Chapter 17 Vanessa #2
“Is this enough? Or would you like more?” There was that faint blush again, making me want to lean forward and brush my lips against it. “I have to admit, I don’t really know how much humans eat.”
“You made this plate for me?” I murmured, well and truly surprised.
Maybe it was a stupid thing to get caught up with, since it wasn’t particularly difficult to put some pancakes on a plate, but I had heard with my own ears just how hungry Leo was, yet his first thought had been to feed me. The non-shifter. The one who needed way less food than he did.
“Of course.” Then uncertainty crossed his features. “I didn’t mean to offend you if this is rude to do, but as an alpha, it’s my job to look after my pack.”
“It’s not rude at all,” I said, willing my heart to slow down before he heard it. I didn’t want him to think I was a dork who got emotional over breakfast. Still, I couldn’t even remember the last time someone had put me ahead of themselves. It was... nice.
The buildup of everything inside my chest was a bit too much, though, so I desperately sought for a way to change the topic of conversation. That was when my mind latched on to the last part of what he’d said.
His pack.
While I obviously didn’t know much about shifters, I didn’t need an introductory pamphlet to know how important a pack was to a wolf. Leo had basically just called me his family, called me one of the most important people to him, and he said it like it was a casual fact no one could doubt.
No one had ever treated me that way, except perhaps my mother. Even my own aunt had made it clear she only looked after me out of obligation to her dead sister. I was a relative, but I was never family.
Yet here Leo was, calling me pack like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Hey, are you all right? I can smell you getting stressed.”
Holy shit, I was not about to cry into my breakfast. That would be mortifying. Instead, I grabbed onto the opening that Leo had unknowingly presented.
“Where do you think your pack is?”
It was blunt and sudden. Leo blinked at me in surprise, but thankfully, he didn’t question it.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted as he loaded up his own plate.
Satisfaction rolled through me as he put about eight pancakes on his plate, five eggs, and nearly a dozen sausage patties.
The wolf needed his protein. “I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure they’re also cursed.
I think I was trying to protect them, but I couldn’t.
As far as I know, they could all be dead or scattered across the continent, locked in their animal bodies. ”
Although I could tell that he was trying to keep his tone casual, I heard the heartbreak beneath it. Damn it, in my efforts to change the conversation for my own sake, I had inadvertently soured the mood. I hadn’t meant to be selfish, and yet...
That was all right. I could still fix it. It wasn’t irreparably lost. I just needed to change it again, although perhaps this time a bit more gently.
“I mean, your curse broke, so maybe theirs did too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because none of them are here,” he answered as he poured a generous amount of the syrup over the pancakes. Normally I’d be way more conservative since it was so damn expensive it was, but Leo deserved a little decadence after everything he’d been through. Also, he needed the calories.
“I don’t follow.”
“In order for you to break their curse, I think you’d have to interact with them.
I suppose there’s a small chance that somehow you broke the entire thing when you broke mine, but I should be able to sense that.
When I reach out for my pack, there’s just nothing there.
When I dream of them, their faces are distorted, like something’s trying to keep them from me. ”
As horrifying as that was, I couldn’t help but get stuck on one particular part of it.
“Wait, you think I broke your curse?” I asked as Leo stuffed his mouth with a truly impressive forkful of syrupy and buttery pancakes. I waited for him to chew and swallow, but the entire time he was looking at me like I was strange for questioning that.
“Of course, you did. I would have thought that much was obvious.”
“Obvious, how?”
“Because I was completely consumed by the curse until I met you. It wasn’t until you saved my life that day that I even began to inch toward being myself again.
And the more I hung around you, the easier it was to remember bits and pieces of who I was.
Honestly, before that day in the woods, I wasn’t even capable of actual thought.
It was all animal instinct. You changed that. ”
While that was an incredibly sweet thing to say and it made my stomach swoop again, it couldn’t be true. “Leo, I’m human. How could I possibly have broken the curse?”
“I don’t know. I’m not really magically inclined.” What a wild thing for a werewolf to say. I knew what he meant, but still. “Maybe true love’s kiss?”
