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“People fall in love in all sorts of extremely inconvenient places.”
“I think this takes the cake,” he said ruefully. “Goldie, I’m not good for you.”
“If you think my cousin’s live-in boyfriend is the best person to determine that for us, you really are delusional.”
He tried to sit up and had to use his hands to push into a sitting position because his abs were still wrecked. He dislodged her as he did so, and she followed him up, so they were both sitting cross-legged facing each other, her witch light dangling between them.
“Goldie, it’s not just how it started. I can offer you nothing. I’m going home to a fractured, alpha-less pack that I can’t fix as a submissive wolf.” He had to brace against the shelves to stay upright. “I can only attack and attack until somebody puts me in the ground. I can live locked in that house or exiled from the pack. You’re gorgeous and brilliant and deserve a life under the brightest lights surrounded by family.”
“I kind of hate my family, and I don’t want the brightest lights. I want you.”
He shook his head. “You have to let me go.”
“What if I say no? I’m not letting you go. I’m not walking away.”
“Then one of us will always be trapped.”
She flinched as if he’d hit her. He was breaking his own heart, even as he broke hers, but there was no other option.
She leaned forward until her hair hid her face, but this time he was not with her in her hiding place.
“Say something,” he said desperately.
She tipped her head back, shaking her head a little until her hair fell away. “No.”
“No?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve never been in this situation before. I can point out again and again that there’s no guillotine above your head. That we are free to love each other. That you aregoodfor me, and I am good for you. That I deserve you. And you deserve me.”
He’d flinched the moment she said good, and she’d seen it.
“You see? I can’t fight against a weapon that isn’t there. It’s only in your head, Aiden. I can shout the truth from the rooftops that you are good and kind and not dangerous, but I can’t make you believe it.”
She stood up and opened the door as she snuffed the light by plucking it out of the air. She looked into the corridor.
“Go,” she said.
“What?”
She looked back down at him. “There are no wards. No bargains. There’s nothing between us, and I will not trap you to keep you.”
He let the wolf take him before he could say another stupid word.
He peered up at her through the wolf’s eyes.
This is for the best. You have to believe me.
Her expression was remote, but he could see the sparkle of tears on her lashes with these superior eyes. As always in her presence, he didn’t feel like he was at war with his wolf, a helpless presence banished to the back of his mind. They worked together.
It was why he could force the wolf to obey when he told it to run.
It slunk out of the room, letting only its tail brush her legs. It was the last he would ever have of her.
It was easy to see the way out; to the right, it was pitch black; to the left, he could see the moon’s glow.
He headed that way, walking gently on polished wood boards. The front door was already open.
He looked back at her framed in the closet's doorway where they’d held him. She hadn’t moved. She wasn’t looking at him.
