Chapter 5 #3
When she tilted her head back to look at him, breathing hard, eyes still half-closed, he knew she’d see something–a reckoning?–in his face he couldn’t hide. “Rex?”
“Yes.” He swallowed, looking for words that wouldn’t sound insane. Found nothing. “I... I have to go.”
All the warmth extinguished from her face, where color was still high in her cheeks and her lips still soft from his. She blinked once, as if trying to resurface. Her expression closed, like a door shutting quietly so no one would notice. She took a step back, severing all contact.
It felt like an endless fall into cold air.
“Sure.” A small, careful shrug. She tucked her hands into her pockets. “Of course.”
Her scent, that fantastic, maddening scent, was suddenly marred by shame and bitterness. He cupped her face in his hands before she could retreat any further. “No, no, no.” He brushed a kiss to her mouth, then her cheekbone, then her mouth again. “It’s not like that.”
“You don’t have to explain anything.” Her voice was even, almost convincing. “It’s all good.” But her eyes stayed down.
“Look at me, Zoe.”
She did. And he understood, suddenly and completely, why people wrote entire poems about drowning in someone’s eyes because hers held every feeling she was trying to hide, and all he wanted was to stay in them until he’d smoothed every one. “You think I want to go?”
A small shrug that didn’t fool him for a second. “You said so. Which, again, is completely okay.”
“Moonbeam,” he let out on a sigh, barely registering the name that had slipped out rough and unplanned.
He held her face steady, making sure she was looking at him.
“If I stay a single minute longer, if I let the taste of you, the scent of you, the heat of you get any more into me....” He shook his head, searching for words that would explain without frightening her.
“The longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave. And you deserve better than a man who lost his head in a basement on a random evening.”
She was quiet for a moment, reading him. Seemingly forever. Then something in her face softened—not fully convinced, but willing. “Okay,” she said. Then, smaller. “Would it...” She paused, reconsidered, and said it anyway, almost shy with it. “Would it be terrible if we lost our heads?”
He stared at her.
The wolf lunged for her; the man grabbed it by the scruff and held on. “No. It would be too soon, though.”
Her mouth curved, a little reluctant, a little charmed. She nodded. “I guess you’re right.” Then, after a breath: “It’s just... strong. And there’s very little reason for it. That’s not really how I operate.”
“Tell me about it.” He exhaled and looked at the ceiling for a moment, having a very direct and unfriendly internal conversation—fight—with his wolf. “Alright. Let’s both take a breath.”
His wolf snarled a very sincere what the fuck is wrong with you, and while he agreed wholeheartedly, he had to be levelheaded.
“Do you regret it?” she asked, blurted, really, like the question had been sitting too heavy to swallow.
“I wouldn’t regret it in a thousand lives.”
A small, slightly self-conscious smile bloomed. “Okay.”
“You?”
Her eyebrow lifted, the smile turning just a little cheeky. “Do I really need to tell you?”
“Feelings can be complicated and misleading. What you feel in the moment isn’t always what you think in the morning.”
She considered that seriously, which he appreciated. “Then no. I don’t. I do regret saying goodbye this soon, though.”
There was no way, not a single functioning nerve in his body, that could stop him from pulling her into his arms. He held her there, her cheek against his chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. He felt her exhale, like she was letting something go.
“So do I,” he said into her hair. “But I’ll see you soon. That’s a promise, not a courtesy.”
He kissed the crown of her head and made himself step back. Turned toward the stairs. Made it three steps before he turned around again, taking her hands in his. “Full moon’s in two days.”
“Okay.”
“Spend it with me. In the forest.”
“Aren’t you going to the Oread’s Letha celebration?”
“Not on a full moon. But I’ll come if you have plans to be there. Your choice.” He meant it. Everything had to be her choice.
She held his gaze for a long moment, something turning quietly in her head. Then she smiled. “I wasn’t really planning on going. I swing by for Jade, but I never last more than thirty minutes. Not really a huge-party person.” A small pause. “So, yes. I’ll come to the forest.”
It meant more than she knew. So much more. But as with many other things, there would be time to explain. For now, he was just glad she’d said yes, glad in a way that was dangerously alive.
He left and got to the car. Closed the door, turned it on, and sat there for a moment with his hands on the wheel.
