Chapter 9 - Andrea #2
“Because I knew from the second you walked in. My wolf recognized you before you even said your name. But you felt the pull too, without any of that. No wolf, no bond knowledge, nothing. You felt it on your own. That was real, Andrea. That was you.”
Shit. That was a good answer. I didn’t want it to be a good answer.
“So what happens if I don’t want it?”
He went still. Not pause-still. Frozen. His fingers pressed harder into the desk and I saw actual fear on his face. Not the CEO mask. Fear, raw and unguarded and aimed right at me.
“What do you mean?” Careful. Too careful.
“What happens if I say no? If I reject it? What happens to you?”
I could see him deciding how much to say.
“Don’t filter it. No lies. No half-answers.”
“If a fated bond is rejected, there are consequences.” He spoke slowly, like each word was being pulled out of him. “Pain. Chest, head. The wolf becomes harder to control. Bond strain gets worse, not better. Some shifters go feral.”
“Feral meaning what?”
“The wolf takes over. Permanently. The human part doesn’t come back.”
Jesus. “And for me? For the human?”
“The pull doesn’t go away. It becomes more like grief. A loss you can’t explain because nothing visible was taken.”
“So we’re both screwed.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
I sat with that for a minute. Let it settle. I’d asked partly to test him, to see if he’d sugarcoat it, and he didn’t. Told me the truth even though it made him vulnerable, even though admitting rejection could break him handed me a weapon I could use against him whenever I wanted.
“I’m not rejecting it.”
His whole chest expanded on an exhale he’d clearly been holding. Shoulders dropped, fingers uncurled on the desk, and the fear drained out of his face in real time. The relief was so raw, so exposed, that I had to look away for a second because it did things to my chest I wasn’t ready to deal with.
“I’m not accepting it either.” He went still again. “I need to understand what I’m dealing with first. You had two years on me. I need time to catch up.”
His mouth twitched.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said plenty. Wipe it.”
The twitch got worse. I glared at him until it stopped, which took way too long, and I refused to acknowledge the warmth spreading through my chest because that was counterproductive to the whole ice queen situation I had going.
I should have left then. Got my answers. Should have grabbed my bag and gone home and opened a bottle of wine and sat with all of this by myself.
Didn’t leave. Because apparently I was a glutton for punishment tonight.
“The laws you mentioned last night. Exile or death.”
“Yes.”
“Every night you showed up at my house, you were risking that.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed to be near you.”
“That’s not an answer. You need coffee, you don’t risk your life for it. Why did you keep coming back?”
He leaned forward. Forearms on the desk, eyes on mine.
“Because those nights were the only time my wolf was quiet. I could sit there, listen to you read, and just breathe. Everything in my life is loud, Andrea. The pack, the company, the council, all of it pressing in constantly. But on your porch, with your voice in the dark, it all went quiet. You made everything quiet. That’s why. ”
I stared at him.
That wasn’t what I expected. I expected the bond, the wolf, some biological explanation I could file away under “supernatural bullshit I don’t have to take personally.” Some version of “my wolf made me do it” that would let me stay angry in peace.
He didn’t say that. Instead he said I made him quiet, said I let him breathe, and that wasn’t a wolf thing or a bond thing but a choice. A human, deliberate choice, and it hit me somewhere deep and inconvenient that I didn’t want to examine right now or possibly ever.
I should have fired back with a deflection. A wall. I had a dozen options loaded because I’d been doing it all day, keeping him at arm’s length, and I was damn good at this.
“Goodnight, Finneas.” My voice came out softer than I planned. Soft enough that I saw his whole expression shift into that unguarded look I used to catch through the glass and never understood.
“Goodnight, Andrea.”
My heart wouldn’t stop racing at the elevator ride down.
I leaned against the back wall with my palm flat against my chest, trying to hold myself together, and his voice kept replaying in my head.
You made everything quiet. I wanted to stay angry because anger was clean and made sense, but every time those words came back the wall cracked a little more.
I sat in my car in the parking garage for five minutes before I trusted myself to drive. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel and my eyes were burning and I wasn’t crying, I refused to cry, but my body was doing its own thing and I couldn’t make it stop.
The drive home was a blur. When I pulled up to the house, the porch was empty.
Just the light I’d left on out of habit, shining on bare wood and nothing else.
I’d told him I needed space and he listened, because of course he did, and I wanted to throw my keys at the goddamn wall because why did getting what I asked for feel so much worse than not having it?
I ended up on the porch step anyway. The one where Fin used to sit.
The wood was cold through my pajama shorts and the neighborhood was quiet in that late-night way where you could hear every car on the next block and every dog three streets over.
Except the one dog I actually wanted to hear wasn’t coming, because he wasn’t a dog and I’d told him to stay away.
I sat there way too long. Sat there until my legs went numb and my ass was freezing and I still couldn’t make myself go inside because inside meant my bed and my bed meant the dark and the dark meant lying there with nothing to do except think about him.
Eventually I dragged myself in. Got under the covers.
Stared at the ceiling. My hand kept finding my mouth, fingertips pressing against my lips where I could still feel the ghost of him, and I kept pulling it away and it kept drifting back like my body had its own agenda that my brain wasn’t invited to.
The porch felt wrong without him.
I hated that it did.