22. Rafe
RAFE
I'M OLD, NOT BLIND.
Quinn fell asleep before the mummy was defeated.
I knew this because she had been explaining, in a fever-softened murmur, that Evie was the only sensible person in the film and that Brendan Fraser “understood the assignment spiritually,” and then, mid-sentence, her head had settled more heavily against my shoulder.
I didn’t move.
For several minutes, I sat there in the dim light of Quinn’s small living room, one arm resting along the back of the sofa, her weight warm against my side.
Her hair had come loose from the knot she’d made before the movie, soft strands falling against my shirt.
The quilt had slipped from one shoulder.
I adjusted it carefully, tucking it higher without waking her.
Max opened one eye.
“I have it handled,” I murmured.
He closed his eye again, accepting my competence.
A sick woman sleeping on my shoulder, and an elderly dog trusting me enough to stay at my feet shouldn’t have stirred such intense emotions inside me.
But as I sat there, I couldn’t deny that it did.
I couldn’t deny that this space that smelled faintly of eucalyptus cough drops and the lavender detergent Quinn used on her blankets put me at ease and had me wanting to spend more time here.
There was nothing grand in it.
That was the problem.
I had spent most of my life surrounded by scale.
Estates. Pack obligations. Boardrooms. Archives.
Relics old enough to make men speak softly.
My father’s business, my mother’s illness, our family’s history, the long work of recovery.
Everything important had always arrived large enough to require strategy.
This place? A woman breathing easier because I had brought soup; a dog fed correctly; a blanket pulled back over a shoulder; a movie I didn’t understand and would likely watch again if she asked… it appealed to me more than it should have.
For one treacherous moment, I let myself imagine a life organized around ordinary care.
Unpacking groceries in Quinn’s small kitchen.
Max’s leash on the hook by the door. Her blue chair repaired because she liked it, not replaced because replacement was easier.
Mornings where the first urgent matter wasn’t a meeting or a dispute between wolves who thought lineage was character.
Evenings where the work ended because there was someone waiting, and staying wasn’t another obligation but the point.
The image hurt, mostly because part of me wanted it with embarrassing force.
Quinn shifted against me, her brow tightening. I let a little heat gather in my palm and rested it near her shoulder, not touching skin, only warming the quilt where she’d gone cold. Her face eased.
I wanted to kiss her.
The thought came with such clarity that I closed my eyes, though, if I was honest, I’d wanted to kiss her since the gala.
I’d restrained myself every time because she was professionally tied to me.
Dependent, in some small way, on my recommendation and my restraint.
My desire for her didn’t make those facts disappear.
So I sat there and didn’t take what wasn’t offered.
Eventually, the credits rolled. The television asked if we were still watching, which seemed intrusive for an appliance.
Quinn stirred when I shifted. “’m awake.”
I almost smiled. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
She made a sound of protest. I helped her sit up, then stand, keeping one hand at her elbow while she shuffled toward the bedroom wrapped in her quilt. Max rose at once and followed, nails clicking softly on the floor.
At her bedside, Quinn looked at me through fever-bright eyes. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I know.”
“You always say that.”
“I am often aware of my options.”
She gave me a tired little smile that undid me.
I pulled back the covers. She climbed in without arguing, which told me more about how ill she was than any thermometer could. Max settled on his bed beside hers, watching me as I arranged her water, medicine, tissues, and phone within reach.
“Thank you.”
The words were almost nothing, but they speared right through me.
I stood there a moment too long.
Then I bent and kissed Max on the head.
He accepted this as his due.
Quinn’s eyes cracked open. “Did you just kiss my dog?”
“Yes.”
Her smile barely formed before sleep pulled her under again.
I looked at her mouth. Then I looked away.
I didn’t get the privilege of this life simply because I wanted it.
I had responsibilities. A mother whose good hours came and went without warning.
A father who had carried too much for too long.
A pack that still measured belonging in blood and teeth.
A family history scattered through museums, auctions, private rooms, and the hands of men like Dimitris Burelian and Luke Gildstein.
Love required much.
I knew that better than most.
And still, leaving her apartment felt like stepping out of a life I had no right to imagine.
I locked the door behind me and waited until I heard Max settle again before going downstairs.
My driver took me home. I didn’t remember most of the ride.
At the estate, the house was quiet in the way large homes became quiet after midnight. Lights were low in the main hall. Staff had retreated to the back corridors.
I expected to go straight to my rooms.
Instead, I found my father in the library bar.
He had finished a late meeting; I could tell from the open folder on the table and the bourbon poured into one of the old crystal glasses my mother liked because the facets caught light. He looked up when I entered and studied me.
