Trevor shook his head. His hands balled into fists, and he spread his feet and planted them. His heart pounded with the indignation of Arlo’s description, with the hopelessness of it. Fine, Arlo believed this. But he was wrong, an old wolf clinging to old tales.
“Please, Trevor. You can’t doubt me when it’s been happening to you for nine years.”
A growl burned in his chest, and he turned his face reflexively to hide it until he could control it. But Arlo took a step closer, another step to follow Trevor’s pivot away from him. He gripped Trevor’s shoulders and tugged until Trevor faced him.
“You’ve got to stop burying and shutting down. Claim the loss and the hurt, and you’ll claim your full self at the same time.”
Too much. Too hard. Too terrifying. Trevor’s legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees, then fell back on his butt. Legs bent, arms propped on them, head down, he sat in the road and drew deep breaths. He tried to control himself. Instead he shook with the sobs he kept from surfacing. One or two ragged noises, and then he was quiet though he continued shaking. Arlo sat beside him in the road for a long time. At last Trevor pushed himself to his feet, began shuffling back to the truck.
“I can’t,” he said when Arlo followed him. “And if I’m just going to lose my mind anyway, I don’t want to.”
“You weren’t listening, pup.”
Trevor shot him a sideways glance. Arlo just kept walking, watching straight ahead.
“I said those are the two options for a wolf whodoesn’tpursue his mate.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice, but I sent my mate away, and it took her nine years to come back.”
“Right. She came back.”
Just like Ezra, thinking Kelsey’s return held some kind of promise. “Temporarily. And not for me.”
Arlo shrugged.
“What? It’s too late. It’s so many years beyond too late.”
“Not for you two, it’s not.”
Oh for fate’s sake. “Because we were life mates? If we still were, she’d have come back before now. Better yet—I never would’ve been stupid enough to break us up. I would’ve held onto her and made her happy and…and…” He clutched his chest as the fire flared. No sense hiding it from Arlo now.
“There,” Arlo said as if Trevor had just proved something. He patted Trevor’s shoulder. “You’re reviving just having her home. That’s what I scented on you.”
“Reviving? It’s more like being scorched from the inside out.”
“Good. The numbness has to go first.”
Trevor huffed a long sigh. “Can’t believe this. Arlo the matchmaker.”
Arlo’s growl held amusement, but then he sobered again, and his hand stayed on Trevor’s shoulder as they continued toward the truck. At last he said, “What do youwantto do, Trevor? What’s the first thing that pops into your head to do, as a wolf, as a man?”
“Tell her,” Trevor said. The words sprang from him so fast he couldn’t have stopped them if he’d wanted to. “Tell her all of this, everything, and ask if I can earn another chance.”
Now the old wolf’s growl was approval, even pride.
“You think I can? Really?”
“Best answer you could’ve given me.”
Back in the truck, leaning against the headrest, eyes closed, Trevor suddenly understood something that should have been plain to him from the first. He was almost too tired to say it, but Arlo needed to know he hadn’t become solely self-focused.
“Arlo,” he said.
“Mmhm.”
“This isn’t a legend to you. You’ve seen it. Haven’t you.”
Arlo gave a long, quiet sigh that held the faintest whimper behind it. “He was a good wolf, one of my greatest friends. We were young and ignorant, he and I and the woman he loved. The two of them fought one day. Gene wanted reconciliation, but she would have none of it.”
