“Of course not. You don’t become the wolf king by losing fights.”
I blinked again. “Did you ever think about mating with her?”
He took a large bite of his ice cream, then pointedly looked out the window rather than answering.
“Maverick.”
“Did you ever think about mating with any of the vampires your mom is trying to match you with?”
I didn’t answer either.
“Immortality is a long time, Sugar. You get lonely. I never pursued or fucked her, but I did talk to Rhone about what wouldhappen if I agreed to take her as my mate and merge our packs. I didn’t expect fate to pair me with a pretty little vampire.”
“Why did you decide not to?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I figured the only way I could get lonelier was if I was mated to someone I barely liked. You can assume love will happen, but there’s no way to really know.”
I nodded.
“Your turn.” He elbowed me in the arm lightly.
“One of the eligible bachelors in town isn’t part of the founding families. There are four families, and a few random vampires. It’s obviously preferable to mate with someone from one of the families, because we’re elitists.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, when I was eighteen, I had a…thing… with one of the randoms. Timber. It was kind of a scandal, because my mom had been trying to convince me to mate with Velour Valenti since I was a kid.”
“Fucking Velour.”
He really had no idea.
I finished my ice cream and tucked the wrapper in the grocery bag that was now functioning as a trash bag. “That’s the story.”
He looked at me skeptically. “You want me to believe you broke things off with Timber just because it was slightly scandalous? When you were eighteen? And that you didn’t plan on mating with him eventually?”
“Well…”
He waited.
I sighed. “Fine. I would say part of me still expects to end up stuck with him, even though I don’t have any feelings for him. I do need to pick a mate eventually, and of the four options, he does seem like the best.”
Maverick continued waiting.
I reluctantly went on. “When we were dating, Timber was over a century old. I was barely an adult. I wasn’t ready to seal a bond. I had never even lived outside my mom’s house. When I told him I got a job at a werewolf-owned investment firm, he told me we were over unless I quit. I refused. We broke up, and it was… messy… for a while.”
“Messy, meaning you were still fucking regularly,” Maverick said flatly.
“Maybe.”
“How long?”
“Two years or so.”
He scoffed. “How did it finally end?”
“It just sort of faded out. We avoid each other now, for the most part.”
“What do you mean,for the most part?”
