Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
M y ears were failing me. They had to be.
The lunatic with his palm molded to my hip just looked at me. He rubbed his thumb along the bone there, his face straight. His head dipped so close I could count his eyelashes if I tried. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Yes, Henri.’”
What was this voice he was using? Where was it coming from? Did he have recessive mermaid genes in him I didn’t know about?
I…. “What?” I snarled… or squeaked, it could have been either considering I didn’t know how I felt. Not when we’d been arguing two minutes ago, and I’d thought we’d been on the verge of drawing a final line in the sand once and for all.
Now? I wasn’t even sure there was sand.
“‘Yes, Henri’ was the response I was looking for,” Henri said, his expression so serious. More serious than I might have ever seen him before. “I’d take you giving me a hug too.”
I tilted my head even further back, taking in all his features, thinking about what in the universe had just come out of his mouth… and then I dropped my forehead forward so hard and fast, it practically bounced off the layers of skin and bone of his sternum. It hurt.
But I was in too much shock to feel pain. And for some reason, my forehead didn’t want to go anywhere. It stayed right where it was, on his chest. “You want me to… marry you ? Is that what you just said?” I asked the spot on his body between his pectoral muscles.
“Almost word for word,” he confirmed.
“What the…?” I blew out a breath before sucking another one back in. My mind spinning. “Why are you suddenly offering?” I reared back. “Why are you telling me this now ?”
His eyebrow went up his signature millimeter. “Which question do you want me to answer first?” Apparently Teasing Henri was making an appearance from his tone and the glint in his orangey-brown eyes.
“I don’t know!”
He laughed so softly I felt it more than I heard it. Thumbs rubbed circles on my hip bones, the skin callused, and I had no business enjoying his touch so much. “Well, you made it really clear several times. You need someone to marry you, and I’m sure as hell not letting you marry somebody else,” Henri had the nerve to murmur.
This was not, not how I could have, or would have, ever pictured this day, much less this moment happening. Even my ears didn’t know what to do with themselves because they started ringing. I might have even lost my balance there for a second. Maybe they were more than a little in shock at what they’d just stood witness to. My forehead went back to that spot between his pecs. “You… want to marry… me ?” I asked his chest, not trusting myself to have this conversation with his face. “Why? Why now?”
We’d already had the conversation that I didn’t need to rush into anything. That I should wait until my three months were up to start figuring things out. That was what he’d suggested. Strongly suggested, damn it. And we were close to the three months, but we weren’t there yet.
Warm, solid pressure landed on the back of my head, and I shivered, but that time it was at the smell of him, the feel and strength he emanated. Part of me expected him to give me a reason or two why he was offering to tie himself to me for the rest of his life. Because he thought I was brave or loyal or… something nice.
But instead, Henri’s finger tipped my chin up, and he looked me dead in the eye, to say, “Why wouldn’t I want to?”
My pride was the only reason my knees didn’t buckle.
The same hand that had touched the skin beneath my chin seconds ago went to my shoulder, and he palmed that body part too. “Is that a ‘yes’?”
“You brushed me off every time I’ve brought this up before,” I reminded him, thinking of the roller coaster—a children’s roller coaster to be fair—he’d put me on. “And now you’re asking me to mate with you? I don’t even… I don’t even know who your parents are! Or where they are! Or anything about your family. Really, every single one of you is so guarded talking about it. You said you grieved someone once, and I don’t know who that was. I don’t even know who raised you, or how Matti’s dad and everyone else could have just… left you here to deal with all this by yourself.”
That was something that had been on my mind from time to time the longer I was here. How they could have all just left him with his huge burden without looking back. I knew Matti inside and out, and in my heart, I knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t have abandoned Henri just like that. But that didn’t feel like a conversation my best friend and I could have over the phone.
None of my questions or points fazed Henri even a little bit. “I grieved my brother and his wife when they died. They were both much older than me. They were who raised me. Matti’s dad was their son, and he was my older brother in every way that mattered, but we always knew he was going to leave. This land didn’t call to him the way it did to my brother and me. He invited me to go with him when I was old enough,” he explained gently. “We called Matti my cousin because he and I are closer in age than his dad and I were, and that term was easier to explain.”