The next part of the plan was simple: find his Beta, find his best friend, and unload. He already had his phone in hand, thumb hovering over the group chat, the one that had no name because none of them had ever bothered, but he stopped.
Closed his eyes. Reclined his head back.
The shape of her was still imprinted in his hands; her taste still clung to his lips.
The absence of her was a specific, unreasonable discomfort, flowing in his blood, making no logical argument for itself other than its inherent rightness.
The bond was rarely reasonable. The wolf didn’t understand why they were in that car, aroused and alone.
Rex did. It had been the right choice, maybe the only one.
So. Friends. Unload. Clearer head.
He stared at the group chat. His house was on the opposite side of town from Lachlan’s. The bar meant noise and witnesses. Owen’s was downtown, in between. Owen’s, then—and Callista, Owen's very human wife, might have something useful to say about this particular situation. She usually did.
Emergency meeting. Owen’s place. One hour.
He dropped his phone on the passenger seat and pulled out of the driveway. A quiet, welcome chuckle escaped somewhere around the second traffic light. They were going to complain about the notice. They would show up anyway.
He went home, took a quick shower, hoping it would do something about her scent while knowing, with grim certainty, that it wouldn’t, then drove to Owen’s. Lachlan’s truck was already parked out front when he arrived. Of course it was.
He let himself in through the garage the way he always did, followed the voices down the hall, and walked into the living room to find Lach sprawled across the couch, and Owen perched on the arm of the chair where Callista was sitting, her legs tucked under her.
All three of them looked up.
“He lives,” Lachlan declared.
“Forty-five minutes,” Owen added, his voice all but filing a formal complaint.
“I said one hour.”
“Aye, and I was here in thirty because I thought something was actually wrong with ye, pup.”
Callista pointed at him, finger-gunning directly at his face. “Oh. Oh, you have the face.”
Rex blinked. “I have a face, yes. Most people do.”
“The face." She turned to Owen. “He has your face.”
“He does not have my—”
“The emotionally mature one. The one you get right after you do the right thing, and your soul goes why did we do that?” She turned back to Rex, nodding gravely. “It’s a good face. Deeply unhappy, very heroic.”
Rex opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Lachlan—who raised both hands.
He dropped onto the couch next to Lachlan on a sigh.
So okay. He had to spill.
Laced his hands together.
I found my mate.
No. Too definitive for what he actually knew.
I think I found my mate.
Better. He could work with—
“You smell horny,” Owen said after he caught a whiff in the air.
Lachlan leaned back slowly. “I am never so grateful to be without yer gifts as I am in moments like these.”
“Not just normal horny,” Owen continued, with the focus of a man running a scientific project.
Callista cleared her throat. “Should I go put coffee on?”
“No need.” Rex shot Owen a look. “If my asshat Beta is finished, I’ll explain everything.”
Silence.
He exhaled.
“I think I found my mate.”
Not that hard. Really.
Except, no one was talking—which, from this group, was its own kind of loud—until Callista made a sound that could only be described as a delighted squeal, launched off the armchair, and threw her arms around him in a hug that was deeply awkward given that he was sitting and she had to basically fold herself over him to make it work.
He patted her arm once. It was the best he could offer.
“That is so exciting,” she said into his shoulder. “Who is she?”
“Zoe Greenwood.”
The silence that followed was of a different quality entirely. More silent, if that was even a thing.
It was Callista, again, who broke it. “Oh, she’s human like me!
” She pressed a loud kiss to his cheek, waved off Owen’s low growl with a laugh, waltzed over to kiss her husband, and then floated toward the kitchen with the serene confidence of someone who had long ago made peace with the fact that the men in this house sometimes needed a minute.
“My very human sixth sense is telling me this is complicated news. So I will, after all, go and put that coffee on.”
The three of them watched her go.
Owen spoke first. “I don’t smell the bond on you.”
“It’s not complete.” Rex pressed his forearms to his knees. “It’s more like a very strong guess. But at this point, I’d be surprised if she wasn’t mine.”
Lachlan turned to look at him, the way he did when he was deciding whether something was worth the energy. “Right. What’s the holdup then?”
“That she’s human.”
“Aye. And so’s Callista, and the pack would take a blade for that woman without blinkin’.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Dinnae see yer point.”
“I’m the Alpha.”
He watched Lach work through the meaning behind the words, watched him glance at Owen.
