Her eyebrows rose.
“Arthur,” she said, her tone heavy with implication.
Guilt burned in his chest. He swallowed.
“Aye,” he said.
Aurelia looked up at him, surprised, then nodded, brisk and practical. “Good,” she said. “Because Kiara said she’d teach me how to do the card thing if Mom says it’s okay.”
“Absolutely not,” Arthur and Dani said together.
Kiara sighed. “You’re both very boring.”
Rory chuckled under his breath. The knot of attention around them loosened. Voices rose, music crackled from the jukebox, and wolves drifted back to their drinks. Aurelia slipped away toward a pair of Volkhov pups, drawn by the lights of the machine.
Leaving Arthur and Dani in a thinner bubble of space.
He cleared his throat. “You should be in my house.”
Not what he’d meant to say.
Dani blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The guest rooms in the compound are fine,” he said, pushing on. “But they’re not as secure as the alpha house. You’d be more comfortable at mine.”
She stared. “Is this your subtle way of asking me into your bed?”
Heat slammed into his face. “No,” he said, too quickly. “You’d have your own room. Separate. With a door that locks.”
Her expression shifted, suspicion tinged with something else. Exhaustion. Maybe the tiniest thread of relief.
“Why now?” she asked.
He shrugged, shoulders tight. “Because you’re mine,” he said simply. “And she’s mine. And I sleep better if you’re under my roof. Where I can hear if anything goes wrong.”
“Control again,” she said softly.
“Protection,” he said. “Call it what you like. It doesn’t change what it is.”
She looked away, watching Aurelia laugh at something by the jukebox, her hair bouncing, joy making her almost incandescent.
Dani’s throat worked. When she met his eyes again, there was resignation there. And something more fragile under it.
“Separate rooms,” she said. “My key. You allow me to cast wards on the doors. If I say we’re done for the night, we’re done.”
“Done,” he said at once.
“And if I decide this was a mistake,” she added, “I move back to Thistlehouse or the compound, and you don’t get to drag me back by the scruff.”
His wolf perked at the image. Arthur ignored it.
“Agreed,” he said. “On one condition.”
Her brows rose. “There it is.”
He stepped a fraction closer, heart thudding. The bond tugged, pleased. Up close, he saw the faint smudge of ash near her temple from some earlier spell. His fingers twitched with the need to brush it away.
“You don’t run in the middle of the night,” he said quietly. “If you decide you want out, you tell me to my face. No vanishing. No letters. No ten years of silence.”
