Chapter 5
EMME
“Let’s do it.” West rounds the counter, grin crinkling the corners of his eyes.
My pulse skips, and a little thrill runs down my spine. My fox hums beneath my skin, tail flicking, excited and reckless. She loves this—being seen, being matched. Someone stepping right up to the line and daring her to cross it.
“Ask away.”
The cookies slide across the sheet pan as I set it on the leather armchair. Right. Questions. I knew this was coming, but my mind goes completely blank.
“Fudge fuckers,” I mumble.
He tilts his head. “What was that?”
“Oh, um, what’s your favorite color?” I blurt.
He crosses his arms over his chest and settles back against the counter like he’s watching a show, and I suppose he is. “That seems like a wasted question.”
I groan. He’s right. “Let me start again—”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, grin widening. “No going back on the rules. I answer, and you take something off.”
I purse my lips. “Fine,” I say, pretending to be annoyed even as a spark of heat races through me. “But you’re only getting a sock for this one.”
“Favorite color’s green.”
I peel off one fuzzy pink sock and toss it at him. He ducks, and it lands somewhere behind him on the kitchen floor.
“Next question,” he says, still smiling.
I narrow my eyes. “Wait a second. I’m not getting anything out of this game.”
His brow lifts. “You’re the one who made the rules.”
“And I’m the only one who can change them. New rule,” I declare. “For every question I ask, you have to ask me one too.”
“And take off something when you give me an honest answer?”
“Oh yeah.” I lean against the armchair and grin right back at him. “Let’s see what you’re packing under all that middle-of-nowhere lumberjack accoutrement.”
“Accoutrement?”
“I can know big French words.”
His chuckle is low and wraps around me like a furry blanket. “Guess it’s my turn.” He stares at me with those gray eyes, and my body gets warm all over. “Why don’t you want a mate?”
“Wow. Starting off with a bang.”
“A sugary bang,” he shoots back with an actual wink. “At my age, you learn not to waste your questions.”
I roll my eyes in an attempt to disguise the blush creeping up my neck from that wink. “Okay, fine. You want the truth?”
“That’s the rule, isn’t it?”
I take a deep breath, fingers worrying the hem of my sweater. “My fated mate broke my heart last solstice,” I say, and immediately regret how small my voice sounds. “Spectacularly and very publicly. Just like that.” I snap my fingers. “He dropped me for someone else.”
The words taste bitter even now.
“And I had to stand there in front of my family and friends and basically everyone I’ve ever known and smile just so I wouldn’t fall apart.
So…yeah. I can’t trust fate,” I finish quietly, “and I definitely can’t trust my own instincts when it comes to love.
Better off alone than looking like a clown. ”
I can’t bring myself to look at him, not yet. The last thing I want to see is pity—or worse, amusement—etched across his face. Like I’m just some silly girl who should’ve learned her lesson by now. Who should’ve built thicker skin, stopped whining, moved on.
A soft sound breaks the quiet, fabric whispering against wood. His white thermal top slides across the floor and comes to rest at my feet.
“Felt like that deserved a whole shirt,” West says.
A soft smile lifts the corner of my mouth, and I look up at him then.
Firelight paints him in gold and shadow.
He’s all solid planes and hard lines. The muscles across his chest move as he shifts, tensing and relaxing beneath sun kissed skin.
Silver threads through the dark dusting of hair on his chest, glinting like metal.
Heat rolls through me, sharp and greedy, and when my eyes meet his, my breath catches in my throat. He looks at me like he recognizes every raw, aching piece of what I just confessed because he carries it too.
The room goes still. The fire crackles, snow sighs against the windows, and the space between us seems to shrink before he murmurs, “Your turn, Emme.”
I pick up a cookie and nibble on the soft sugary edges, my mind turning over half a dozen teasing questions that would pull us back into safer territory, a space that feels less intense than this emotional undressing, less like the careful unbuttoning and baring of everything I’ve kept locked away.
But I don’t actually want that.
Standing here in one sock, warmth curling around me, firelight dancing on the walls, and this beautiful man watching me like I’m worth all the truths in the world, I might finally be ready for the change I’ve spent so long avoiding. Maybe the sky outside isn’t the only thing breaking open.
“What’s the real reason you’re not with your pack?”
His grin fades, and he drags a hand through his thick hair. “I suppose it’s only fair I get a question like that after the one I asked.”
“We’ll see if your answer is worth my sweater.” I bite my lower lip and hold up the treat in my hand. “If it’s really good, I’ll even give you a cookie.”
The corner of his mouth quirks like he’s about to lean into the playfulness, but the teasing fades from his eyes, replaced by something heavier.
“I was supposed to be Alpha, and an Alpha needs—”
“A mate.”
“Yeah.” He gives a short, humorless laugh.
“I didn’t look for anyone before that. Didn’t have time.
