"Maybe."
"Not maybe. You couldn't have just taken me. Not with everything that could have gone wrong. It would have collapsed everything and I'd have ended up back with Ragon with no way out at all." I hold his gaze. "I know that. I've had time to think about it and I know that."
"I still should have—"
"You got me out," I say simply. "In the end. You got me out and I'm here and I'm okay." I pause. "Better than okay." I let that sit. "I've only been with you a few weeks but I'm already feeling happier than I have in a really long time. I don't want you carrying guilt about this. Not when what you've all given me here has been what it's been. I don't want the shadow of the bad thing ruining the good thing."
He looks at me.
I look back.
"I don't blame you," I say. "For any of it. Not even the parts that hurt."
He's quiet for a long time.
The woods do what they do in the late afternoon. The light shifts, a bird calls from deep in the trees, the whole world seems to slow down to the pace of itself.
"I've been thinking about something else too," I say.
"Yeah?"
I take a breath. "I've made a decision."
He turns his head slightly.
"I choose you," I say. "All of you. I've thought about it, really thought about it. Not just the feeling of it but the actual choice. What I want my life to look like, what I want to build." I look at him. "I want to build with this pack. With all of you as my forever pack."
Alex goes very still.
Then a sound starts in his chest.
Low and rumbling and clearly involuntary. His purr, starting up without his permission, and I watch his face go briefly mortified as he registers what's happening.
He clears his throat.
I press my lips together. I don't succeed at keeping the smile off my face.
"Don't," he says.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're smiling at me."
"You started purring."
He clears his throat again. The purr doesn't stop. If anything it deepens slightly, like it does when you try to suppress it and your body overrules you.
I laugh.
He looks at me with the appearance of a man who is both embarrassed and entirely unable to do anything about it.
"I've never—" He pauses. "That's never happened. Not without my consent."
"I know," I say, still smiling.
"It was involuntary."
"I know that too."
