Chapter 8
Wyatt
This date was a disaster.
First, I hadn’t been able to find my favorite red plaid shirt—the one Willow had given me for Christmas three years ago. And then I’d bungled the flower handoff with my awkward rambling. And now I’d shoved my foot so far into my mouth that I was pretty sure I could taste shoe leather.
I fought the urge to look over my shoulder toward Aisling.
I hadn’t accepted today’s deliveries, and no one in the pack had told me that Liam was injured.
I didn’t know whether my mother was keeping me out of the loop on purpose or if Liam had decided it wasn’t worth telling me, which was worse.
We’d known each other since we’d been pups and, technically, his family line was second-in-command.
Even if I weren’t alpha, I would still feel responsible for him.
Willow was more attuned to my emotions than I’d expected. I’d felt her monitoring me during my exchange with Aisling. Her hand had clenched when my jaw had. She’d pressed her body to mine when I’d felt exposed.
I needed to tell her.
It was now or . . .
I’d considered not telling her. Sure, it would be a huge deal if she ever found out on her own.
She’d likely never speak to me, and I’d lose my favorite person in the whole world, not to mention one of my steadiest clients.
But when I glanced down at her, I had to fight the voices compelling me to blurt out everything and ruin our not-so-perfect date.
At some point, the inevitable would catch up with us. But for a blissful hour, we laughed, played, and picked far too many apples.
I laid out the thick blanket beneath two apple trees, our heaving baskets doubling as weights to hold down the corners.
Willow splayed herself across the soft fabric, her golden hair haloing her perfectly freckled face.
I watched her soak in the rays of sun for as long as I could, wanting to hold on to these last few moments when I was just Wyatt and she was just Willow.
But if ever there was a time, it was now.
I cleared my throat. “So . . .”
Willow cracked an eye open. “Is it time for this dreaded news?” She rolled onto her side, then lunged for her basket.
“Wait, let me get an apple ready just in case I need to throw it at you.” She plucked out a sizable specimen and held it aloft.
“Here. This one’s chunky enough to bludgeon.
” When I didn’t laugh, she added, “Okay, you’re officially freaking me out. ”
“Sorry, that’s not . . . I just need to get this out, okay?” I took a breath, trying to settle the feeling of panic that was rising from my gut. “You know my grandfather is getting older,” I began. “And since my father passed—”
“You’ll be the next pack alpha,” Willow supplied.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t a secret, but hearing her confirm it made me cringe.
“I may still be considered an outsider at times, but I have managed to hear the pack gossip,” she said with a laugh. “Agnes loves to pry. She says you don’t want to be alpha. Is that why you’ve not been running with your pack?”
“Not exactly.” I rubbed at the sigil just under my shirt. “There are things that are keeping me from taking up the mantle.”
“Things like . . . me?”
“Well, yes, but also . . .” I pulled the neck of my shirt aside, showing her the sigil on my collarbone.
Willow sucked in a sharp breath, her fingers gently sweeping across the mark. “What is that?”
“A demon sigil,” I replied. “Ramona’s, to be exact.”
“You made a deal with Ramona?” She balked. “Why?”
“You asked why I didn’t know about Liam getting injured. This is why. It keeps me from shifting.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to shift?”
“Because it would be dangerous,” I said. “For you.”
Her brow furrowed. “Me, specifically?”
“There are reasons I haven’t, uh, taken things further with us before,” I continued. “Because we can’t just date.”
“What?”
“There can be no casual. Not with you and me. We’re kind of an all-or-nothing sort of situation because . . .”
“Because . . .” Willow wheeled her hands. “Spit it out, Wyatt. I’m freaking out here.”
I knew everything would change from one word to the next. I felt myself jumping off a cliff and knew there was no net to save me, but part of me felt incredibly relieved.
Finally, I could tell her the thing my heart had been screaming for years.
“You . . . You’re my mate.”
Her mouth fell open. “Mate? What does that even mean?”
“It means that from the moment I first saw you, I knew you were mine,” I said.
“Your scent, your breath, your heartbeat—gods, sometimes even your thoughts. You and I are connected, Willow. We are so much more than friends or lovers. We’re soulmates.
We have the sort of magical bond that is sacred to my kind. ”
I could see her mind reeling. “Is that why I can always sense when you’re around?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why I am constantly wondering where you are when you’re not around? Why I’m always seeking you out?”
Realization had hit her like a freight train. And through our connection, I could feel her emotions going haywire.
“Yes,” I answered again.
“Is that why my feelings for you are so intense and confusing?”
The last bit of that question ricocheted through me. I didn’t want this to be complicated, but I also knew I had no control now.
“I feel them just as intensely,” I replied, reaching for her hand, but she yanked it away.
She glared at me, and the beautiful daydream I had of kissing my mate while we ran off into the sunset swiftly disappeared. “And you didn’t tell me for four years?”
She shot to her feet.
“Willow, I—”
“Four years, Wyatt! I thought I was losing my fucking mind!”
I scrambled to meet her, but before I was upright, she whirled on me and stabbed her pointer finger into my chest. “You should’ve told me.”
“I should’ve, but the longer we knew each other, the more I didn’t want anything to change between us,” I pleaded.
“I didn’t want to drag you into this mess or take away your choices.
I wanted you to choose to love me for me.
And not because some magic preordained it.
I wanted to give you time, Willow, please—”
She started to pace in short circuits across the blanket. “How many people know?”
I raised a brow. I was pretty sure everyone knew that I was the future pack alpha and insanely in love with a human. It seemed to be all anyone could talk about. “What do you—”
“Does your whole pack know? Does the whole town know what we are?”
I swallowed thickly.
