Chapter 19 #3
But I will not. I will not. Because that is not normal. Pagan rite or no, I am still a nonmagical, normal person. That whole goddess-thrall thing was definitely a one-time deal.
“Who were the men with you last night?” she asked, needing to distract herself.
“My guard.”
Selene tilted her head at that answer. “You have a guard?”
“Bannock, Ewan, Gabriel, and Kipp,” he said.
“The oldest wolves in the pack and my closest friends. We left Europe together to form a new pack in America. We spent decades exploring the country, gathering more wolves into our pack along the way, until we found the sacred grove here. Along with me, they are the founders of Avondale.”
Selene’s eyebrows shot up.
“They advise me on political matters.” His tone brimmed with fondness and respect. “They watch over the town, and they are leaders in a fight when violence is called for.”
“Does that happen often?” Selene whispered the question.
The closest to a werewolf fight she’d experienced was when Fenris tossed Daniel across her yard. He’d remained in human form then, and it had been scary enough.
“More often than I’d like,” Fen said. “But it’s been some time since we’ve had a major incident.”
“You said the guard are your closest friends?”
“I did.”
“What about Josh?” she asked. She only knew what Allie had told her, which wasn’t very much and was filtered through both Josh’s and Allie’s perceptions of the relationship.
Fen’s smile was warm. “Josh is like a son to me. Our bond has been strong since the day I found him lying on the side of the road, near death, and made him part of my pack. He is a warrior and very intelligent, if not yet wise. He’ll get there, but he’s young for a wolf.
One day he’ll have a place among my advisers, but not until he’s seen another century. ”
Selene blinked at his casual reference to the passing of hundreds of years.
Will I ever get used to that? Probably not.
“Do you have other questions?” he asked.
“Yes.” She shifted uneasily in the booth, dreading what she was about to ask, but she needed to know. “If you really don’t mind.”
“Please.” He watched her expectantly.
“Last night I was chosen,” she began and couldn’t keep the nervous edge out of her voice.
She felt like she was drawing back a curtain and wouldn’t be able to unsee what was revealed if she didn’t like it.
“You were,” Fen replied, perfectly at ease.
“But if someone else had been chosen, then you would have . . .” She let the phrase hang in the air between them and looked away when he frowned.
“You were chosen,” Fen said firmly.
“But I might not have been.” She couldn’t let it go. The idea of Fen with someone else in that rite . . . It made her sick with jealousy, furious and heartbroken all at once.
“No one else could have been chosen last night,” he insisted, but his expression gentled at the worry in her voice.
“But if another had been called by the goddess, I suspect—no, I am certain—the ritual would have played out in a different manner. It can take many forms. What happened last night, our union, was only possible because of who we are to one another.”
“But you couldn’t have known it would be me,” she countered. “I saw your face after the old woman called my name and pointed to me. You were surprised.”
He paused. “I didn’t know,” he admitted. “No one did. Only the goddess can reveal who the chosen will be. But I know now that it could not have been different. Our paths were set well before last night.”
“Natalie said she’s been chosen in the past,” Selene argued.
“She has.”
“So when it was you and Natalie, you didn’t . . . ?” Yet another question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to.
Fen looked genuinely startled. “I wasn’t involved. A different consort is chosen every year, as is a different Lady, and as I said, the ritual doesn’t always involve the sacred union. Though it did when Natalie was chosen—”
“Natalie got naked in front of everyone too? Who was the guy, or girl, or person?” Selene blurted before she could catch herself, having destroyed her effort to be cool with the more salacious aspects of pagan festivals.
But it made sense now—the way Natalie had tried to warn Selene that she might not like the Beltane ritual.
Natalie had known the rite could get sexy, as apparently it had when she’d been chosen.
Fenris shook his head, obviously a bit frustrated with her unevolved take on possession by pagan deities. “Selene, you’re worryingly fixated on the naked part. Nudity isn’t shocking for pagans. I know that challenges the paradigms you’re accustomed to—”
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” Selene interrupted. “And I get it. Or I’m trying to. Fenris, I’m not denying that what happened during the ritual felt like more. So much more.”
When he nodded, pleased, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “But could you tell me who it was with Natalie? ’Cause I’m dying to know.”
He shook his head, chuckling, then his voice grew thoughtful. “It was Gabriel. One of my guard.”
