Quinn latched onto him as if he were ten years younger. They stood that way for a long moment, longer than Aaron expected given Quinn’s overstimulated senses. Then Quinn let go, and Aaron stepped back too.
“I, uh, thanks,” Quinn said to the ground between them.
“You bet.”
He looked up. “Will Aunt Em get kicked out?”
“That’s up to the alpha.” He had to talk to Malachi. But how could he plead Ember’s case after what she’d done, and…why even try?
Malachi’s stance didn’t matter: Ember had already packed her bags and vacated the state. No way she would stay now. She must have believed her life in real danger from the whole pack. A tide of sorrow took him. His mate, his Ember… Quinn shot him a measuring look, no doubt catching the scent of distress. Aaron shook his head.Don’t ask, pup. Please.He resumed walking toward the yard, and Quinn followed, but putting one foot in front of the other took every ounce of concentration while the loss gripped his wolf heart.
“It’s weird,” Quinn said. “Caring about her felt different last night. It wasn’t the way I care about people when I’m, you know, me.”
Please stop talking, pup.No, he needed an anchor. He focused on Quinn. “Both forms are you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s a different form of caring, but it’s not a lesser form.”
“I didn’t know I could do that. When I’m a wolf, I want to bring down a deer and eat it, but I also want people to…to be safe from me and other wolves. Even when it’s hard, like you said to Corbin. The smell was really hard, Aaron.”
“It was hard for all of us, hardest for Corbin and Nathan.”
“But they’re like twenty. I thought they were done adjusting.”
“Around eighteen, nineteen the hunting instinct gets really intense. Then in a year or two, it levels out.”
Quinn frowned. “And stays leveled out?”
“Right.”
He mulled for a while. At last he said, “I protected Aunt Em. Even though I was a wolf.”
“You did. And don’t forget, you didn’t hurt your mom. You scared her, yeah. But she’s okay. That matters.”
Quinn gave a slow nod. He said nothing else as they started the three-minute drive home.
At the end of Aaron’s driveway sat a familiar car. An unexpected scent hit him, made his mouth water. Grilling steak. Halfway up the hill he caught her signature nutmeg, blended with anxiety. He wrestled his food-deprived, post-moon brain to comprehend what it all meant. Ember hadn’t left? Ember was still here?
Before he finished parking, Quinn leaped out and loped to the door and into the house.
“Aunt Em!”
Aaron parked and followed the pup. “Ember?”
She stood over the stove, minding two skillets, one of which sizzled, a spatula occupying each hand. “Um, hi.”
Not gone. Here. She hadn’t left him. Even when she had good reason to.
Aaron wanted to do nothing less than barrel into the kitchen and take her in his arms, press her to his chest, inhale the unique nutmeg fragrance of Ember. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and cup the back of her head in his hand. He wanted to kiss her, hard.
But he could do none of these things, because she’d seen the animal beneath the full moon. She had seen his black fur, his fangs, his four-legged gait. She had heard him howl. She would eschew his touch; no doubt about that.
So he stood still. “Ember.”
She stood at the stove, both spatulas dangling from her hands, staring at him with less revulsion than she had a right to, maybe with no revulsion at all as long as he kept his distance. That was something.
Quinn took the implements from her hands, turned to the stove, and began moving the eggs around the skillet. The sizzling sound grew louder for a second as he flipped one of the steak slabs.