I was too busy taking care of the pack, fixing what needed fixing, being the one everyone leaned on.
I just assumed that when my turn came, fate and the Elders would handle the rest like they had for the Alpha before me and the one before that… ”
He exhales slowly, gaze dropping to the floor as if the memory is written in the whirls of the pine.
“I shifted at Solstice, declared my desire for my fated mate. Apparently, fate had other plans. It skipped me. Passed right over, like I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I wasn’t. I don’t know.”
The silence stretches. The fire pops.
“Doesn’t matter.” His jaw works, the muscle ticking. “It ended the same. No mate. No divine blessing. No symbol of unity or good example for the pack to follow. No Alpha.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “They shouldn’t have made you leave the pack.”
When his gaze finally finds mine again, his eyes are storm gray shot through with something fragile. “They didn’t kick me out. I left. I hadn’t earned the right to lead a pack.” He lifts a broad shoulder and lets it fall. “So I came here.”
For a long moment, neither of us speaks, and all I can hear is the steady thud of my own heartbeat.
“You know,” I say softly, “for someone who thinks he didn’t earn the right to lead, you still carry yourself like you never stopped.”
His brow creases. “What do you mean?”
“You still act like an Alpha.”
His brows lift, faint surprise flickering across his face.
I gesture at him with my cookie in hand. “You invited me into your place after I assaulted you, made sure I didn’t freeze to death, and now you’re letting me stay in your cabin, no questions asked. Well, except for these.” I shrug. “If that’s not leading by example, I don’t know what is.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but the words don’t come.
“You’re still an Alpha,” I murmur, quieter now. “Just one who’s been hurt.”
His eyes darken, and he takes a step forward. “Emme…” The way he says my name—low and rough and nearly a growl—turns every nerve in my body electric.
I swallow hard. “I think you earned the whole shirt.”
I lift the sugar cookie to my mouth and hold it between my teeth as I tug my sweater over my head. The air hits my skin, warm from the fire as I toss the sweater onto the couch where it lands with a soft thud. I finish the cookie, sweet sugar clinging to my lips.
Crumbs dust my chest, catching in the pink lace of my bra. Without thinking, I trail a finger across my skin to brush them away, then bring that same finger to my mouth, licking away the last bits of sugar.
When I glance up, West is watching me. The silver glint in his eyes catches the light, flickers once, then spreads until both irises glow like molten steel.
Something primal in me answers. My breath stumbles, my heart beating hard against my ribs. Every inch of my skin feels too tight. My fox stretches, a purr rising in the back of my throat.
I bring my finger to my mouth again. There’s still a dusting of sugar on the tip, glittering like frost. I drag my tongue over it, tasting the sweetness, then let out the purr that’s been building in my throat.
His breathing deepens, muscles shifting, chest rising and falling with each slow, ragged pull of air as his gaze tracks the movement of my wet fingertip against my lips.
I can almost feel his control wavering, the way the wolf inside him prowls just beneath the surface, waiting for permission to break free.
I suck the sugar from my thumb and release it with a wet pop.
A growl vibrates deep in his chest, and his hands clench at his sides, knuckles flashing white.
My tongue curls around the pad of my index finger, heat pulsing between my legs as I hold his gaze. I suck it all the way into my mouth before letting it slide free, slow enough that his breath hitches on the way out.
“You earned one of these, too.” I pick up another cookie and hold it out to him. “Do you want it?”
His eyes lift from my mouth, and the look that meets mine is pure ruin. “You have no idea what I want.”
West stalks toward me. Each step devours the distance between us, the air thickening with heat and smoke and that wild scent of clove and pepper that’s entirely him, entirely wolf.
My pulse trips, my fox bristles, and for a second, I swear the whole room leans toward him too, pulled by the same gravity that has me frozen in place, trembling, focused on the sound of his steps against the floorboards and the way his gaze pins me in place.
My thighs press together, a helpless reflex against the ache building between them. The cookie trembles in my hand, dough flaking over my fingers as I hold on too tight.
He’s closer now. Close enough that the scent of him wraps around me, thick and heavy. It fills my lungs, clings to my skin, seeps into the edges of my thoughts until there’s nothing left but him.
When he reaches me, I lift the cookie, my hand unsteady.
He leans in, eyes locked on mine as he closes the last inches between us.
His breath brushes my fingertips, his teeth sinking into the soft dough.
He tears away a piece with a low, guttural sound that vibrates straight through me, lighting up every one of my nerve endings.
Sugar dusts his lower lip. I want to taste it as he drags his tongue along the sparkling grains.
“I can’t tell who’s winning this game,” I whisper, the words catching on a shaky breath.
West’s jaw flexes as he chews, his gaze never leaving mine. His throat works with a swallow, and his voice roughens, the wolf right there beneath the words.
“I know how we both can.”