“Green.”
“Of course it is. Wait. I know you guys live longer. How old are you?”
He didn’t answer right away, which made her roll her eyes. “Iknowwhat you are, Rex.”
“Alright. I’m a hundred and ten.”
She stopped. Nodded. “See? Not weirded out at all.” Shook her head. “At all.”Liar. Turned out knowing it and hearing it were different things, but... yeah. Okay. “I’m thirty-one.”
“I know. I remember when you would visit during the summer as a kid. It was right before I became Alpha.”
“Don’t make it weird, Rex. The hell...”
He chuckled. “I didn’t give you a second glance or sniff then. Never even thought about you at all until very recently, actually.”
“Thanks, that helps.” She looked intently at his face. “I’ll get your lifespan?”
“Yes.”
“Which is?”
“Around two hundred and fifty, give or take.”
“Damn,” she breathed.
And the biggest, most upsetting thought took all the room in her head. “What about the kids?”
“What kids?”
“Our kids.”
Everything in him stilled. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. “What about them?”
“Well, assuming.... assuming all the assumptions, if we have kids, are they going to be like me or like you? Because that would be a deal breaker, Rex. Assuming.”
He tilted his head on one side, as if he was struggling to keep the topic reasonably leveled. She was struggling too, so hey, at least they were even on that? “Assuming,” he said, “The wolf gene is dominant. Any child coming from a werewolf is a werewolf, regardless of the other parent.” He swallowed. “Assuming.”
“Good. Good.”
And then.... she realized she’d run out of... everything. She checked, mentally, the way she checked her bag before leaving the house. Patting each pocket in turn.
Questions—gone. She’d asked some, knew there were plenty of others, couldn’t summon the urgency of asking them. They seemed too trivial to be bothered by now. Something—him—felt way more important—him. Him.
Objections—spoken. The bond, the pack, the challenge, the longevity, the hypothetical children who would apparently be werewolves. They were all valid, though none so convincing as they had seemed when she’d picked them up first.
She could go home, she registered. He would take her, no questions. He would walk her back down the trail in the dark, hand her into her car, watch her drive away, and that would be tonight. A beginning, sure. A question left open. But that option existed, and he would not object.
She looked at her hands. At the blade of grass she was holding for some reason. At the moon, again.
And understood. “Rex?”
“Yes, Moonbeam?”
“I don’t want to go home tonight.” She felt him go very still beside her. “I know what that means,” she said, before he could counter with anything. “I know exactly what that means. I thought about it until all the angles either ran out or didn’t seem so important anymore. It feels like the only important thing is you.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t say a single thing. His jaw set into an unforgiving line, his hands on his knees—not quite fists and not quite not.
The moon was loud, even for her it seemed; the pull to him almost drowning. Need and hunger were taking over reason and will. To touch, to take, to own, to claim. She understood, in a way she couldn’t have only a week ago, what that stillness must require of him. It was a study in self-denial—of the wolf, of everything in him that wanted, that ferociously wanted. Of her. His position on the matter was, after all, perfectly clear. Had been clear for a while. He was simply waiting for her to decide, to pick a course so he could follow it. Whatever it was. Wherever it went.
