“Yes, I can see that,” I said mildly. “You actually seem… pent up.”
Harris paused long enough to give me a strange, searching look. “We’re going to need to go slow.”
“Notentirelywhat I meant, but it’s nice to know where your mind is.”
Who the hell was this strange human man who fought monsters with silver bullets, befriended vampires, ducked outof barrier spells, channeled the power of an alpha, and then seemed fine less than an hour later? And, to top it all off, he had traveled a thousand miles to storm into the wolf’s den—well, okay, the bar owned by wolves, but still—to tell me off to my face for what had been, admittedly, bad behavior on my part.
It was laughable I had ever entertained, even for a moment, that there was anything weak about him.
Harris snorted, obviously not convinced but apparently willing to let it go, because he said, “So, I somehow… channeled your wolfy powers? And that’s not a thing that has ever happened before?”
“Fated mates are rare. I have no idea what a mate bond is capable of.”
“And ‘fated mate’ was the first thing Emma jumped to?”
“It’s the simplest explanation for why I brought a human to the commune. Because of what happened with Jeremy and Thierry, we knew it was likely that the fated mate summoning spell would impact the pack as well.” I paused. “By the way, none of the people in that room—except Daniel—will be able to talk about us being fated mates with anyone else now. Not until they have permission.”
“Shit,” Harris said, with a shake of his head. “This feels fucked up. I wasn’t trying to control anyone. I got pissed, because I sensed how Emma had just made you feel—”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “How was she making mefeel?”
“Like you were a kid again. She robbed you of your ability to decide how to share this information.” He paused, frowning at me. “She took away your authority. It pissed me off. Who evendoesthat?”
“Emma has been around for two hundred years. She’s been with a dozen alphas. She’s definitely not afraid of the consequences.”
I said it automatically, but the emotions I felt at his words were hard to quantify. He had read my emotions perfectly. And no one had ever seen me like that. Not Jeremy, not Lindsey, not even Ian, Jeremy’s former mate, who I had grown up with too.
Warily, I asked, “What am I feeling now?”
Harris’s head tilted to the side as he considered me. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You do, don’t you?”
“Let’s not play that game.” Harris sighed, rubbing his temples. “Look, I don’t really give a crap about any of this mystical stuff. It’s not really something I’m into.”
“Yet you came here anyway. Knowing you’d be walking headfirst into ‘mystical stuff.’”
“I came for you!” he snapped, exasperated. Then his eyes widened, as if he hadn’t meant to say that.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Harris, you have to tell me.”
His gaze searched mine. Then he deflated slightly. “Christ, that’s effective. You do realize you can’t whip out your literal puppy-dog eyes whenever you want to get your way with me, don’t you?”
“Can’t I? You just said it works on you.”
Harris gave me a sour look. “That doesn’t make it fair.”
“Harris, tell me.”
His gaze dropped to the floor. “The last night we shared a dream together, I heard you whimper in that alleyway. And it broke my fucking heart, Reed. I saw the pain you were in.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “How much it was costing you to hide yourself from me. And yeah, I was angry. I was furious. I still might be—I haven’t decided yet.” He paused. “But that wasn’twhyI came here. Not really.”
I realized, suddenly, that I had bitten off way more than I could chew by insisting he explain himself. But I felt rooted to the spot, the wolf in my chest transfixed by Harris’s words every bit as much as I was. And I couldn’t make myself even want to stop him.
“I came for you,” Harris said. There was a naked vulnerability in his expression that made me want to swear to nature, to the moon, to pack and bond, to anything that would listen, that I would never, ever hurt him. He finished with, “I came here because I heard the pain you were in, and I couldn’t stand it. And once I knew it was real—when Cole put it together for me that it had allreallyhappened, it meant your pain was real, too…” He swallowed hard. “I couldn’t not come.”
