Chapter 19 - Selene
Ronan is up and gone before I’m even awake properly, and I lie in the warmth he’s left in the bed, trying not to notice how easy this could become. Waiting up for him and waking up in his bed.
Wanting him gone and wanting him back in the same breath.
Last night I fell asleep with my head on his chest, counting the beats of his heart, almost afraid to move, afraid of the fact that I didn’t want to.
A month ago, I tried to run, and now I don’t want to.
Now I want to wake up in his arms, go help out at the clinic, stop off at the bakery on the way home, and laugh with friends.
I want those things, but they also make me feel like a fool, and a traitor all rolled into one. Because he is the monster I was brought up to fear, and I’ve given myself to him willingly. Given him my bond magic. Anything that happens next is my fault, too, all because I couldn’t resist him.
I force myself to get up because lying here and thinking about Ronan isn’t something I can afford to do this morning.
Especially because it will only confuse the situation even more.
So I head to my room and pull the tablet out from under the pillow.
The message I was expecting is waiting for me on the screen.
Selene,
We’ve been talking to our mates and the people in the harbors. They’re frightened—some families are sending their little ones to stay with family on the mainland, just in case. Nobody here wants this.
Tristen let something slip after the last council.
They think Ronan isn’t just raiding anymore.
They think he’s been moving people and supplies—that he’s building toward something, and that he’s closer than they thought.
It’s frightened them, and they don’t seem in the mood to talk anymore.
I think they’re preparing to fight. Their first duty is to protect the people here, but there is a lot of sympathy for their half-brothers in the packs; they remember their mother and have been talking about the situation.
Ralph was a real piece of work, but if you can stop it on that end, then do it, because I fear what will happen if they come face to face here.
Delete this once you’ve read it.
E
I read it twice, delete it, and sit there with my heart racing.
Closer than they thought. Preparing to fight. I don’t need her to spell it out. If the island strikes first, out of fear, Ronan won’t hold back, and then there’s no stopping any of it.
So I write back, careful, the way I always am, because I’m not trying to betray any of these people.
I give her more information about the settlement here, the families, the school, everything Ronan and Ryder have built out of nothing.
I tell her to talk to their mates and tell them the full story of their brothers, and not to see them as monsters but rather as men damaged by Ralph and seeking retribution. But that they’re not irredeemable.
But I don’t give her anything that could be used against him.
I don’t confirm that I know Ronan has a foothold on the island because I’ve heard about the families that have moved over there, and the witch that fixes the wards.
I’m not trying to help them beat Ronan. I’m trying to save him from himself.
I also don’t tell her that the reason Ronan may escalate now is that he has the bond magic.
The thing that has changed the most is me; I’ve gifted him the one thing he needs to go from being a threat to being the one man who could beat them all.
If they knew that, they might move on the offense even more.
Then I put the tablet away and try to get through the day, knowing it’s going to be one of the last calm ones for a while. The tension is already building in the air as the docks get busier, and all eyes are on the island.
I try, but I can’t settle on anything all day.
I go through the motions, but I can’t shake the helplessness I feel.
I check the tablet several times, once when I come back from the clinic at lunch because I can’t think about anything else, and as soon as I get back in later.
I almost send Emily another email, but then I realize I have nothing new or helpful to say, and every message sounds like a risk.
So I make some food, clean things that are already clean, and watch the light crawl across the water toward evening and toward him coming back.
When I first sent the email to Emily, I thought we really might be able to stop this, but now that he has my bond magic, I’m not so sure.
His pain is real, and it needs to go somewhere.
I’m not sure the alphas on the island really appreciate what Ronan and Ryder went through, what their mother went through, and how much all this has cost them.
I’m not sure they appreciate how much he needs to hate them.
By the time I hear his boots on the porch steps, my stomach is in knots. I feel guilty about the emails; I shouldn’t, because he kidnapped me and wants to start a war that will hurt people, and yet I can’t help it.
When he walks in, I can tell his wolf is riding high on whatever he’s been doing all day. He smells like the sea, and he crosses straight to me, arms snaking around my waist as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Missed you,” he says into my hair, and goddess help me, my body leans into him almost instinctively.
He’s warm, and he smells like salt and cold air and a long day’s work, and for a moment I let my forehead drop against his chest and feel exactly how much I missed him all day, which feels like another small betrayal, missing the man I’m actively working against.
Then I make myself step back, just enough to put some air between us and clear my head.
But he notices. Of course, he notices. I feel him go still, that hunting stillness wolves get, and when I glance up, his eyes are already on my face.
“What?” he says, nothing sharp in his tone, just watchful.
“Nothing.” I turn toward the coffee pot, so I don’t have to look at him. “Long day.”
“Mm.” He doesn’t move. I can feel him behind me, all that new power humming around him, and I know he can feel me, too. That’s the part I keep forgetting—that his wolf easily reads me, that he can likely hear my heart going too quickly from clear across the room.
