He didn’t move, didn’t speak when her words trailed into tears. Ember swallowed them all down. She had to say this.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “You don’t have to leave if I stay. Please. I want to see Quinn grow into a good, strong man and wolf, and so does Aaron. But more than anything else, I can’t—I can’t let him choose me and lose all of you. It would tear him apart.”
A full minute ticked by, and then Malachi’s voice rasped above her. “I can’t allow you to stay. Not now.”
She peeked up at him. “Aaron told me bonded mates never separate.”
“Bonded?” He folded his arms across his chest, which only made him look more massive, more petrifying. “You’re not.”
“Is it like a marriage license? Do you give us permission?”
“Not exactly, but you’re on the right track.”
“He wants this. He’s told me.”
“And you?”
She lifted her head and held contact with the amber eyes so intent on her. “I don’t know how it all works, and I might screw up along the way, but—but I’ll never disregard the pack’s privacy again.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back. They’d do her no good in persuading the alpha. “He’s hurting. You haven’t even gone yet, and he’s grieving already. I can’t let him go through that for the rest of his life, not if I can stop it.”
A low, contemplative rumble. Then his rasp, quieter this time. “That’s also not what I asked.”
Whathadhe asked her? …Oh. “You want to know if I want to be…bonded. Not for his sake, but for myself.”
“Yes.”
She could not have answered the question this morning, when she still had time to decide. But her own actions had fractured the hourglass, and all the sand had gushed out. She had to know what she wanted. She had to feel, all the way to the core of her heart, what she wanted, and she had to choose it. Right now.
“When…when I think about losing him, it’s like something cleaved me in two from head to toe and…and I have to walk around for the rest of my life like that. The rest of my life without Aaron.” She pressed one hand to a sudden ache in her chest. “I love him, Malachi.”
For a full minute she stood there, head bowed, heart pounding as the enormity of what she’d said flooded into her. The truth of it. The depth of it. Then Malachi stepped to one side, gestured with an open arm.
“Please come in,” he said.
She took four steps inside, then stopped. Malachi’s domain. Stone floor, ten-foot ceiling, stained-glass accent window high above the front door. She and Aaron had entered at the back of the house, and she’d hardly taken in any details, all her attention riveted on her wounded wolf. Malachi led her down a wide hall to the living room. The ceiling here was true cathedral height. She’d sat here with Aaron, kept him awake with arm pokes and conversation. She’d never noticed the ceiling.
Malachi did not sit, so she didn’t either. He paced to the widest of the windows and stood there, gazing out on the twilight. “It’s a covenant. You won’t break it. There’s no divorce among the wolves.”
“Of course,” she said to his back.
“You’re not only pledging yourself to Aaron. You’re joining the pack as well.”
“I know.”
“You’re willing to commit to this? Now?”
“If I don’t, he loses his pack forever. His home. And we both lose Quinn.”
“That’s true.”
“Then I’m willing to commit.”
Slowly he turned to face her. It was only a trick of the light, but for a moment his eyes seemed to glow, not in hostility but with an incredulous intensity, as if he didn’t fully believe in her existence. At last he said, “You saw us under the full moon, and less than twenty-four hours later you’re asking to be bonded to one of us.”
She nodded.
