I turn to the sideboard. There is a decanter I almost never use. I pour two fingers into a crystal glass, my back to her, wondering how to tell her I don’t want company tonight. I turn with the glass in my hand, about to ask her to leave.
Lydia has dropped the robe.
It is pooled at her feet in a cream puddle. She is left wearing a negligée the color of champagne, with two thin straps and a length that stops high on her thigh. Her hair falls forward over one shoulder. She stands very still, watching me, and I understand at once what she has come here for.
For a long moment, I cannot react, shock filling me.
My wolf does not react. He does not snarl. He does not indicate that he wants her body at all. What he does instead is twist upward with a low, aching whine and direct every scrap of his attention elsewhere in the house: toward Sienna’s room, toward that closed door in the guest wing.
The human part of me feels no attraction to Lydia, either. I avert my gaze and focus on the glass in my hand. Looking at this woman feels like I’m being unfaithful.
The thought comes to me just like that, and it has me wincing.
I set the glass down and walk slowly over to her. Without looking at her, I bend down to pick up her robe from the floor. The silk is warm from her skin. As I put it around her shoulders, my voice is low.
“I’m sorry, Lydia.”
My hands do not linger. I find the ends of the belt and hand them to her, then step back so she can tie it herself.
She does not do or say anything for a moment except look at a point on the wall just past my shoulder. Then, her throat moves.
“I see.” She awkwardly ties the belt into a loose knot. The smile she puts on her face is too fast. “That was stupid of me.”
“Don’t.”
“No, it was.” She manages a low laugh despite the sad look in her eyes. “I thought, perhaps, if we just…if we started somewhere…I thought I could help us move this forward.”
I watch the blush creep up her neck.
A breath escapes me that I did not mean to release. “This is why I told you I was against the idea.”
She lifts her gaze. Tries to hold mine.
“I knew this would happen, Lydia.” My voice stays quiet. I cannot make it cruel. “I knew you would get hurt.”
She swallows. She tugs the belt tighter and wraps her arms over the front of the robe. When she speaks, her voice is even. Controlled.
“It’s fine. I just wanted to try.” She lifts her chin. “We have our whole lives ahead of us. I thought—I thought we could start now.”
I’m silent.
She walks past me to the door. Her drink sits untouched on the sideboard. She pulls the door closed behind her with care, almost no sound. I stand where she left me with the echo of one phrase going around and around in my head.
“Our whole lives ahead of us.”
I lower myself onto the edge of the bed and try to picture it.
Lydia, across from me at a breakfast table twenty years from now. Lydia, standing beside me at pack ceremonies. Lydia, in this bed. The image stops working each time I reach the part where I have to want her. I stare at the carpet, understanding what I have done.
I told myself this could work. I let her convince me. After all, Lydia is intelligent, warm, loyal. She would be a competent luna, a kind presence, and I let myself believe that I could live the rest of my life with her.
But I can’t.
I do not love her. Not as a man loves the woman he stands beside for the length of his life. I love her as I loved my father, my mother. She is like a sister to me. Family. Nothing closer than that. Nothing that belongs in my bed.
I rub a hand over my face.
I cannot do this. I told myself these past few days that I could, that I was strong enough to purchase Sienna’s survival with this arrangement, that love was a small thing to trade against a life. It is not a small thing. My wolf can’t bear it.
