Page 48

“Not many do. Our allies don’t need to know who our soldiers were before. Only what they’re capable of now.”

“That’s the pitch,” she says with a smile.

“That’s the pitch,” I agree. “It cost everything I had for the first four years. There were two winters where I genuinely didn’t know if we’d make it to spring. I taught most of the classes myself because I couldn’t afford to hire anyone.” Something in me loosens at the admission. I don’t usually tell people about those winters. No heat. Minimal rations. A leaky roof. A lot of outcast wolves who took their frustrations out on each other. “My first year, I had eleven students. Three of them are now alphas of their own packs. Marcus is my second in command. Two are on the Black Moon Pack alpha’s security detail.”

“No shit.” She’s watching me now instead of the road. Just briefly. “You’re proud of them.”

“More than anything else I’ve done.”

“More than the alliances? The territory? The reputation?”

I can’t help lifting a brow at that. “You mean the reputation that made you call me a monster the first time we met?”

She grins. “Fine. Not a monster. Prepotente.”

I shake my head, fairly certain I don’t want to know the meaning of that word. So, I just say, “Everything else I’ve achieved was downstream of those eleven wolves,” I say. “Everything I have now came from deciding not to sell. To see it through with them. And from us not killing each other,” I add.

She looks back at the road. Something in her expression has changed; the professional mask replaced by something more unguarded. Like she’s seeing something in me she didn’t know existed and isn’t sure yet what to do with it.

“The night we met,” I begin.

She stills.

“You made me vow to leave the city without harming Franco. All to protect the innocents that might get hurt in the crossfire. You were willing to give up your own happiness to protect them.”

A beat. Then: “You remember that.”

“I remember everything about that night.”

“It was two years ago.”

“I’m aware of how long ago it was, Mia.” I let that sit for a moment. “I remember the way your dress tied at the back of your neck. The way your skin shone in the light when I took it off you. The way you said my name as you came. I remember you told me Indigo Hills was worth saving. And I agreed because you were worth it to me.”

She’s staring at the road with the focused intensity of someone who is working hard at not reacting. But I can hear her heartbeat. Smell her arousal.

“I remember,” I say quietly, “that you made me promise to leave and never come back. And I remember deciding on the drive back to Crossvale that it was the last promise of that kind I’d ever make you.”

The road ahead curves into deep shadow under the canopy. She takes the curve without slowing.

“Nash,” she says. Her voice is careful. Controlled. But fraying at the edges.

“I’m not asking you for anything,” I say. “I just wanted you to know it wasn’t nothing. That night. For me.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “It wasn’t nothing for me either.”

My wolf goes very, very still. I look back at the tree line, terrified of spooking her. I don’t push. I just let those words exist between us, real and unhurried, all the way to the other side of the mountain.

According to the GPS, we’re twenty minutes out when I hear it. A sound from the backseat. Small. Shuffling. Followed by what is unmistakably the crinkling of a wrapper.

I turn around.

Echo is sitting in the center of the backseat amid the packs and gear with a protein bar he has apparently liberated from the outer pocket of my bag and is eating it with the tranquil satisfaction of a small child with a sweet treat.

He looks at me.

I look at him.