Chapter 28 #2
“I don’t remember any silver on my face,” I said. I didn’t recognise the emotion in my voice.
“You can never be too careful,” he replied, as if we both didn’t know this touch had nothing to do with healing me. His thumb danced along my cheekbone, until his palm moulded to my cheek.
I could’ve pushed him away, could’ve jumped off the island and fled, but I didn’t move off as he leaned closer. The kiss was feather-light, little more than air grazing my bottom lip. And for some reason I couldn’t put into words, it made me want to cry.
It was one brush, one kiss, then Verne moved back, gathering up the pestle and mortar, scrubbing them in the sink as if nothing just happened.
I didn’t know what to do with this atmosphere between us, not comfortable exactly, but tender and more significant than it should be.
“This,” I said, chewing my lip. “It’s just because I’m your mate, right? You’re not— it’s got nothing to do with me as a person, right? This draw you feel towards me.”
“Sadie,” he breathed, and he was so appalled, his expression so strict that I jumped off the island and had retreated almost entirely through the living room before he spoke again. “It has everything to do with you as a person.”
I froze on the edge of the plush rug, my hand finding the back of a sofa and digging my fingernails in.
Verne read my incision, my confusion, and came closer, drying his hands on a towel embroidered with a little moon. It was the strangest detail—this conversation, this man who said I was his soulmate, who’d saved my life by making me a werewolf, and his cute little tea towel.
“Mates aren’t chosen at random,” he explained, with crushing devastation I could almost feel pinching my chest. “We’ve given you the worst impression of us.
You’re not our mate because you’re the first woman to wander into this forest in months, or the first female wolf we’ve encountered in almost as long. ”
I shrugged, feeling… brittle for reasons I didn’t understand. My wolf had been quiet for too long, and I suspected this breakable feeling came from her. “I figured it could have been anyone, and it was just a wrong place, wrong time kinda situation.”
Verne drifted closer, and it struck me how strange it was, to see an alpha male be hesitant. Cautious. As if he walked a delicate tightrope, and moving too fast, saying the wrong thing, would send me running.1
“It’s sheer fluke that we met when you’ve only been in Lunova for days,” he replied, sinking onto the arm of the tufted chair and watching me with big, sad eyes, like he’d never see me again.
“Even if we’d met before, when you were human and alive, I would have known you’re my mate.
It would have been fainter, the bond nowhere near as strong as it is now, but I would have known. ”
“And when you say strong…”
He ran his thumb over a thick, gold ring on his hand, the movement repetitive. “Being away from you all day was torture. I couldn’t draw a full breath, couldn’t get my mind to stay away from you. Any longer, and it would have started to hurt, your absence a physical pain.”
I narrowed my eyes, but I didn’t get the sense he was trying to guilt me into staying. So I walked around the sofa and dropped onto its cushions, almost swallowed into them. Goddamn, this was comfortable.
“The bond isn’t just designed for pups,” he said, spinning his ring faster.
“It’s a partnership. Sure, part of that partnership is a family in the traditional sense, but there are mates who choose not to have children.
It’s not an expectation for our pack, alianazara.
It would be something we choose, all of us together. ”
All of us together. I blinked, and filed that away in a sordid folder deep in my mind.
“So this feeling eating at me all day, making me so restless I couldn’t sit still… that’s the bond, trying to make me come back to you?”
“To where you belong,” Verne said softly. “Like the bond urged me back to your side, where I belong.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “That’s crazy talk, you know that right?”
Verne’s smile was a little less sad than before. “Most things about being a wolf are crazy. It’s instinct, purer than anything else. The bond doesn’t have expectations, it doesn’t judge. It knows we should be together, and won’t rest until we are. It’s… belonging. Pack, but more than pack.”
“So you don’t have bonds urging you to screw Lainsz and Leander senseless?” I asked dryly.
Verne choked. “Not bonds, no. And Leander and I don’t…”
“But you and Lainsz do?” I blurted with zero tact. “Lainsz?”
“Lainsz is… an extremely complex man. Try to ignore his hostility, that’s not who he is deep down.”
The assholery seems to run pretty deep to me, I thought but decided to be kind and not say.
“You haven’t met the real Lainsz yet. Only his trauma.”
I made a low sound, allowing that. Most people had baggage; Lainsz was an entire suitcase factory.
Verne rubbed his jaw, looking at a spot over my shoulder. Silence spooled out between us, then his stare fixed on me again.
