His head bobs slowly, never breaking eye contact. “Do you want to go home? Or would you rather stay here, with me?”
I get the feeling somewhere in my overwhelmed mind that this is a very big deal. The fact that he would even ask me in the first place, not to mention the implication. Does this mean what I think it means?
I have to force it out, still trembling with nerves. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
“About what?”
Easy, girl.He’s lucky I don’t jam my fork in that massive arm of his. “About rejecting me. Have you changed your mind?”
His eyes narrow in what could be frustration or suspicion. I can’t tell which before he replies, “You first. I won’t say until you do.”
Fuck me. Is this really happening? Are we really tiptoeing around like this?
He continues staring at me with an intensity that freaks me out a little while I stare down at my plate, tracing shapes in the syrup. Do I want to stay here? What if I say yes, and he tells me that’s too bad, because he doesn’t want me? What if he’s setting me up to make a fool out of me? I can’t believe at a time like this, I actually care about saving face. I guess when you’ve got nothing left to lose, things like that matter.
If I stayed here, his clan would never accept me. That’s obvious.
Also obvious is a lifetime spent never seeing my family again. I wouldn’t let them cross the border for fear of them going through what I’m going through now—only in their case, they wouldn’t have a fated mate to protect them. I can’t do that, just like I wouldn’t be allowed to cross the border if I mated with a bear. That’s out, too. Starting a new life with Kyran would mean saying goodbye to my family. My core. Can I really do that?
Who am I kidding? No matter what I choose, I lose. Either I spend the rest of my life with Kyran and lose part of myself by saying goodbye to my family, or I spend endless years without my fated mate. There’s no winning. I am doomed to a future where part of me is missing.
“This is what I deserve.” A soft, cynical laugh bubbles in my throat when I look at the full picture.
“What does that mean?”
I might as well tell him. He should have a full picture of who I really am before he makes his final decision. “I told you about the girl Dad died trying to protect, right? In the woods?” Whenhe nods, I explain, “Her name is Nora. She’s my twin brother’s fated mate, as it turns out.”
“Sometimes it turns out like that,” he muses, because he still doesn’t see the whole picture.
“You see, Nora’s dad left her out there to die. Her mom was human; she was a half-breed. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her, since he already had a new wife and kids who were full-blooded, like him. So after her mom died, and Nora had nowhere else to go, she came to the pack. And he left her to die that night. She was just a little girl, all alone.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Do I look like I’m joking? No, I’m serious. But the thing is,” I force myself to continue, “we didn’t know that. And when she was found, her dad made up a story about how he warned her not to go into the woods and play, but she refused to listen. So…”
The shame. It burns. “Cole and I made it our mission to make her miserable from that day on. Every time we saw her at school, we singled her out. We’d hit her, call her names, get other people to laugh at her for what she did to our family. As far as we were concerned, she might as well have killed our parents with her bare hands.”
Tears make the plate blur. I want to stop. It’s too much. I’m too ashamed, but I need to let it out. Like my last confession or something. “It turns out she was getting the same treatment at home. When she came to us, she was covered in bruises. So skinny, because she wasn’t allowed to eat more than scraps. She was already being tortured by her own family, and we made it worse. I went out of my way to hurt her. I made it my mission. So yeah,” I conclude with a shrug. “Maybe this is what I deserve, because I’m not a good person. I don’t deserve happiness or peace. I deserve to pay for what I did to her. I guess that’s what I’m doing now.”
There. That ought to make up his mind for him. Now he won’t have any choice but to reject me. Why would he accept me after what he just heard? I force myself to eat the rest of the pancakes, which are a little cold now. Almost like I’m defying him to make up his mind. Pretending it doesn’t matter either way.
“But you didn’t know.” It’s so soft, tender. “How could you have known?”
Nope. I’m not going to let him do that. “But…”
“Just listen to me for a minute. You were so young when you lost your mom and dad. You were carrying all that hurt and confusion and fear. You had no reason not to believe the story you were told about how Nora ended up in the woods that night—I can’t believe an adult would tell a lie like that about his own child, and I’m thirty-eight years old. So what is a kid supposed to think?”
I guess that makes sense. I lift a shoulder, still staring at the plate, drawing shapes that disappear as soon as the syrup spreads and erases them.
“It would’ve been one thing if you knew the truth and still blamed her. That, I couldn’t excuse. But you were only lashing out at the one target you could find to pin the blame on. People do it all the time. That doesn’t make it right,” he adds quickly. “But it’s not a crime. I think you ought to let yourself off the hook, little wolf. Nora isn’t the only one who has been through more than anybody her age should suffer.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry. Dammit, I can’t help it. How did he know exactly what I needed to hear? Even I didn’t know. “You really mean that?” I croak. “You really don’t think I’m a terrible person?”
His eyes twinkle a little when I get up the courage to look into them. “You don’t deserve a lifetime of punishment. That much, I can tell you for sure.”
It’s the most amazing thing. Like he just handed me the keys to unlock a jail cell I didn’t even know I had put myself in. I feel lighter. He gave me that gift. “Thank you,” I whisper, knuckling away more tears before releasing a slow breath.
It doesn’t hit me until hours later, when we’re both lost in our heads in front of the TV, that I never gave him an answer. He never gave me one, either. I can’t get a read on him. He’s angry, but I don’t think it’s me he’s angry with now. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s his clan. Maybe it’s himself, for not being able to cut me loose and turn his back on me like everybody thinks he should.
