Chapter 8 - Arthur #2
“Hard not to,” he said. “You nearly took my eyebrows off in that clearing.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, unwilling.
He seized on it. “What were you doing, anyway?” he asked, nodding at the cards. “Apart from giving my wolves bad habits.”
“Party tricks,” Dani said. “Kiara and I were teaching them not to bet on the obvious card.”
“You were cheating at cards in my bar,” he translated.
“Correct,” Kiara said serenely. “It builds character.”
“I…” he broke off, frustrated. Words felt like the wrong tools for this. “I don’t want you hurt.”
Her eyes searched his face, like she was hunting for the lie.
“I know,” she said.
Kiara snorted. “You mated a witch,” she said. “Adaptation seems wise.”
He gave her a flat look. She didn’t so much as blink.
“All right,” Dani said slowly. “Then we learn. Together. But on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You stop talking about my magic like it’s a disease,” she said. “And you stop looking at Aurelia like she’s one misstep away from being infected by it.”
His head jerked back. “I don’t—”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Arthur,” she said, her tone heavy with implication.
Guilt burned in his chest. He swallowed.
“Aye,” he said.
Aurelia looked up at him, surprised, then nodded, brisk and practical. “Good,” she said. “Because Kiara said she’d teach me how to do the card thing if Mom says it’s okay.”
“Absolutely not,” Arthur and Dani said together.
Kiara sighed. “You’re both very boring.”
Rory chuckled under his breath. The knot of attention around them loosened. Voices rose, music crackled from the jukebox, and wolves drifted back to their drinks. Aurelia slipped away toward a pair of Volkhov pups, drawn by the lights of the machine.
Leaving Arthur and Dani in a thinner bubble of space.
He cleared his throat. “You should be in my house.”
Not what he’d meant to say.
Dani blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The guest rooms in the compound are fine,” he said, pushing on. “But they’re not as secure as the alpha house. You’d be more comfortable at mine.”
She stared. “Is this your subtle way of asking me into your bed?”
Heat slammed into his face. “No,” he said, too quickly. “You’d have your own room. Separate. With a door that locks.”
Her expression shifted, suspicion tinged with something else. Exhaustion. Maybe the tiniest thread of relief.
“Why now?” she asked.
He shrugged, shoulders tight. “Because you’re mine,” he said simply. “And she’s mine. And I sleep better if you’re under my roof. Where I can hear if anything goes wrong.”
“Control again,” she said softly.
“Protection,” he said. “Call it what you like. It doesn’t change what it is.”
She looked away, watching Aurelia laugh at something by the jukebox, her hair bouncing, joy making her almost incandescent.
Dani’s throat worked. When she met his eyes again, there was resignation there. And something more fragile under it.
“Separate rooms,” she said. “My key. You allow me to cast wards on the doors. If I say we’re done for the night, we’re done.”
“Done,” he said at once.
“And if I decide this was a mistake,” she added, “I move back to Thistlehouse or the compound, and you don’t get to drag me back by the scruff.”
His wolf perked at the image. Arthur ignored it.
“Agreed,” he said. “On one condition.”
Her brows rose. “There it is.”
He stepped a fraction closer, heart thudding. The bond tugged, pleased. Up close, he saw the faint smudge of ash near her temple from some earlier spell. His fingers twitched with the need to brush it away.
“You don’t run in the middle of the night,” he said quietly. “If you decide you want out, you tell me to my face. No vanishing. No letters. No ten years of silence.”
Her breath hitched.
They looked at each other, the noise of the bar blurring into a dull roar.
After a heartbeat, she nodded once. “Fine,” she said. “No running. Not this time.”
Something in his chest eased that he hadn’t known was locked.
“Then come home with me tonight,” he said.
The word home hung between them, fragile and dangerous.
Dani eyed him, then huffed a humorless little laugh. “You are really bad at this.”
“At what?” he asked.
“At courting,” she said. “At apologies. At…everything. But.”
She glanced over at Aurelia again, at the way the girl’s shoulders had dropped, at how she looked almost relaxed here, surrounded by wolves who were pretending not to stare.
“Fine,” Dani said. “We’ll stay at your house. For now. Don’t make me regret it.”
He bit back the ridiculous urge to grin. “I’ll have Chase bring your things over,” he said. “We’ll leave when you and Aurelia are ready.”
“We’ll finish our hot chocolate first,” she said. “I’m not wasting Layla’s hospitality.”
He snorted. “Wouldn’t dare.”
For the first time that night, she smiled at him. Properly.
His wolf rolled over in sheer, ridiculous joy.
Arthur straightened. “I’ll be at the bar,” he said. “If anything—”
“I know where to find you,” she said.
He hesitated, then, as he passed the jukebox, bent and brushed a brief, careful kiss to Aurelia’s curls.
She stiffened in surprise, then relaxed. When he glanced back, she was watching him with a look he couldn’t quite read.
He didn’t need to. Not yet.
His mate and his daughter were here, in his town, edging closer to his roof. He intended to keep it that way.
One step at a time. One evening. One concession.
It wasn’t much.
But it was a start.