But I had never seen him lose control. Not like this.
"Brother," I said carefully. "What is wrong? I thought… I thought you of all people would be happy for me." I tried to keep the hurt from my voice, but I didn’t quite manage.
Rivik closed his eyes, fighting for control, fighting the shift. "What is wrong?" He opened his eyes again, and the raw agony in them stole my breath. "She kissed you. She chose you. And she cannot ever choose me."
"I do not understand—"
"She is mine too."
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water, and I felt the ripples move through me in waves.
She is mine too.
For a moment, I simply sat with it. The fire crackled. Somewhere across camp, the children were still laughing, oblivious and cheerful in their separate world. The morning light had shifted while we worked, the sun climbing higher, and it caught the planes of Rivik's face and showed me everything he'd been hiding. The hollows beneath his eyes. The tension carved so deep into his jaw it looked permanent. The way he held himself like a man bracing against a current that had been trying to pull him under for days.Moons.
Understanding flooded in so fast it nearly knocked me sideways.
All of it. His distance, the brooding, the way he'd positioned himself at the edge of every gathering where Ellie was present. The way he'd watched me carry her into camp, watched me tend her, the way he’d sat and watched her during her fever to let merest. Every moment I'd been quietly, helplessly falling, he had been standing nearby, watching me fall, knowing exactly what it meant.
"You have been living with this," I said, and my voice came out strange. Hollow. "Watching me…" I broke off, the full weight of it crashing down. "How long?"
He turned away. Set his hands flat against the nearest post as though he needed something solid to hold onto. "Since I heard her scream the day we found them.”
“You never said anything. Why, Rivik? Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
"What would you have had me do?" The words came out harsh, ragged. "Tell you to step aside? Demand you give up your fated mate?" He laughed again, that broken sound. "I would not do that to you. I would not do that to her."
"But—" My mind struggled to find purchase. “We would share. It is not uncommon for a female to have many mates. She watches you, Rivik. I have seen her. She is drawn to you too, and now I know why. This is good news, brother. Don’t you see that?” I felt a burst of joy inside the more I thought of it. Not only had I found a mate, she was my fated mate, picked for me by the Great Mother. She was beautiful, perfect, funny, kind, and now I got to share her with my best friend. To me, it could not be more perfect.
"I think the Great Mother made her for both of us," I said, the joy of it was still fizzing through me, warm and bright and almost too large to contain. Rivik didn’t respond.
"Like Torval, and Wase and Brek share Lenna. Like the Ashwood brothers and their mate. It happens, Rivik. The Great Mother sometimes—"
"I know what the Great Mother sometimes does." His voice was very quiet now.
"Then you know it is possible—"
"I know it is possible." He turned, finally, and looked at me. His eyes were back to their normal colour, but that was somehow worse. Because what I saw in them wasn't anger anymore. It was something far harder to look at. "I know that some circumstances, it is done. Brothers, close friends, wolves who trust each other enough to—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I know all of this, Daska."
"Then why—"
“She is not a wolf.”
I looked at him. “That… that is important to you? I did not think you…”
"It is not about what is important to me. It is about what the pack will accept. What they will allow."
"The pack—"
"The pack will not permit their alpha to take a human mate." The words fell between us like stones. Flat. Final. "You understand what I am saying to you, Daska? Not merely that they would disapprove. Not merely that there would be whispers and muttering around the fires. It would be unthinkable. An ordinary wolf who took a human mate would be shunned. Cast out. His status stripped, his place in the pack forfeit. The elders would not even debate it. For an alpha—" He stopped, jaw working. "For an alpha, it would be the end. Not just of my leadership. Of everything my father built. Everything his father built before him. The pack would fracture. Other packs would see weakness. Karik would see weakness. You know what Karik would do to us if he thought he could."
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I thought of the young wolf Rivik had mentioned. I thought of Birch Lake.
"So I am not speaking of preference," he continued, quieter now, and somehow that was worse than the controlled anger had been. "I am not telling you this because she is not—" He stopped again, closing his eyes.
“The fact that she is not a wolf, I don’t care, Daska. She is everything you say. I have been watching her for so long, it’s part of me now. Looking for her everywhere, needing to know where she is, who she talks to, hear her laugh, even if I cannot be the one near her. She is perfect, Daska. My perfect mate, everything I could want, and everything I cannot have.”
I stared at him. "You are telling me the Great Mother herself chose a mate for you, and you intend to refuse her?"