Rex hadn’t opened the mental link between him and his Beta, there was too much noise in there right now, too much want and confusion tangled up together, and no matter how much he trusted Owen, he was still the Alpha. Some things he carried alone.
“There’s a group,” he said, steadily. “Came in two years ago with the Harlow pack when they lost their Alpha and couldn’t find a successor.
There were a couple of strong wolves, but none strong enough to beat me.
Leaderless wolves go one of two ways: feral, or swallowed up by something worse.
So I took the whole lot.” He paused. “Most of them folded in fine, but there were five, maybe six, who never quite... settled. They’ve been looking for a crack ever since, something to leverage the fight.
” His jaw tightened. “I’ve been watching them. ”
“Donovan’s been circling for months,” Owen said. “Nothing actionable. He’s careful, I’ll give him that. But the last three wolves who pushed for shit? All ran with him.” He looked at Rex. “It’s not a coincidence. And I know what I smelled on them. Their submission is thin.”
Rex looked at his hands. “They are looking for a reason to challenge my leadership, and this would be one. A human mate—my human mate—handed to them like a gift.”
Lachlan was quiet for a moment. “How bad are we talkin’? Bad enough they’d go after her directly?”
“They’re not good people,” Owen said, and the flatness in his voice closed the door on any optimism.
“I handed them a loss not a week ago, and they know what I’m capable of.
They won’t come at me—they’re not stupid.
” Rex sat back. “But her... She’s human.
She’ll share my longevity once we bond, but she won’t share my strength.
She won’t shift. She won’t heal the way we do.
And the bond itself is the problem. The second it’s sealed, the whole pack will feel it, including them.
They’ll know exactly what she is to me, and exactly what she isn’t.
” His jaw tightened. “I can’t be with her every hour of every day. And they know that too.”
The room sat with that until Lachlan exhaled slowly through his nose. "So ye took in a wolf with a bad leg, and now it’s eyein’ the furniture.”
“Poetic,” Owen said drily.
“I’m just sayin’, he couldnae have known—”
“I knew enough,” Rex said quietly. “I made the call anyway.”
Nobody argued with that. Nobody absolved him of it either, which he appreciated. He didn’t need comfort. He needed a plan.
“Aye, then.” Lachlan cracked his knuckles, and magic flared up. “What’s the play?”
Before Rex could answer, Callista materialized from the kitchen with a tray and four mugs, moving with the determination of someone who had heard every single word, had no regrets, but many opinions.
She set it down, straightened up, and looked at Rex.
“Whatever you decide,” she said, meeting his eyes, “you have to tell her. Clearly. All of it.” Her voice was gentle, but it didn’t waver.
“There’s no going back, Rex. She’ll be standing next to you no matter what happens—that’s what this is. ”
He saw the flicker of something in her eyes, there and gone, something that didn’t belong to her usual sunshine.
The memory of the years she spent fighting for Owen when Owen couldn’t fight for himself.
The pain of all the time Owen’s curse had cost them before it was over.
Callista picked up her own mug and held it in both hands.
“She’ll stay, and she’ll fight for you and with you, regardless.
But from what little I know of her, I think she’ll want the heads up. ”
The kitchen light caught the steam rising from the coffee. Outside, the wind had picked up, shoving through the pines in short, restless slaps. Somewhere in the distance, thunder was still making up its mind.
“Full moon is in two days. Owen.” Rex looked at him. “I need eyes on the dissidents. Quiet ones. I want to know if anything shifts.”
Owen nodded once. No questions.
“Lach, you have ears everywhere.”
“Aye. And all will be listenin’.”
“I’m taking Zoe into the forest that night.”
The room understood what that meant. An Alpha could hold a great many things by force of will alone. But under a full moon, with a mate unclaimed and close, the bond wouldn’t negotiate. The only one who could stop him would be his Moonbeam.
Lachlan let out a long breath. “So that’s it, then.”
“That’s it.” Rex reached for a mug. “Assuming she doesn’t run.”
“She won’t,” Callista said, with a certainty that had no business being so steady. “Tell her the truth, all of it, and she won’t. Never question if the pull of the bond affects her, or how much.”
Rex said nothing, just reached for his mug and took a long sip as thunder rolled in close and menacing through the walls. It appeared the storm had made up its mind.
And so had he.