“What?” I asked, my ears burning.
“Everything is your choice, Sadie. Whatever you choose, when you choose it. But don’t mistake this bond for something that could happen to anyone. It’s you, and only you. You’re our mate, our perfect fit, the woman chosen by moon and forest and fate.”
His dark eyes were doing something to me. My stomach fluttered, and I couldn’t look away even as my common sense screamed.2
“I’ll find a way to be patient. I’ll wait as long as you need, alianazara, but the moment you’re ready for us, I want your eyes rolling back for me.
I want your moans filling every corner of this cottage.
I want you so beautifully languid, so lazy with pleasure, that you don’t leave our bed for hours. ”
My body went from nought to hell yes, right now in milliseconds, and my breath hitched when he rose to his feet, crossing the few small steps between us to touch my face.
“But I’ll wait, until you’re ready. Until you’re at peace with your wolf body, and secure in your place in this world.
Until there’s no doubt in this clever mind. ”
“How do you know my mind’s clever?” I drawled, head tipped back to look at him. “I could be a complete idiot.”
“No.” He folded at the waist, brushing a too-soft, too-quick kiss to my mouth. “You’re my mate, my equal. That means you’re wicked with cleverness. Intelligent, and patient enough to know when to pick your battles.”
His words were like soft rain on sunburned skin, but… “Actually, I just pick fights with everyone.”
“That’s the Lainsz in you,” he said with a smirk, kissing my temple as if it was a completely ordinary thing to do, and then moving back. Touch starved as I was, I swayed after him and desperately hoped he didn’t see it.
As if he’d summoned the prick by speaking his name, the cottage door flew open, bringing with it a gust of wind and slicing rain. Great, it was pissing it down outside.
“Is she healed?” he barked at Verne, which was honestly no way to talk to anyone, let alone your pack’s leader.
“She is,” Verne confirmed, his voice as serene as a summer’s day. Lainsz was the thunderstorm that came to ruin the good weather; I gave him an unimpressed look, and when that wasn’t enough, followed up with my middle finger.
“I’ll walk you back,” Lainsz said in a grunt.
“Aw, that’s so kind of you,” I said, pressing a hand to my heart. “You know, you’re really sweet when you want to be, Lainsz. Escorting me back to the academy so no danger can befall me—”
“So you can’t befall any of us,” he muttered. “Call me sweet again; see what happens.”
Energy coursed through me, and I was ready to do just that, to provoke him even though my common sense was howling at me again, but then Leander leaned his head around the open door.
“I’ll take you, Starlight. These two have had time with you today; I’m wasting away, heartbroken here. Take pity on a poor, tragic creature and let me walk you back.”
“A poor, tragic creature,” I repeated, fighting a smile as I rose to my feet, casting around for my coat.
Verne didn’t just retrieve it from the kitchen; he held it out for me to slide my arms into the sleeves. A lump pressed into the thin skin of my throat, the back of my eyes burning.
God, my standards were low. All he’d done was helped me put on a coat.
“Leander can take me,” I said, clearing my throat and looking over my shoulder. “Thank you for healing me. You’re certain I’m not going to keel over from poison now, right?”
“Positive,” Verne confirmed, and skimmed the edge of my jaw with a knuckle before stepping back.
Right. Yep. I needed to clear my throat again, but I refused to show how much that affected me. My head was a mess, full of so many conflicting thoughts that I didn’t know where to begin sorting through them.
“Alianazara,” Verne rushed out when I reached the threshold. “Are you sure we can’t convince you to stay?”
I wanted to. But I was nowhere near ready to commit to this relationship yet, and that was what moving in here would be—commitment.
“It’s my choice,” I said, the words coming out soft.
He could have forced the issue. The three of them could have overpowered me, locked me in one of their bedrooms ‘for my own safety.’ It would have been easy for them; I’d had a grand total of four training sessions, and while I could probably deflect one hand coming at my body, I wouldn’t stand a chance against six.
Plus, something told me these three were used to fighting; these were not the bodies of idle men.
Verne didn’t like me walking out of the cottage, but he didn’t push me to stay, didn’t say anything beyond that plea.
He accepted me at my word, and it planted the seed that maybe he told the truth.
Maybe they weren’t after an obedient wife to pop out kids like shelling peas; maybe it was more about wanting me.
More thoughts piled up in my head, until they began to hammer at my skull. With a muted goodbye, I followed Leander back into the forest.