“Can you look at me?”
And see the hurt that my decisions have caused him? No.
Soren sighs. The warmth of his body seeps into my side when he joins me, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. If he were angry, would he sit so close? Finally, I face him. The anger I expected to see in his eyes isn’t there. Instead, they’re red and damp.
“I’m sorry.” Soren’s face becomes a blur through my tears.
He says, “What for?”
What for?He saw the choices I made. Surely he knows I did not choose him.
“You didn’t see our talk in the basement after my fight with Wulfric?”
“No, I did,”he says.
Then why isn’t he angry with me?
“Soren, I let my family exile you. I chose to stay behind. Did you not see that?”
“I did!” he snaps. “What I don’t get is why I’m supposed to be angry with you.”
He’s lying to spare my feelings; he must be. “I abandoned you! I should have followed you into exile. By the gods! You were my mate, and I let you go!”
Soren’s lips part on a quiet inhale. “Sweetheart, you’d just lost your father. Your brother was still a child, and he was forced to become an Alpha before he was ready. He begged you not to leave him.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
Soren leans in, his hands warm as he cradles my face between his palms. “They needed their big brother. I decided to take the blame so your pack could stay together and if I had that choice now, I’d make it again.”
I can’t speak as my throat tightens and my eyes burn. How can he be so understanding?
Soren’s lips tremble when he smiles. “You promised you’d find me. You honored your duty to your family but you never gave up on me. How could I ever be angry with you for that? You found me, Lyall. After all these years,you found me.”
A laugh shudders from my chest. I hide my face against his palm as a tear spills free. Pressing a kiss into his hand, I say, “I always will.”
Soren pulls me into the warmth of his body, and when his lips find mine, he tastes like the ocean. Even after so much time and the loss of his memories, the man he was has never faded. His heart is still the kind, noble one I fell in love with.
Stones press into my back, but I barely feel them when Soren’s fingers curl in my hair and we kiss until we’re breathless. I pour my devotion, love, and joy into the kiss and pray Soren can feel everything I can’t fit into words.
When we finally part, I hold him for several long seconds, unable to let go. He runs his hands up and down my back, pressing fleeting kisses into the crook of my neck as the sun sinks into the ocean.
“What are we going to do?” Soren asks sometime later as we lie on the shore together.
“About?”
“Your family.” He tightens his grip on my hand. “The Council. How can we convince them I didn’t betray the pack? Could we show them this moment in the past?”
“I wish we could. The Council would not approve of what we’re doing here, Soren. If they found out I’ve been traveling to the past without their approval, I could get in trouble, and so could my pack.”
Soren sighs beside me. “So we have to hide for the rest of our lives?”
“The Council made it clear I was not to remind you of your past or expose you to the paranormal world. Theymade it clear I could have a relationship with you, so long as their terms were met.”
“But you’ve violated all of their terms,” Soren says heavily.
“On top of that, my family would never approve of us. So I can’t count on their support, either.”
Soren’s face falls. “So we stay a secret forever. Got it.”
