddock? Was it painful? Damaging to her nephew, to Aaron?
Ember rested her hand on his chest. “Aaron, please. I need to know.”
“No.” His voice was taut.
“I know you heard Lucy tell me what she could. The paddock and the fence.”
Still nothing. His chest barely moved beneath her hand.
“Jeremy talks to her about it. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I need to know what it’s like for you, for Quinn. I need to hear about it from you, not from Lucy.”
He would tell her. He had to tell her. But his breaths were constrained, ragged. The hand that had been stroking her hair, that had wound a strand around his finger, convulsed and tangled the strand.
“Aaron.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t, Ember.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Carefully he untangled his fingers from her hair, set her away from him, and stood. He left the room, and in a few moments she heard his bedroom door click shut. Ember’s stomach clenched, began to ache. Whatever the paddock held for the wolves, for Quinn, it must be worse than she could imagine. But Lucy’s description had sounded safe; her own mate shared at least some of the experience with her. Why couldn’t Aaron? Was it somehow worse for some wolves…for him and Quinn?
All right. Pivot. She had to know what happened under the full moon. He wouldn’t tell her, maybe ever. But he didn’t have to tell her if she saw for herself. However horrible it was, she would face it for him and for Quinn. She would be smart and careful, as careful as she’d ever been in her life. And regardless of Lucy’s warning, Ember would see the wolf pack.
Aaron would know she’d been there, would likely sense her presence when she got close enough. She would ask forgiveness for being a battering ram one last time, but she had to batter down this barrier just as she battered so many, beginning at age five, for the sake of herself and Poppy. She couldn’t remain ignorant about something so significant to Quinn’s and Aaron’s lives. She couldn’t protect her nephew if she didn’t know what from. So she would go and see. She would do the best she could for them, be the best she could—human aunt, human friend, and maybe, maybe, someday mate for a wolf who was turning out to be the best of men.
“It’s quick, remember. Ten seconds, tops.”
“I know,” Quinn muttered. He cut his gaze sideways at Aaron as they parked the truck alongside half a dozen other vehicles to the right of Malachi’s driveway. They got out and headed for the paddock. “You okay to walk the whole way?”
“My pace is a little slow, but yeah.”
The throb in his leg was a nuisance, but the wound had closed enough that he could safely hike without reopening it, and tomorrow it would be healed altogether, nothing left but a long scar. Beside him the pup stewed in anxiety and dread, the odor monopolizing Aaron’s senses.
“Good food tonight,” he said, his first thought for a distracting topic.