“How interesting . . .” Selene couldn’t wait to corner Natalie and grill her about the night she’d been chosen by the goddess. Consider it payback for not cluing Selene in on what was going to happen.
Shoving that idea aside for the time being, Selene refocused. “So you aren’t always the consort? Even though you’re the king of Avondale?”
“I was selected this year because of special circumstances,” he replied. “The hunter is named before the rite because of what is required of them, which is the reason I knew what my role would be before you discovered yours.”
A wave of relief poured over her. As much as Fenris insisted that what took place at the rite was different every year, and that the intimacy the hunter and Lady shared wasn’t always what took place, Selene was too far removed from the paranormal world to completely accept that.
It would have been . . . awkward, to say the least, knowing he’d participated in the rite year after year, including once with her closest friend.
His explanation also pushed her a little closer to believing what he and Natalie kept saying about fate bringing her and Fen together. But just a little.
“What were the circumstances?” she asked.
“Beltane coincided with the full moon and a specific planetary alignment,” he said. “The power raised in the circle was much stronger last night than in other years. The crone said that only a true king could fill the consort’s role for this particular rite.”
“And you’re the true king?”
“Yes.” There was no arrogance in his voice.
“What does that make me?” Selene asked.
“The one who belongs at my side.” He spoke softly. “I already believed that, and last night our deities proclaimed the truth of that belief.”
And there it was again. Fate. Gods and goddesses. “How can you talk about this stuff so easily?”
“I am immortal, and I rule among immortals,” he said. “The divine is always close in our world.”
He leaned forward and caught her in a gaze that stopped her breath.
“Now I have a question for you, Selene.”
She nodded, not trusting her ability to speak.
“What are your feelings for me?”
“What?” Fen tended to be direct, but asking her how she felt about him outright, in public, caught her off guard.
He grinned, enjoying her bewilderment. “Was the question unclear?”
Not unclear, but very uncomfortable.
Instead of looking at him, she focused on the steaming coffee in her mug. She knew the answer to his question, despite the excuses she could make about what she’d told him amid their lovemaking, but it felt much too raw . . . too exposed to let the words hang in the air between them.
“Selene.” His tone drew her eyes upward.
She met his dark-gray irises and shivered. The emotion roiling in his gaze demanded a response. An honest one.
“What do you want me to say, Fenris?” she murmured. “That I’m falling for you? That it scares me? That I don’t understand why I feel so strongly when we’ve spent only a short time together?”
“I only want to know what’s in your heart, Selene.”
“Pretty much everything I just said,” she told him. “But I don’t know what to do with it. To be honest, Fen, I’m overwhelmed.”
“I hear you.”
“We met a little more than a week ago.” She frowned at him, hoping her words weren’t hurtful. “That isn’t enough time to know you. Not really.”
His smile was mysterious and carried an impish edge. “You’re limiting the possibilities of knowledge too narrowly.”
She shook her head, snickering. “You paranormals and your ideas about past lives. Natalie said something like that too. I can only say that I met you in the here and now. I don’t buy in to the other stuff.”
“Then explain the depth of your feelings.”
“I can’t,” she admitted, but she tilted her head and studied him. “Can you explain yours?”
He tensed, smile fading. “When Miriam died, I made a decision to spend my life alone. To be a leader to my people and forsake anything that could distract me or divide my loyalty.”
“You were going to be celibate?” Knowing how skilled Fenris was in bed, Selene couldn’t believe he’d be willing to live like a monk.
Laughing, Fen replied, “Sexual partners come and go, bringing earthly pleasure, which is no small thing, but it’s nothing like the mate bond. It’s not love.”
Selene winced, ready to apologize, but Fen kept speaking.
“I never believed I would encounter a true mate. Someone I yearned for, body and soul. A thing altogether different from the partner and friend I had in Miriam.” His voice was gentle.
“But I would never turn from such a blessing. No matter how unexpected it is. No matter how much it complicates my life.”
Selene’s throat felt dry. She didn’t know what to say, so she fumbled for another question. “What does it mean when you say true mate?”
“The connection between true wolf mates is inalterable, a union that lasts beyond death,” he told her.
“In other lives?” Selene echoed Natalie’s words. “And other planes of existence?”