“Oh my god,” she whined, scrubbing a hand down her face. “Everyone knows, don’t they?” When I didn’t reply, she screeched, “Don’t they?”
“Not everyone,” I hedged pathetically, which only incensed her further.
The truth was that anything paranormal could spot a mating bond from a mile away. But humans didn’t have mates in the same way, and somewhere along the line, my attempts to not chase Willow away had turned into me keeping this enormous secret from her.
“Why the sigil?” She folded her arms around herself and retreated another step. “Why haven’t you been shifting? You said it would be dangerous for me.”
“It would have been.”
“How?” she snapped, her patience thinner than my own restraint.
“It was days before the full moon the first time we met . . .” I ran my fingers through my hair, remembering. “I went to Ramona and made the deal.”
“And what would’ve happened if you hadn’t?”
I took a tentative step toward her, and she didn’t retreat. “It wouldn’t have been good, Willow.”
The gnawing feeling in my gut started up again. This was the part that I was most afraid of because it might send her packing her bags and running for the hills.
But she looked up at me through watery eyes and I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“I would’ve torn the whole town apart to get to you because no one keeps a wolf from his mate,” I said thickly and watched her shudder, her lips parting in fear. “I would’ve wanted you so badly, it would’ve driven me mad with lust. I could have hurt you.”
“You should have told me,” she whispered, her eyes welling.
I folded my arms to mirror hers, wanting so desperately to touch her, to comfort her, yet I knew it wasn’t the right call.
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I am madly in love with you, and if you don’t agree to be with me forever by the next full moon, I’m going to run you out of town with my possessive werewolf lust?’”
She huffed out a reluctant sigh of agreement. “Fine, so it probably wouldn’t have gone over well.”
“I didn’t want to drive you away.”
“But . . . if you’d told me, at least I wouldn’t have spent the last four years questioning every small thing between us, wondering if I was the only one.”
I shook my head. “I know this is a lot, but we have time. I will keep the sigil. I will keep delaying and—”
“No, I don’t want that,” she cut in. “I don’t want you hiding from your responsibilities because of me. I won’t be a wedge between you and your pack.”
I wasn’t expecting her to agree with my mother so soon.
“What if,” she started. “Even with the sigil gone, I wanted to stay . . .” She shrank a little at the admission, but my heart swelled in my chest.
“. . . and be with you?”
“There are a lot of strings attached to that scenario,” I answered, giving her a moment to take her request back.
When she didn’t, I continued, “You would be mine in every way. Heart, soul, and body. You’d have to learn the ways of the pack and what it means to be a wolf, and you’d have to prepare yourself to be the future queen. ”
Her eyes flared. “The queen of the wolves?”
“It’s traditional that the alpha be wed before they take over their position. Typically, I would have been betrothed as a child, but I rejected that long ago.”
Flashes of my teenage self telling my pack that I refused the girl they’d picked came to mind. Back then, I’d thought I couldn’t disappoint the people I loved any more.
And then I’d kept doing it over and over. Including this moment.
“Isn’t a human wife out of the question, then?” Willow asked. “Even if I am your mate?”
I blinked at her. “Would you want to be part of the pack if it were allowed?”
“I . . . I mean, I want to be with you. It’s been driving me crazy not being with you.”
“You don’t understand what it would all mean,” I said. She didn’t know what she was volunteering for, and I wouldn’t drag her into that pit of snakes. “My family is intense, to say the least. And the pack. I want them to accept you, but could you be with me if they never did?”
“Would a human queen even be allowed?” She threw her hands up and let them fall to slap against her sides. “But taking on all this responsibility . . . Can’t we just see where this goes and . . .”
I groaned, wishing I could say yes.
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this on our first fucking date!” she erupted, wiping her eyes. “This is too much.”
“I know,” I lamented. “I’ve thought about this conversation a million times, and I never figured out a way for it to go well. It’s why I’ve danced around this for so long.”
“And if we start down this path and things go bad?”
“I wouldn’t allow that to happen.”
What I should have said was that it couldn’t. The consequences of a failed mating bond were nothing compared to how treacherous the pack would be if they found out things had gone sour.
I reached for her hands and pulled her into me.
“If we were to break up, I’d have to leave town, wouldn’t I?” She cried into my shirt, and I cradled her head into me, letting her fear, hope, and grief flood us both. “But even if we don’t end up together, I’d have to leave town because if I’m here, you’ll have to—”
“No.” I held her tighter. “I promise, Willow. I won’t ever let that happen. I’d move my entire pack before making you feel like you had to leave.”
That only made her cry harder.
“I need to go,” Willow muttered, pulling from my hold. “I need to process all of this.”
“Wait.” I gently took her elbow.
She stared at me with those heartbroken, red-rimmed eyes, and I couldn’t stand it.
I grabbed her cheeks and kissed her. Salt and doubt stung my lips, but she let out a little noise that sounded like relief.
We melted into one another, and I let my lips tell her all the ways this could work out, all the ways I could make her happy.
I would mend this betrayal one kiss at a time.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered against her mouth.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to kiss you.
” I leaned my forehead against hers. “All I have wanted since I met you was to be the town baker who happened to have a human mate. Just the two of us running our shops, going on dates, being a normal Maple Hollow couple. I wanted us to be together and happy, but . . .”
She took a step out of my touch, cheeks glistening with tears. “But you’re the future leader of your pack, and they need you.”
I hated this feeling, how terribly torn I was between my duty to my family and the woman I loved with my whole heart.
She nodded. “I need some time to think about all of this.” She wrung her hands together, and it took everything in me not to pull her back into my arms. “Don’t follow me.”
I hung my head as I listened to the sound of her fading away.