So I do. I lay out the sacrifice issue as I see it. And the protection issue—or lack of it. I tell him exactly how long it took for my supposed protection detail to show up after McCaffrey’s pack started their howling outside my cottage.
“Too long,” he mutters, a look on his face that does not bode well for my cousin Beaudry.
I keep going. “I thought it was aimed at me specifically, but maybe it’s not. Maybe this is about the pack. Because if there really is a traitor causing trouble, it makes sense to me that the very day after we literally showed them all a different path forward that instead of working toward it, they’d suddenly be at each other’s throats. Over stealing.” I roll my eyes. “It’s textbook. Every single wolf here could get their own personal arsenal in a heartbeat if they wanted to. There are goblin gun markets all over the place. But they’re all territorial assholes, so the very idea that someone might have taken something that’s theirs? Instant battle.”
“You’re not wrong,” Ty agrees. He runs a hand over his beard. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out someone was manipulating everything to make sure it goes bad. It justfeelswrong.” He shakes his head. “My gut is always right about that shit.”
“Let me tell you whatmygut wants.” I shift on the bed so I can look down at him, full in the face. “But you have to promise to hear me out. Don’t rip out my throat until you hear my logic.”
“There’s only one reason I’ll be ripping out your throat, babe,” he drawls lazily, though his eyes flash. “But you have just about ten days to get yourself right on that one.”
He thinks we’re talking about mating. I am definitely not talking about mating.
I must have a serious look on my face, because he shifts his position then too, propping himself up on one elbow. I sit up all the way so I can look directly at him. So he can see how completely serious I am. “It’s been obvious for a long time that the packs need unity. And you keep trying to build consensus. You keep trying to get them all to work together, and I just don’t think that’s ever going to work.”
“It will,” he says, his voice as serious as mine. “But if I’m honest, I think some of the old guard is going to have to die off first.”
That’s the way it usually goes. The young wait out the old, but by the time they can do what they want they decide that nothingreallyneeds changing. If it did, we wouldn’t be living like it’s still the Revolutionary War out there.
“Sure,” I say. “But in the meantime, you’ll get bigger and stronger, they’ll all try to challenge you, and we’ll all continue living exactly the same way we always have.”
He frowns at that, but I don’t give him a chance to respond.
“And I don’t just mean that in terms of me,” I assure him. “I mean all of this. These petty little fiefdoms. Little kings marching around all puffed up because they can dominate a few submissive females and a handful of weak beta males. We were always taught that the original packs were formed the way they were because they all had powerful wolves to run them—but things are different now. There’s no one in any pack who could even dream of being as powerful as you are. You know this. They know this.”
“I can handle a target on my back,” Ty tells me with a laugh.
“You have to,” I say. I’m not laughing. “Because tomorrow is the solstice, Ty.”
We both know what that means, especially now. Wolf week always ends at the solstice. The darkest night of the year. The one night that any wolf from any pack can challenge any other wolf for any reason. The night hierarchy and common sense don’t matter.
On one such solstice night, a hundred years ago, Ty himself challenged the leader of this very pack and won.
“What if,” I say, actually whispering because what I’m saying is heresy and I’m suddenly afraid the walls themselves can hear me, “instead of waiting for all of these little kings to challenge you, as they probably will, you issue a challenge yourself?”
He blinks, then looks amused. “Baby. Who am I going to challenge? I can kill all of them. It’s not even a question.”
“I know that.” I lean in and put my hands on his face. His beautiful, impossible face. “What if you crown yourself king of all kings.Theking. If they won’t pledge their fealty to you, they can fight you. Just like back in the old days. Honoring the old ways, as so many of these kings claim they’re doing all the time.”
I expect him to flip out at this. I expect him to at least shut me down, and hard, whether he thinks I have a point or not. But ... he doesn’t.
We stare at each other. We stare into each other.
And I know, suddenly, that whatever comes next—our lives will always be divided between before this moment and after it.
Ty knows it too. He puts his hands over mine, holding them fast against the planes of his jaw and the rough caress of his beard.
“If we do this,” he says, his voice hoarse, “are we doing this together?”
I don’t look away from him. I’m not even sure I blink. “We’ve been doing everything together for a long time, Ty. That’s who we are. It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves or what they call us. We’re stillus. We’re alwaysus.”
I know full well that it’s a vow I’m making. I know that I’m telling him that I’m not fighting anymore. That I’m leaning into him, to this, to the fate we make.
I know that I’m promising him that when the Wolf Moon shines full above us, I’m going to run, he’s going to catch me, and he’s going to stake that claim at last.
I’m promising him that I trust him more than I fear what lies ahead for us.
“Us,” he says, his dark eyes bright and hot. His own kind of vow.
