“I was wrong,” I said.“I was wrong to keep this from you.Wrong to make decisions about your life without consulting you.Wrong to treat you like something fragile that needed to be managed instead of a partner who deserved the truth.”
“Yes.”Her voice was steady despite the tears tracking down her cheeks, silver lines catching the golden light.“You were wrong.”
“I know.”
“I am not a child, Raphael.I am not some delicate flower that cannot handle difficult information.”Her chin lifted, that stubborn strength I loved so much burning through the hurt.“I have run a hotel through crisis after crisis.I have survived my father’s death and his betrayal and a stalker who turned out to be my half-brother.I could have handled this.”
“I know.”
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
She was silent for a long moment.Through the bond, she worked through it, the anger and the hurt and the understanding all tangled together like threads in a knot she was trying to unravel.I waited.I had no right to push, no right to demand anything.I had laid the truth at her feet like an offering, like a penance.What she did with it was her choice.
“I am not telling you this so you will stay,” I said finally, because she needed to hear it, because I needed to say it.“I am telling you because you deserve the truth.Because you asked for it, and I promised you no more walls.If you want to leave after this, if you want to walk away from this marriage and this bond and me, you can.I will not stop you.I will make sure you are protected, that Michael cannot touch you, that the pack cannot harm you.But I will not hold you here.”
Her eyes met mine.Blue as a summer sky, bright with tears and hope.Or maybe love.I was afraid to believe it.
“Is that what you want?For me to leave?”
“No.”The word came out raw, honest, stripped of everything but need.“I want you to stay.I want you to choose me, even knowing what I did, even knowing I kept this from you.I want you to be my mate in truth, not just in bite.But that has to be your choice.Not mine.”
The silence stretched.I could feel my heart hammering against my ribs, could feel my wolf pacing with anxiety beneath my skin, terrified and hoping despite himself.This was the moment.This was where everything hung in the balance.
She did not leave.
Instead, she reached for me.Her bandaged hands cupped my face, her thumbs brushing across my cheekbones, and she pulled me down until our foreheads touched.Her scent surrounded me.
“I need time to process this,” she said quietly.“I am not going to pretend it does not hurt.That finding out you kept something this big from me does not feel like another betrayal on top of all the others.”
“I understand.”
“But.”She pulled back enough to look me in the eyes, close enough that I could count the individual lashes framing that impossible blue.“I am also not going to pretend I do not understand why you did it.You were trying to protect me.Badly, wrongly, paternalistically, but you were trying to protect me.”
“That does not excuse it.”
“No.It does not.”Her thumb traced my jaw, her touch gentle despite the strength in her hands.“You should have told me.You should have trusted me with the truth.But you also took a beating from your own people rather than kill me.You married me to save my life.You have defied your Alpha twice now, thrown away everything you built with the pack, because I mattered more.”
Her emotions settled into something steadier.Not forgiveness, not yet.But acceptance.Understanding.The first tentative shoots of something that might, with time and care, grow into forgiveness.
“I love you,” she said.The words were quiet, certain, offered like a gift I had not earned.“Both sides of you.The man who lied to protect me and the wolf who would kill to save me.I love you even when you make me furious.Even when you treat me like someone to protect instead of someone to trust.”
The words hit me like a blow to the chest, stealing my breath, making my vision blur with something I refused to acknowledge as tears.
“I love you.”My voice broke on the words, cracked apart by the weight of what I was feeling.“I have loved you since the moment your scent hit me.I have loved you through every wall you built and every one I built between us.I have loved you through my cruelty and your rage and all the months we wasted fighting what was inevitable from the moment I first breathed you in.”
She kissed me then.Soft, sweet, tasting of salt and morning and hope.Her love bled into mine, our emotions tangling together until I could not tell where I ended and she began.
Mate.Ours.Forever.
My wolf settled at last, quiet and content, the restless pacing finally stilled.We had our mate.We had confessed, and she had stayed.She had chosen us.
We stayed like that for a long moment, wrapped around each other in that dusty bed in that hidden cabin in the middle of nowhere.Her heartbeat against my chest.Her scent in my lungs.Her love thrumming through the bond like a song I had been waiting my whole life to hear.
Then someone knocked on the door.
I pulled back, my wolf instantly alert, hackles rising at the interruption.The scent of coffee drifted under the door, along with Dmitri’s familiar musk.