Before I could say I was sorry, or ask about them, or bring up the fact that he wasn’t actually Matti’s cousin, he moved on.
“The whole purpose of the elders was supposed to be for them to help those in my family run the ranch. Every generation of my father’s descendants had less and less children. Until I was born, my brother had been an only child, and Matti’s dad was an only child. Things were fine when my brother handled everything with the help of the elders. They were who took care of things when I left for New Mexico and went away to school. Everyone knew I wasn’t leaving forever.
“It was my decision to take on so much when I got back. Matti is his dad’s son, and there was no way I could’ve ever guilt-tripped him into staying here,” he admitted. “I have a hard time delegating work or asking for help. It’s my fault things got out of hand, but I never had a reason to want more time for myself until now,” Henri went on to explain.
I blinked.
And if everything that had come out of his mouth hadn’t been enough, he dropped yet another secret on me.
“My mother was once known as Fenrir.”
Fenrir? The Fenrir? The Norse monster wolf? Maybe it was no wonder he didn’t talk about his family. We could come back to all this some other time.
“My father is the original Amarok—the Great Wolf, like the gnomes eventually came to call him. That’s how I’m related to everyone here. All the Amarok are descendants of his descendants, but I’m his direct flesh and blood,” he explained without even blinking. “He doesn’t live here and neither does my mother. They used to check in once every few years—time means something different to them.”
My lips parted in awe. “Are they together?”
“No. I think their relationship is an arrangement I don’t want to begin to understand. I’m not the first child they’ve had together, but it’s been centuries since. My brother raised me, and his brother raised him. None of us shared a mom.”
Just when I thought that my DNA parents were out of their minds….
“I was told that our father has sons and daughters so that they can care for the land. In the past, every thirty to fifty years, a baby will show up, and his last child will raise it. It’s been the cycle since he found this place. But I haven’t seen or heard from him in almost a decade. No one knows where he is. I might be the last of his kids, or in a few years, he might show up with a baby he wants us to raise.”
Us.
Henri leaned forward then. “Does that bother you?”
I frowned. “Why would that bother me?”
The face he made was just short of smug. “That’s what I thought, but I needed to make sure. We have to stop assuming things about each other.”
“That’s dumb. You know I wouldn’t care.” I dropped my shoulders, vulnerability piercing my sternum. I wanted to pick apart him already signing me up to raise a child with him in the future, but really, there were so many other important things I wanted to discuss. I would do anything with him, and I was pretty sure we were both aware of that. A child would be a given. “But what about what Franklin said? My DNA dad can kill people. It was one thing when we guessed who he was, but it’s a totally different thing to know exactly who he is. To know… that they didn’t want me.”
“I don’t give a fuck who your biological anyone is,” he argued gently. “And I’m never going to.”
His words made me release a sharp breath.
“ You are a good person,” Henri went on. “And I want you enough for both of them. For all of them.”
Cupid might as well have shot me in the heart. “But you didn’t act that way, not until now,” I reminded him, trying so hard not to say that shakily.
“Nina.” He made a sound in his throat, and one of his thumbs did another circle over my skin that I had to try really hard to ignore. “We’re supposed to wait for the three-month period.”
Was that what all this shit was about? The three months?
“I don’t hold myself above any of our guidelines. I needed to wait. You deserved the time to settle in,” he tried to explain. “I thought we were on the same page?—”
My scoff wasn’t exactly quiet. “We haven’t been in the same book, Fluff, if you think this is supposed to not surprise me.”
Henri stroked my hip a little more, all his features pursed with intent. “You liked me, I liked you, and I could tell….”
“Tell what?” I asked slowly.
“That there was more there. More than attraction. More than surface feelings.” His eyes moved over my face. “I thought you knew that.”
My voice was a little flat. “How was I supposed to?”
“You think I kiss every member of the ranch?” he asked. “You think I tell all my friends to fuck off and go sniff around somebody else for just anyone?”
He’d told his friends to fuck off? What friends?
“You have to understand how many people have come here over the years and left before their three months were up. I didn’t expect you to stay either, not at the beginning. I was trying to do the right thing, dammit.” His eyebrows dropped on his forehead. “Why the hell do you think I told you to wait to start dating?”