“You look troubled,” he said.
“I am tired.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
I crossed to the sideboard. “Is Mother asleep?”
“For now.” He leaned back in the leather chair. “She had a difficult evening. Thought the west corridor was her aunt’s house.”
I poured a finger of bourbon. “I’m sorry.”
“She wasn’t distressed. Only insistent. Apparently, her aunt kept terrible lamps.”
Despite myself, I huffed a laugh.
My father smiled into his glass. “Sit, Rafe.”
I sat.
For a while, we drank in quiet. The library smelled of old paper and the faint smoke of my father’s bourbon. Above the mantel hung a portrait of my paternal grandmother, severe and beautiful, her wolf eyes painted too accurately for comfort.
I looked away from it.
My father noticed. He always noticed more than he admitted. “Is this about the pack?” he asked.
“It is always, in part, about the pack.”
He nodded once, no argument. That was one of the things I valued most about him. Rafael didn’t rush to defend what didn’t deserve defense, even when it belonged to him.
“I have never fully understood what they want from me,” I said.
“Which faction?”
“All of them.”
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything, just waited patiently for me to continue.
“Some want me near because I am your son. Some want me diminished for the same reason. Some will never see anything but the dragon in me. Some insist it doesn’t matter, then ensure I notice that it does.”
The bourbon burned warmly down my throat.
“I am too much dragon for the wolves,” I said. “I’m your heir, but the pack treats me as a complication. The Olden Folk courts treat me as useful when they need influence and suspicious when they do not.”
I hadn’t intended to say so much.
Perhaps that was what Quinn had done to me. Made certain truths less patient about remaining unsaid.
“And what do you think?” he asked.
I looked at him. “About what?”
“About yourself.”
The question irritated me because I had no clean answer. “I think I’m tired of proving I belong in rooms not built for me.”
My father was quiet for a moment. “You take after your mother.”
I looked up sharply.
“She never belonged neatly either,” he said.
“Too bright for the people who wanted her to be merely ornamental. Too sharp for the men who preferred women agreeable. Too fond of strange music and old stories for the committees who thought culture should be curated by the dull. What is there in that to be ashamed of?”
“I am not ashamed of Mother.”
“No. But sometimes you treat the parts of yourself that came from her as though they require defending.”
I stared into my glass.
My father continued, gentler now. “The pack matters. Blood matters. History matters. But those aren’t the only measures of belonging.
I have run with wolves who would abandon a brother for status, and I have broken bread with humans who would die before betraying a friend.
Species is a poor substitute for character. ”
I thought of Quinn asleep on my shoulder. Max at my feet.
“She is human,” my father said.
I went very still.
He took a sip of bourbon. “I’m old, not blind.”
“There is no she,” I protested.
“If you say so.”
I gave him a look.
He lifted one hand. “I won’t pry.”
“You’re prying now.”
“This is restraint.”
I snorted. “Your restraint needs practice.”
He smiled then, and I saw the man my mother had chosen. Warm beneath the weight. Amused by the right things.
“Accept connection where you find it,” he said. “Don’t ask every person who offers you warmth to prove that they belong to the correct category. Life is lonely enough without sorting love by species.”
Love. The word tightened something in me.
“It’s not love.” The lie rolled smoothly off my tongue.
“No?”
“No,” I snapped.
My father didn’t challenge me, just looked toward the low fire. “Then there’s no need to be afraid of it.”
I said nothing.
He finished his drink and set the glass down.
“You do not have to run only with wolves, Rafe. You do not have to become smaller to make them more comfortable. Choose people of courage. People of loyalty. People who tell the truth when it costs them and stay when staying requires work. The rest is background noise.”
Quinn had told me once that doors broke and people changed and no one could disclose every future cost up front.
My father, apparently, believed something similar.
He stood, slower than he used to, and closed the folder on the table. “Get some rest.”
“I have work to do.”
“You always have work.”
I caught myself before I rolled my eyes. “That doesn’t make it imaginary.”
“No. But it allows you to pretend everything else has less value.”
He touched my shoulder as he passed.
I remained in the library after he left, listening to the house settle around me.
I thought of my mother asleep upstairs. Of my father rearranging his days around her without resentment. Of Quinn tucked under her quilt in an apartment too small for all the care I wanted to bring her. Of Max accepting my kiss like a benediction.
I had spent years believing love was consequential, and I still believed that.
The trouble was, consequence no longer sounded like warning alone.
Tonight, it had sounded like a dog snoring at my feet and a woman murmuring movie commentary against my shoulder, and for a few stolen hours, responsibility hadn’t felt like weight.
It had felt like a choice I wanted to make room for.