“True love’s kiss?” I tried not to sound absolutely shocked and failed entirely. Was that really even a thing? Any other time, I would have said it was the stuff of fairy tales, but it was pretty hard to definitively declare that when I was staring at a man who could transform into a wolf at will.
“I mean, it would make sense. You kissed my nose, and the next thing I knew, I had my human form again.”
Oh shit, that was kind of how it had happened, wasn’t it?
I’d been so startled and terrified at the time that my brain hadn’t exactly computed the order of events like that.
But it was true. Thinking back, I remembered leaning toward his wolf head—something that was rather inadvisable to do with a wild animal—and giving him a gentle little peck like I would with my cats.
Still, what he was saying just couldn’t be true. “How can it be true love’s kiss when I didn’t even know you?”
Leo tilted his head again, although this time it was less adorable and more troubled. “Were we not friends?”
I didn’t expect the hurt in his voice, and my heart squeezed. Goodness, I was really fucking things up without even trying. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t have any close friends.
“Yes. I mean, I did feel like we had some sort of connection, even if it didn’t make sense. I definitely enjoyed your company and looked forward to coming home and talking to you, even if I didn’t know you understood.”
“Honestly, I didn’t understand a lot of it, but what I did told me you were a safe person. And something about you—actually, many things about you—made some part of me want to find all the pieces of myself I had lost.”
“I… I did all that?”
Man, those pesky emotions and tears pricking at the corner of my eyes had come back in full force.
I’d spent so long living at the periphery of so many people’s lives, never being important, never being of any significance, but the way Leo talked about me made me sound so incredibly important to him.
It was overwhelming in the best possible way.
I felt so seen, even if it was intimidating—no, scratch that, terrifying—to be so visible to someone.
“Of course, you did,” Leo said, smiling ever so softly. The hurt was gone from his voice, but not the vulnerability. I actually felt as though I could ask him anything and he would tell me the truth without a doubt. “Even if you didn’t realize it.”
Not for the first time, I didn’t know what to say to Leo, so I stuffed a sausage patty into my mouth and made an affirmative sound. Leo chuckled, then busied himself with his own food.
Fortunately, my little trio decided to come run interference.
They all knew they weren’t allowed to beg directly from my plate or get on eating surfaces when humans—or kind of humans—were using them, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t lower themselves to staring at us from their various perches around the room.
“Am I allowed to give them anything?” Leo asked.
“Protein and egg yolk only, but you need to throw it on the floor. Sometimes I’ll let my cats smell something from my plate if it’s something new and they’re curious, but they are not allowed to eat directly from it.”
“Interesting. Why is that?”
“I loved cats, but when I was growing up and went to other people’s houses, too many of them had cats who would be a real hassle while eating.
Not only is it really annoying for the people who visit, but also it’s really unhealthy for the cats themselves.
People don’t realize how much being overweight can affect a feline.
Some are meant to be bigger than others, like Goober, or Russian Blues, but most aren’t. ”
“Ah, I see. You really care about them don’t you?”
“Of course, I do. They’re my pack.” I didn’t go into the fact that cats really seemed to understand me.
A lot of people tended to dislike felines because they didn’t understand the language and social rules, especially when they tried to use dog logic on cats.
That was like trying to teach a Mandarin speaker how to drive a car for the first time while speaking Arabic.
Yeah, maybe it was a little dramatic for me to feel camaraderie with my pets, but it was what it was.
“They’re lucky to have such a good alpha,” Leo said with another soft smile before inhaling his last pancake. “You know, Ricky would absolutely love your cooking.”
“Ricky? Who’s that?”
It was the first name Leo had mentioned to me. Were more memories returning? That was wonderful. It was so good to see the curse have less and less of a grip on him.
But then a voice in the back of my head, soft and insidious, started whispering. What would happen once he remembered everyone who had been left behind? He was a wolf, so of course he would want to be with them. And once he had his pack back, he wouldn’t need me anymore.
Whoa, whoa, I’m getting way too ahead of myself.
I buried those thoughts into the deepest part of my mind and focused on what Leo was saying.
“I… I’m pretty sure he’s my beta.”
“Your beta?” I questioned.