She forgot Malachi altogether, forgot Maggie too, when she entered the living room. Trevor lay on Maggie’s couch, propped by pillows in a way that betrayed him: he needed them to stay upright. But he was awake today. One hand clutched a sheet of green stationery. His blue eyes were glassed with fever.
“Oh,” she said and dropped to her knees near his head. “Trevor.”
“I came to…to try to show you…that I can be honest.”
His words were a sunburst within her. She tried to rein it in, but he blinked, and his eyes seemed clearer. He had smelled the shift in her, caution to hope. He held out his hand, and Kelsey took it. He lifted the sheet of stationery close to his eyes, lined, full of tiny script on both sides.
“Trevor…”
“This is everything you need to hear. The stuff I couldn’t say, before. I—I couldn’t write last night, but I dictated it all to Ezra. So I wouldn’t freeze up again.”
Freeze up…had Maggie been right? “You hate to write.”
“Yeah, well, it helped though. Just hope I can read Ezra’s micro-writing. Eyes…a little blurry right now.” His mouth tipped up on one side, then flattened again. His hands were trembling, the letter crinkling in his grip. “Is this okay with you? Will—will you listen if I read it?”
“Of course I will.”
A gust of a sigh caved his shoulders.
“Or I could try to make it out, so you don’t have to. Your head hurts, I can tell.”
“No. I owe you this, Kels, whatever happens to us.”
He wasn’t wrong, yet she hated to sit still beside him, to let him expend strength when he had so little. She wanted to take the letter from his hand. She wanted to take the illness from his body into hers. She scooted closer on her knees, but she didn’t place a hand on his flushed cheek, didn’t kiss the crease of pain between his eyes. This was the time to hear him out. To search for honesty in his words, his bearing.
He unfolded the letter, and he was right. She would need a magnifying glass even to begin deciphering Ezra’s handwriting.
His voice shook as he said, “Dear Kelsey.” He cleared his throat once, twice, and began again, steady this time. “Dear Kelsey. About a year after you left, I figured out you were supposed to be my mate, and I had pushed you away and broken the bond. I thought there was no fixing a broken bond between mates. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Ezra. For nine years I got weak. All my gifts got weak—my strength, reflexes, sense of smell and hearing. The last thing I lost was my voice. I don’t know if these things can come back. Arlo says all this is happening because I tried to absorb how it felt, you being gone. He says until I let it hurt, I’ll keep fading. That’s the wolf word for it—fading. I know I need to tell you about it. But I lose my words, and the harder I try to get them back, the more they slide away. I think because I decided so long ago never to tell anybody.”
His hands shook badly now, made the letter jump. He tried with one hand to hold the other still, which only exacerbated the tremor of both. He pressed his lips together with the effort. Her sweet wolf was trying. He was trying with everything he had. Kelsey’s heart squeezed for him, for the vulnerability he’d brought to her, laid open for her in the letter, in the willingness to show himself weak and sick. She took his wrists and gently held them still, and the letter stopped crinkling. He was too warm, even for a wolf.
“Thanks,” he whispered.
“Trevor. I’m yours.”
“Wh-what?”
She kissed him, soft and gentle, a reassurance. “You’re not on trial, Trev. You came to me ready to show your heart, and that’s all I needed.”
“Kelsey.”
Oh, that voice, her name spoken in that voice. She cupped her hands around his, around his precious letter. “You didn’t break the bond, not forever anyway. We’re mates. I choose you.”
“My Kelsey.” Tears filled his eyes.
“Yes. You are my Trevor, and I’m your Kelsey.”
Tears pattered onto the letter. He bowed his head and sobbed. Kelsey perched on the edge of the cushion and held him to her. She drew his head down to her shoulder, and he rested against her until his tears were spent.
She had to help him lean back into the pillows. He wiped his cheeks with his palms as he’d done since he was little. “I need to finish reading.”
“It’s okay.”
“No.” His voice was firm. “For both of us. I need to.”
“Then I’ll listen.”
He smoothed out the tearstained stationery. He hadn’t used a waterproof pen, and a few lines at the top had run to the side. But the lines not yet read had escaped the tears. He cleared his throat again, but now his hands were steady.