“You still writing to that coven of yours?” he asks, keeping his tone almost deliberately light. “On the tablet I gave you.”
The floor drops out from under me. He gave me the tablet himself, and he knows I write to Maren. I’m sure he hasn’t been checking it, but for one horrible second, I’m sure the truth is written all over my face.
“Every other day,” I say, and thank the goddess it comes out steady. “Maren worries. She thinks you’re a monster who’s going to get me killed.”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile. “I can see why she’d think that.
” He steps in closer, close enough that I have to tip my head back to meet his eyes, and brushes his thumb along my jaw, slow, almost tenderly, except his gaze is doing something else entirely—it’s reading me. “You’d tell me if something was wrong.”
It isn’t a question.
“Of course I would,” I say, lying straight to his face.
So then I give him a different truth to try to hide what I’m really thinking.
“I don’t like you getting hurt,” I say, glancing at a fresh bruise on the side of his face that’s already healing.
“You go over there every day and come home with some new injury, even when you haven’t been fighting.
I don’t love watching you hurt yourself over this. ”
I watch it land, and the suspicion eases into something warmer, because that’s something he thinks he understands. He pulls me in, and I let him, and I hate how much I still want the warmth of him even now.
“Nearly done,” he murmurs into my hair. “Soon. Then no more injuries. I promise. Well, less, anyway, because there are always injuries at sea.”
He thinks that soon is a comfort. Soon is what I’m most afraid of, because it means I’m running out of time.
We eat at the counter, and he talks easily about what he envisages coming after he takes the island.
He talks so confidently, as though it’s already guaranteed.
A house with an even better kitchen than this one.
Ryder having his own land, somewhere to put all his books, and a place to find himself without all the struggle.
Mornings that don’t start with a run to the docks to count the boats that came in overnight. Time to focus on his pack.
“You could have your coven again,” he says, not looking at me, pushing food around his plate. “Once the island’s ours. Bring Maren over. Those kids you talk about and the rest. There’d be room for them all.”
He remembers the children that I mentioned missing in passing. Then he notices I’ve barely touched my own plate and looks at me again, that calculating look returning.
“Eat,” he says. “You were on your feet all day.”
I just can’t. I’ve no appetite, because while he’s talking about what comes after, I can’t shake the thought of all the bloodshed that will have to happen first for that to happen.
“When you say soon,” I hear myself say carefully, maybe too carefully, “do you mean weeks, or…”
“Why?” His eyes settle firmly on me, and just like that, the warmth is gone, and the strategist is back in place. “You in a hurry for it, Selene?”
“No.” My pulse jumps, and I know he catches it. “The opposite. I told you. I don’t want this to happen at all.”
He watches me for a moment, and then he sets his fork down.
“There’s a witch who’s been at our wards over there,” he says, slowly, still watching my face. “On the island. Two nights running. Testing them. Poking around where she shouldn’t. You wouldn’t know anything about witches poking around where they shouldn’t, would you?”
It isn’t really a question, but my heart is beating so hard in my chest that I’m sure it would drown out any answer. I force myself to hold his eyes because if I look away now, my guilt will be obvious.
For one, possibly crazy second, I think about telling him all of it.
About Maren, Emily, the other mates who are trying to help, the whole thing, and try to explain to him that I was only trying to stop the war, and that I haven’t told them anything about his actual operation.
I haven’t told them about the island settlement because I don’t even know much about it.
I haven’t led a witch to the wards; I don’t even know where on the island it is.
That I’m only trying to save him from himself.
But I know he wouldn’t understand. I can feel it in my bones.
“I don’t go anywhere without Tom since the day you dragged me here,” I say instead. “How would I go poking around wards on the island, Ronan?”
It’s true, and it’s the right thing to say, and I watch him weigh it. He knows it’s true. But something in him doesn’t fully let go of it, and I know that deep down I’m running out of time.
“No,” he says at last. “I don’t suppose you could.” He picks his fork back up. But he doesn’t look satisfied. He looks like a man who has simply set something aside to come back to it later.
Something has shifted between us, and for the rest of the evening, it hangs between us. Guilt and worry war within me, and he looks suspicious. I want to try to soothe it, but every time I try, I seem to make it worse.
When it’s time to sleep, I don’t follow him to his room.
“I’m sleeping in my own room tonight,” I say, and I make myself hold his eye. “I’m exhausted, and you’ll be up before dawn anyway. I just need a proper night’s sleep if I’m going to help Emma tomorrow.”
It’s a lie, and we both know it.
He stops in the hallway and looks at me for a moment, not saying anything, and I watch him decide whether to push it.
Part of me wants him to. Part of me is desperate for him to catch my wrist and pull me back and make the choice for me, because deep down, I want to fall asleep listening to his heartbeat again with his arms around me.
But he doesn’t reach for me. He just looks.
“Alright,” he says at last. “If that’s what you want.”
It’s the opposite of what I want, and that’s the problem.