“Okay,” she said quietly. “You win. It’s pretty.”
Arthur had the good grace to not look too smug as he set down their things. He shook out the blanket and began unloading the basket, stew, bread, chocolate biscuits, and a flask that steamed.
“Hot chocolate?” she asked.
“Spiked coffee,” he said with a grin.
They sat. Their shoulders almost brushed. The coffee burned pleasantly.
They talked about small things first. The town. Salem. Aurelia. It was surprisingly easy. Underneath the easy was a taut line, humming, but she could almost pretend they were just…normal.
Almost.
“So,” she said eventually, turning her empty mug in her hands. “You dragged me up a hill, fed me, and didn’t mention hybrids once. I’m guessing we’re about to do the honest talk.”
“The honest talk,” he echoed.
“We’ve been avoiding it long enough,” she said with a slightly sheepish smile, “and earlier, at the pier, you said you wanted to explain properly. Well, now’s your chance.”
Arthur sighed, brow furrowing, before he rolled his shoulder back and straightened as if preparing for battle. “Aye,” he said, “I suppose it is.”
She stayed silent, let him collect his thoughts, until finally he spoke.
“My father got sick during our last year of school,” he said. No preamble, just a drop into the deep end. “Properly sick. Inside. Couldn’t heal. One day, he was wrestling lads in the yard, the next, he was coughing blood.”
Dani stilled.
“He told me before he told anyone else,” Arthur went on. “The morning after we slept together. Shut the office door, showed me the handkerchief. Said I had a year or two to pull myself together.”
“Pull it together how?” she asked.
“Become the alpha he wanted,” Arthur said. “An alpha worthy of leading the Nordan. He looked at me and saw…the bits he didn’t trust. Too soft. Too”—his gaze flicked to her, then away—“distracted.”
“By me,” she said.
“By you,” he agreed, “By the idea of you. He smelled it. The pull. Before I even understood what it was. He liked you fine when we were kids, just playground friends. He decided he hated you the minute he realized I wanted you.”
Her stomach twisted.
“He told me attachment to somebody like you, somebody who couldn’t shift…it was weakness,” Arthur said. “That if I tied myself to you, the pack wouldn’t respect me. It would split. He made me promise I’d never choose a female over my wolves.”
She stared at him. “And you said yes.”
“I was eighteen,” he said quietly. “I’d just learned that he would be dead within a year or two. That I would have to lead, to take the mantle as one of the youngest alphas in our history. The pressure I would be under to prove I was strong enough...”
Her fingers dug into the wool at her knees.
“So when you finally came to me three days after…after that night,” she said slowly, “and I thought—”
“I panicked,” he cut in. “The bond wasn’t sealed, but it was there. Strong enough, my wolf wouldn’t shut up. Strong enough that when you smiled, I felt sick from wanting you. And all I could hear was him. Saying if I chose you, I’d bring the pack to ruin.”
Anger flared, sharp and bitter. “So you chose him,” she said. “You chose fear. You chose not to choose me at all.”
He didn’t look away. “Yes.”
Silence dropped, thick as snow.
“He died a few months later,” Arthur went on, voice rough. “The last thing he ever said to me was that I’d be fine as long as I remembered wolves come first. Everything else is temptation.” A humorless tug at his mouth. “He meant you. Didn’t have to say it.”
