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She put a finger to his lips. “This isn’t a story you can rewrite if you don’t like the beginning. The past is forever set in stone, but we haven’t written the ending yet.”
“I can’t guarantee it’s going to be a happy one.”
“Aiden, nobody can. But if it’s going to end tragically, at least we’ll be together for it.”
He closed his eyes. He’d been so intent on what he could do for her that he’d forgotten the most important thing he could do for another human being: just be there. “I couldn’t breathe without you,” he confessed.
“I was going to say I couldn’t sleep, but that sounds puny compared to the whole breathing thing. So I’ll just say I love you, too.”
He laughed, and she cut off the sound with a kiss. The singing rightness of her in his arms stole every thought from his head. Gently, he wrapped his arms around her.
They stayed like that for long minutes. He reveled in the peace and a curious of absence of guilt. She was here with no wards forcing her. And she already had all his furniture.
She was right. How they started was best left to the history books. The only thing that mattered now was how it ended.
The horse pawed at the ground, and he got a good look at it over her shoulder.
“Where did she come from?” he asked, eyeing the skinny old beast.
“She’s mine now.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain later. I had to find a way to get home.”
The door creaked open, and he spun to see Buck standing white-faced on the threshold, a bucket of paint in his hands. “Please don’t kill me.”
Goldie disentangled herself but kept hold of his hand.
Aiden squeezed hers hard. “What was that about new stories with new endings?”
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” she called out after a long sigh. “And I didn’t hurt you before. It was all an illusion, just bangs and colors.”
“You said you’d take my wolf.” Buck stood as if the threshold was some kind of defense against witches. Aiden chuckled. It used to be.
“I was bluffing,” Goldie insisted.
Buck shook his head like a small child who’d just been told there were no monsters under the bed. He didn’t believe her.
“Look, even if I could,” Goldie said. “I don’t need to. We’re even. You stole me away on a horse, and I stole you away on a—um—horse trailer.”
Buck nodded, then shook his head, then nodded. “I am real sorry. Like real.”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she replied, then turned to Aiden. “Not that I don’t love guests on my first night home, but what the hell is he doing here?”
Buck lost all color again. “The alpha. My father now.”
“I know about that,” she said with a wave of her hand.
He looked at her in surprise.
“The gossip in these hills flies on wings,” she said with a small smile.
He would have to get used to his isolated pack that no one knew existed being gossip fodder for a coven of witches miles away.
“Buck,” he said, “having seen the errors of his ways, refused to kill me. So Nathan left him here to finish the job before he comes back to try it himself.”
“What?”
