“That’s not true.”
Ty doesn’t respond to that. He doesn’t drop his hand, and he doesn’t move closer. He just watches me, this massive, beautiful male who is already too many things to me. I can’t count them all.
I blow out a breath. “It’s not true,” I say again. “Sometimes I think you’re the only person I do trust.”
His hard hand squeezes my arm, then drops. “But not enough, Maddox. Never enough.”
Without him touching me, I can think a little bit better. But my heart hurts a whole lot more. I cross my arms over my chest like that will help. It doesn’t.
“I’m not blind,” I manage to say, though my throat feels tight. “I wouldn’t be a worthy mate for theRixif I couldn’t comprehend the politics.”
“Funny you say that.” Ty’s words are like bullets, and he doesn’t miss when he shoots. “You had the opportunity tonight to solidify our standing ahead of the gathering of the packs, and you didn’t do it. Explain that to me in a way that makes sense.” His dark eyes blaze. “Because you know and I know that there are any number of motherfuckers out there who want nothing more than to crash into this valley and take me down. At what point do I stop protecting you and protect myself instead? Maybe even let you step up and offer to protect me for a change? When is that part going to happen?”
He lets that sit there for a long, long time. So long I think I almost feel the cold.
When it’s clear I’m not going to say anything, he keeps going. “I’ve heard a lot, for years now, about what a partnership should look like. But all I see, all I ever see, is me taking heat.”
My temper spikes at that, but I’m pretty sure it’s just rushing out ahead of what I’m really feeling, which is shame. Because he’s not wrong.
I wish he was.
“It has nothing to do with you.” I grit that out.
“What I know is that you tell me that,” he replies in that same implacable way that’s making everything in me quiver, and not in theusual, fun way. “You keep telling me, Maddox.” This time I think that dark flash in his eyes leaves burn marks all over my body and, worse, inside. He leans closer. “But I’m still the hundred-year king with no goddamned queen. I’d have to be a little bitch if I wasn’t starting to wonder if maybe you don’t have any intention of keeping the promises you made to me.”
“I just need more time.” I shrug as I say that, because it makes me feel something like helpless. I need more time because I know that it isn’t therighttime. Not yet.
I’m aware that I’ve been saying that for so long now. Too long now. It feels like ash on my own tongue.
“Time is running out,” Ty says quietly. It hits me a lot harder than it would have if he’d shouted. If he’d come at me, wrapped his hand around my throat the way he likes to do—and the way I like him to do, to be clear—to growl straight up in my face.
Ty all quiet like this seems to settle in my bones like the kind of cold a werewolf isn’t supposed to feel. Like it’s already the darkest part of December inside me.
I push back and stand up, arms still crossed, but I feel restless.Undone,something whispers inside me, but I don’t want to accept that. I look around the abandoned hilltop, empty of everyone now except the two of us. The fire still dances in the stone circle. The jagged rocks that so many of the pack use as stadium seating are empty. There’s only the moon up above us, keeping her watch, and the inky dark of the night sitting heavy on the trees that stretch out all the way to the coast.
I remind myself that it really is December now, on this side of midnight. The Wolf Moon is coming. The all-pack gathering is happening. I don’t need Ty to tell me that time is running out, because I can feel it myself.
Like it’s been an hourglass all along and the very last bit of sand is on its way out.
“When your mother brought you to me because you bled that first time, what happened?” Ty asks, still where I left him, seemingly lounging on the ground.
He’s not asking because he doesn’t know the answer.
“We don’t have to dredge up history,” I mutter.
“Sure about that? I think we should, Maddox.” There’s a little more temper in his voice now, and I’m ashamed that I find it comforting.
I know what to do with his heat. It’s his disappointment that breaks me, every time.
I’m now hugging myself more than crossing my arms for the sake of it. And I can’t help my reflexive look toward the door that leads back down to the grand cavern, like all he has to do is bark out an order and even my memory obeys him.
Johanna wanted the spectacle. She wanted everyone to know—or to remember, maybe—that she alone had given birth to the girl who would be the next queen of the pack. She has always been exacting when it comes to upholding the old ways, especially if those old ways advance her position.
I suspect that’s because she likes to think she survived the old ways more or less intact, so why shouldn’t everyone else? Not that I’d dare psychoanalyze my mother to her face.
I was thirteen that night. A wolfling girl becomes a woman when she bleeds, and that’s not inappropriate. Regular wolves reach sexual and social maturity a lot sooner. Humans later. Like most werewolf things, it all comes down to the blood.
Blood was the beginning and the end of it as far as my mother was concerned, and that night she herded me over from our part of the cavern to Ty’s up in the front, nipping at my furry haunches when I tried to evade her.