I sputtered. “I mean… it was wishful thinking….” Had he been jealous ? Had he been trying to sabotage my dating efforts for his own benefit?
I leaned back and looked up at him, totally caught off guard by this conniving MFer.
One side of his mouth curled a little, his thumb continuing to do that circle thing as he held me against him. “From the moment you made fun of Spencer, I knew I was in trouble.”
I squinted so warily. “Go on.”
His mouth curled a little more. “Then you made us go visit him so you could say you were sorry, and that was it.” He exhaled. “Liking you would’ve been enough, but… you had to be you.”
The sound that came out of my nose was as unexpected as the smile that took over his lips, and I think I might have gone a little lightheaded again for a second. “Are you telling me this right now because I almost died?”
The way the growl crept up his throat gave me the good kind of goose bumps. “ Don’t remind me .”
I raised my eyebrows, and he growled again.
“Yes, I was trying to wait for the three months to be up. We’re two weeks away. What are they gonna do? Kick me out?” He had the nerve to snicker.
Just when I thought I had him figured out, he’d admit something like this. I poked him again. “But you still pretended I didn’t say anything every time I brought it up.”
He almost looked regretful. “Cut me some slack. I don’t get proposed to on a regular basis.”
My body wasn’t prepared for Funny Henri. The skin on my arms prickled. “Who did you tell to fuck off anyway? Those men who came into the kitchen?” I asked him.
His palm slid up and curled around my waist, beneath my shirt. “Yes.” His tone didn’t say he felt bad about it either.
“Really?”
“They should’ve walked out the second I came in. Randall tried to tell them. I was a minute away from doing something no one was going to like.”
Maybe some people thought you shouldn’t be attracted to possessive people, but I wasn’t one of them. It fueled my soul. Fed my spirit. If I could’ve glowed, I would have.
I just shook my head at him, smiling a little bit because I couldn’t help myself. Plus, I’d known he was up to something rubbing his face all over me!
Henri closed the distance between us even more, his mouth hovering above mine. “I’d lay down my life for every single member of the ranch, but I was on the verge of forgetting about that. I had a talk with most of them afterward and made things real clear. You’re the only person I was trying to keep anything from, Cricket, and the truth is, I can’t go through you going on a single date,” he told me somberly. “Attraction is important, but respect, loyalty… strength… those are the traits that matter the most to my people. If we’re lucky, we might meet a few people in our lives that our senses are drawn to without ever talking to them. But it’s everything after that that matters most.”
That sounded an awful lot like how every werewolf before him had explained how mating someone worked. Basically, biology had a small say in it: the same way you might prefer apples over oranges, you smelled someone you liked more than someone else. Then every once in a while you might meet a strawberry, your absolute favorite fruit. The one who lit up your taste buds and your sense of smell like nothing else.
Then you had to get to know a person, and that was what you fell for. It was like… a filtering process, kind of. A process of elimination helped by biology.
And the person my biology seemed to favor over everything and everyone before palmed my lower back with his warm hands. “You know damn well that I like you just fine. More than fine.” His eyes searched mine. “Nina… you smell like my mate. Feel like it too….”
“And?” I asked, my voice wobbling, high and stringy.
Henri’s brows furrowed before he dipped down to kiss me again, but this time, it was more than a hard press of a warm mouth. His lips captured mine, parted them too, and his tongue swept into my mouth with an ease and finesse of familiarity. His tongue sliding and meeting mine like they were old friends, and my body wasn’t trying to pretend otherwise. When he pulled away, he only made it a second before he swept back in and did it again. And then again, followed by another one, a million more I would have taken before his breath wafted over my lips. He gulped when he pulled back and pierced me with those incredible eyes. “The more I learn about you, the more I like you, and there’s not many people I can say that about.”
My lips parted as I watched every line on his face.
He kept going too. “Nobody has ever made me as happy as you do, and the idea that somebody else would be spending their free time with you, hearing you laugh… I can’t fucking do it. It’s unbearable to me.”
