“Mal will come for Quinn tonight. The pack will leave probably early tomorrow, and then… Well, then we won’t know where they are.”
“Suppose I swore an oath of secrecy?”
“Suppose you broke it?”
She bit her lip, tried to reclaim her hand, but his grip tightened.
He opened his eyes. “I know. I’m only telling you how the pack sees it.”
“So if Lucy got it into her head to see her husband’s wolf form, she’d be cast out forever and oh well, so sorry that Jeremy’s lost his life mate and four kids have lost their mom.”
Aaron’s brow furrowed. “Lucy’s joined the pack. That’s a permanent thing. Jeremy would be…well, he’d be hurt. But bonded mates won’t separate, not for any reason.”
“Bonded… That’s the extra-intense wolf marriage Lucy told me about.” When he nodded, she got them back on track with her illustration. “What if the pack hated her? And wanted her gone?” This was silly, too thin to conceal her real questions, but he didn’t point that out.
“We don’t take a vote,” he said.
“You mean, it would be up to Malachi.”
“And the pack would accept his lead.”
She leaned down and rested her head on his chest. Time to say the truth, forget hypotheticals. “I’ll cost you too much.”
“No,” he said.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, and Aaron’s silent anguish squeezed her heart. She couldn’t endure it. She couldn’t stand by and allow it to happen.
She had very little time to do something about it.
Just when she believed he truly could keep himself awake forever, it occurred to her his breathing had slowed in the last few minutes. His grip on her hand relaxed. She lifted their linked fingers and set his hand on his chest, and it rested there, and one finger twitched.
She tensed her muscles, waited for him to wake. He didn’t. She sat up slowly, so slowly, waited for him to wake. He didn’t. She stood up from the couch, disturbing the cushions as little as possible, and waited for him to wake. He didn’t. Not even wolf senses could prevail against exhaustion of both body and soul.
She padded barefoot to the back door and slid on her shoes. She had a long walk, but starting up the truck would wake him for sure. She set out at a jog down the driveway, then down the road toward Malachi’s cabin.
In the muggy July twilight she was sweating and winded long before she reached the end of the driveway. No doubt he knew she was here. She paused to catch her breath, and then she stepped onto the alpha’s property. Did not jog. Walked slowly, eyes on the house for any movement. A few lights were on, but she saw no shifting shadows. He might not even be home.
At the base of the porch steps, she swallowed hard. She studied the front door. No knocker. As she fought cowardice, as it hit her that this time she was trespassing on Malachi’s land without a wounded wolf as an escort, her chest flooded again with the depth of Aaron’s loss, of Quinn’s. She couldn’t turn around and go home.
Home. Aaron’s cabin. The fridge and pantry filled with her groceries, the simple guest room, the wide and beautiful hills. And the man who lived there, who could turn her on with a look, with a shrug of his muscled shoulders, with the showing of a dimple. The man who told her to be exactly Ember, who confessed he was somehow attached to her for the rest of his life and then told her she wasn’t obligated to anything. The man who demonstrated the value of patience, who accepted Quinn as a son.
She could weep with the revelation, still standing here, steps from the alpha’s front door. Instead she let conviction grant her courage. She stepped up and knocked. Strategy might help. Aaron’s lessons, blurted at her in a rush ten days ago, were all she could think of. Lessons she had failed to apply at the time.
The door opened.
Malachi towered in the doorway. The same jeans and polo shirt he’d worn earlier, barefoot with tousled hair. Maybe he’d been asleep. If not, he should have been; two dusky bruises sat beneath his eyes. A low growl emanated from his throat but didn’t last. Then he simply stood there, looming over her.
Ember bowed her head. Planted her feet. Not one step closer unless he invited it, which was least likely of anything that might happen right now.
“Malachi,” she said.
“Ember.”
“He told me everything. The choice he had to make, and—and the thing he chose. Um, me.”
Another growl, this one harsher.
“I know,” she said. She kept her eyes on his feet. “But the—the thing is—he said in cases like this, it’s not a democracy. You determine the course of action, for the pack. So I came to—I’m asking you to…”
