I stood in the hallway for another minute, listening to her talk about our son, about us, about the life we’d built. Then I went upstairs before she caught me lurking.
Two months in I started planning the proposal.
I wanted to marry her. Not the shifter way, not the bond. The human way. A ring, a question, a yes or no that had nothing to do with wolves or packs or fated anything. She deserved both. The wolf commitment and the human one. I wanted to give her both.
The ring was the easy part. I had Luca track down a jeweler who specialized in custom pieces. Simple, elegant, not flashy. Andrea would murder me if I showed up with something ostentatious. A single stone, warm gold band, practical enough that she could wear it while handling animals. It took three weeks. Cost more than the bassinet and the animal wing combined. I didn’t care.
The hard part was asking.
I practiced in the mirror like a goddamn teenager. I practiced in the car on the way to council meetings. Then one evening I sat on the floor of the animal wing with Buddy and practiced on him.
“Andrea, from the moment you walked into that interview...”
Buddy wagged his tail.
“No, that’s too formal. Okay. Andrea, you are the most...”
Buddy wagged harder.
“You’re wagging at everything. You have zero quality control.”
He licked my hand. I started over. Tried writing it down on my phone. It sounded like a corporate memo. Tried just talking, stream of consciousness, and it came out as a series of half-finished sentences and grunts that Andrea would have roasted me for.
I was the Lycan King. I’d faced down challengers, banished my own mother, commanded the loyalty of hundreds. And I was sitting on a floor rehearsing a proposal to a dog who approved of everything.
I chose the reading nook. The window seat, the bookshelves, the space Mary measured for Buddy. The place I built because she’d once described her dream room to a dog on a porch and didn’t know the dog was listening.
Andrea was in there on a Sunday afternoon, Alex in the bouncer on the floor, Buddy asleep at her feet, a book in her hand. She was wearing leggings and one of my shirts and her hair was in the messy knot she’d been wearing since the baby was born because she said styling it took energy she’d rather spend sleeping.
She had spit-up on her shoulder, circles under her eyes, and her hair was held up by what I was fairly sure was a chopstick from last night’s takeout. Gorgeous. Absolutely wrecked and gorgeous.
I stood in the doorway and my hands were shaking. The ring was in my pocket. My heart was hammering so hard I was amazed she couldn’t hear it.
“You’re hovering,” she said without looking up. “I can feel you hovering from here.”
“I’m not hovering.”
“You’re standing in the doorway staring at me. That’s hovering.” She looked up. Saw my face. Her expression changed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You look like you’re about to throw up.”
“I’m fine.”
“Finneas, you’re white as a sheet. Sit down before you pass out.”
“Andrea.”
“What?”
I walked into the room. My legs felt wrong. I’d fought a wolf in front of my entire pack without my pulse rising and now I was shaking because of a woman in leggings reading a book.
I crouched in front of her. Buddy lifted his head, looked at me, put his head back down. Unhelpful as always.
“What are you doing?” Andrea said. She was looking at me with that expression, half concerned, half amused, one eyebrow up.
I pulled the ring out of my pocket. Her mouth opened. No sound came out.