Someone had a way with words, and I was suddenly grateful that, while he wasn’t quiet, he didn’t drop things like this on me all the time, because I didn’t think I’d be able to survive this Henri in large portions.
“Hmm,” was all my brain could conjure up as a reply.
It made his eyebrows go up. “That’s all you have to say?”
“This wasn’t the conversation I was expecting to have with you today, Fluff,” I breathed. “It’s not every day your childhood crush kisses you, then says they’ll marry you, makes out with you, and finally admits you make them happy. I’m processing.”
I didn’t think he liked that response much.
And there had to be something wrong with me, but I felt like I owed it to myself to do what I was about to do.
Even if it went against every instinct in my body.
“I should probably think about it,” I told him. “I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thinking I needed to move on.”
He reeled back. “You’re going to think about whether or not you’ll mate with me?” Henri asked slowly, surprise in his tone and his eyes.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“What’s there to think about?”
The urge to mess with him ran so strongly in me that I couldn’t even try and have a serious conversation with him, not after he’d had me considering a future where he was just in my peripheral. So, I blinked at him and said, “I’d already been trying to decide whether I could picture my future children having green eyes or blue ones.”
The growl that rumbled in his chest was going to stay with me for the rest of my life. Maybe I’d make it my ringtone.
It took all my self-control to keep my features even as I kept messing with him. “My coloring with those eye colors… I want my kids to be cute.” I raised my eyebrows and shoulders at the same time. “I have options, Fluff.”
Henri’s growl cut off as his eyes searched mine. He almost looked amused. “You can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face, you little brat.”
I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. I was already cracking up. I wiped my eyes and sighed. “Look, two months ago, I would have signed up for this”—I pointed back and forth between the two of us—“in a heartbeat. I was ready to marry anyone to stay here and make this work.”
His nostrils flared at that comment, but I lifted my hand.
“You’re the only man I’ve ever propositioned,” I tried to soothe his ego.
It wasn’t enough. “And I’m the only one you’re ever going to,” he tried to snarl.
I smiled and shrugged. “Probably, but I’ve seen the best relationships with your kind, Henri, and there was never any hesitation in any of them?—”
He grunted, ready to argue, but so was I.
“It seems to me like you just made this decision right now because you’re jealous.”
“I’ve been jealous since before we walked into the kitchen and found people I thought were my friends wanting the only thing I’ve wanted for myself in a long time,” he agreed, surprising me again, especially with the emotion in his tone. “I’ve been jealous since Randall tried to get near your neck.”
That was a statement to store away for later, but I had to focus. “But maybe you need to think about it too some more when you aren’t worked up.”
“Cricket,” he grumbled so deeply I felt it in my chest.
“Fluffy, listen. We have too much history for you to jump into anything. Your cousin is one of the most important people in my life?—”
“And now I’m going to be,” he cut me off, wrapping those brawny arms around me, collecting me. I stared up at him. “We both know what there is here between us, and we aren’t going to insult each other by pretending like we don’t. There’s a choice to be made, yeah, but is there? The first thing I thought when I saw your face was that you were so damn pretty. You smell like my favorite thing in the entire world. The sound of your voice makes me smile.
“A wolf knows when it knows, and I haven’t been able to stop looking at you… looking for you… since you got here. Matti’s always going to be one of the most important people in your life, the same way he is for me, but what you and I are going to have is going to top that.”
I was going to have to consider at a later time that I might have a heart problem from the way it started beating so fast and hard since I’d gotten here.
And Henri didn’t have any mercy on it. “A mate is the foundation for the present and the future. I’ve made my decision, and you made yours before I even did. This is going to happen . You’re not the kind of person who’s going to give me shit for trying to do what I thought for a minute might be what’s best for you.” He lowered his face as he whispered, “There aren’t going to be any green-eyed or blue-eyed babies for you in the future unless they need to use contacts.”
I opened my mouth to try and disagree, but he shook his head. “You liked Dieter and Keegan just fine, but not anywhere near as much as you like me,” he said slowly and carefully. “When you’re scared, you come to me because you know I’ll protect you. When you’re worried, you come to me because you know I’m going to be there for you. You trust me . You love me. I know it, and so do you.”