He looks like he doubts that any potion could be effective enough to get in the way, and as I shift, feeling him still tied tightly inside me, part of me wonders if he’s right.
“I’m sure we could figure it out,” I comment. “Clearly the wolves have children with people who aren’t their mates all the time.”
Fox’s brow pulls even lower and he looks angry, but again doesn’t say anything.
A foggy thought drifts through my mind?—
Would I really be alright with that? Is it still the cocktail of hormones racing through me, making me so complacent? Or, is it something far worse that I can barely admit to myself?
It’s as if I’m starving, and I’m desperate enough to devour whatever scraps I can if it means I can keep him. If it means he’ll keep calling me “his.”
I swallow hard. Even in my foggy daze, I’m sure that’s not what I want.
I wantmore.
And I’m sure he wants that too.
“When we return to Vernallis... what happens to us?” I ask quietly.
Fox’s body goes rigid against mine. “What do you mean?”
“Assuming I’m not, uh…you know.”Pregnant.I gesture vaguely between our still-joined bodies. “Does it continue, or...?”
“That’s up to you.”
The words land like a stone in my stomach, and I have to bite back the hollow desire to laugh. “How is it up to me?”
Something shutters behind his eyes, turning that bright blue to slate. “You deserve everything you want, and as long as that’s me, I’ll keep waiting for you to turn up at my door. Even if you stop coming, I don’t think I’ll ever stop waiting for you.”
My chest squeezes painfully. “You could always come to my door.”
He closes his eyes, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I ask bluntly.
Fox freezes. His eyes shift, and I’m positive he’s wishing we weren’t tied together right now so he could walk away and not have to answer me. I adjust, rising up on my elbows. It’s awkward, but as long as we’re stuck here I’m not going to let him avoid talking about this.
“Why?” I demand again, when he refuses to say anything. “You want me. You want ‘more,’ I can tell, so what’s the problem? Is this about what Viktor said?”
“What did he say?” Fox snarls, then gives me a slightly apologetic look for jostling my body against his.
I don’t even bat an eye at his shift in tone, too focused on forcing the truth out of him to care about anything else. “He said none of you could form mate bonds, and now that I think about it, some of the others have said similar things to me since we’ve been here. Liv and Inga both have a pack of children, but neither one of them is mated. Kai said we’re the first mates in decades. I thought he was being hyperbolic, but he wasn’t, was he? What’s happening here?”
Fox looks at me again, his jaw clenching and unclenching, a muscle twitching at his temple. His tortured eyes flicker from my face to the wall and back.
Finally, he lets out a breath—a sound like something breaking inside him— and his eyes meet mine with such naked vulnerability that my heart stutters. His face crumples for just a fraction of a second, that carefully maintained control dissolving, and I glimpse the raw, terrified need underneath before he surrenders to it completely.
“The reason we hate magic,” he begins, his voice barely above a whisper, “is because it’s magic that keeps us here.”
“What do you mean?”
“The shifters are bound to serve the queen of Thermia. We have no control over our own fate. We can’t leave the borders of the country, can’t disobey her orders, and can’t switch our loyalty to anyone but her.”
“But you crossed the border,” I point out, grasping for the simplest part of what he just revealed, as my brain quickly rearranges itself to keep up.
His gaze darkens. “True, but that’s because I was banished. I’m not actually sure what might happen if I try to go back to Vernallis.”
I hear the “if” and alarm shoots through me, but I keep my voice even as I ask: “What normally happens if you break the rules?”
