I start to go down to one knee, and his hand shoots out and catches my shoulder before I get there, gripping hard, keeping me on my feet. “Don’t you bow to me,” he says, low, and I straighten back up.
“I don’t want to do this.” My voice is coming apart, and I quit trying to hold it together. “Every part of me wants to be selfish. Wants to throw her over my shoulder and haul her into that Glen so I never spend a night without her. But I can’t. It’s wrong. I’m not—“ The rest won’t come. Then it comes too big to hold. “I’m not him.”
And then I’m shouting it. I stand in the dirt of my mate’s home pride and shout it up at Mother Fate, like noise enough could make it true—I’m not him, I’m not him—until the words go ragged and stop meaning anything. “Please.” It barely makes it out. “Help me.”
Ahmal makes a low, broken sound, and both arms come around me, huge and heavy, pulling me in. I sag into the man who once swore to make my mate a widow, and everything I’ve been holding up since the Conjuring Hall finally gives. I twist myhands into his shirt. The proud old alpha holds me through it, in front of his sons and his whole pride.
“It’s all right, warlock,” he rumbles against the top of my head. “I understand your pain. I do.”
He sets me back from him with both hands on my shoulders and searches my face. “Mara’s carrying?” I nod. He turns his head to the side and swallows down a growl. “This will break her,” he says. “You, walking away while she carries your cub. It’ll break her in half.”
“Are you telling me to be selfish?” My voice is raw. “To take her into the Glen after all?”
He falls quiet, looking at me a long moment, and whatever he finds settles him—the understanding in his face almost worse than the anger was. “When will you bring her?”
“Tomorrow.” The word breaks on its way out. “I want one more night with her first.”
He takes it in, then nods once. “I’ll guard your mate and your cub with my life. You have my word as an alpha.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “For being a man unworthy of your daughter.”
He shakes his great head slow. “No. You’re wrong about that, Aaron Blackwood.” His amber eyes hold mine. “A lesser man takes what he wants and calls it love. You’re putting my daughter and your cub ahead of your own heart, and it’s killing you, and you’re doing it anyway. That makes you a better man than any supernatural I’ve crossed in all my long years.” His voice drops, and there’s grief in it and pride both. “I’ll tell you the truth—I don’t know that I could be that selfless with my own. Mother Fate could not have chosen better for my Mara, and I’m ashamed it took me this long to see it.”
What he does next surprises me: the alpha of Solaris Pride lowers himself onto one knee in the dirt and bows his head. Ican’t move. After everything I did to him, he’s the one asking me, without a word, to forgivehim.
I reach out with an unsteady hand and lay it on the crown of his head, smoothing it back over his hair—the shifter way of granting forgiveness, of taking what’s offered.It’s done. We’re square.
He rises, an alpha again. “I’ll ready the pride for her arrival,” he says, and inclines his head to me. I bend forward and brace my hands on my knees. The whole thing has left me feeling like I might be sick.
“Not to ruin the moment,” Ahmal says above me, “but you may want to release my guards.”
I push myself upright and look back down the path. There they are, still hanging over the territory line right where I left them, slowly turning, paws paddling at nothing. One’s given up and crossed his arms, glaring at me like I’m dangling him over a bathtub. The other’s still roaring at no one. It’s so ridiculous I laugh, wet and cracked and helpless, and once it starts I can’t stop it.
I bring them down without a word, easing the two of them out of the sky until their feet touch grass. They stagger, find their footing, and look around like they’re not sure what just happened.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell Ahmal, already backing away, and he bows his head to me one more time.
I’m turning to leave when his voice reaches me across the yard. “You’ll make an honorable king, Aaron Blackwood.”
There it is again. A man I respect looks at the wreck of me and calls me that. I close my eyes so he can’t see what it does to me, and the magic folds the world up and carries me home in the space of a blink.
When I open my eyes I’m in our cabin, and the ruined day drops away. Mara’s at the kitchen counter with a torn-offheel of bread in one hand, her cheek packed full, caught mid-bite, blinking at me like I startled her out of a daydream. She swallows and smiles, easy and bright and full of nothing but love—my whole world, standing there eating over the sink.
I smile back at her, standing in the doorway of the only home I’ve ever wanted. Tomorrow I walk away from her, and it’s going to gut me. Leaving her will be worse than dying.
I’d take the dying.
45
Mara
Ismooth the gold dress down over my hips. I press my hand flat and low over my belly, where there’s no curve yet, nothing anyone else could find. But my lion knows our son is in there. So do I. Behind me, Aaron sits on the edge of the bed, working his feet into his shoes. Today my father learns he’s going to be a grandfather. Today my whole pride learns the lost daughter is bringing home a cub.
I’ll have to tell Headmistress Ebony I’m not coming back to the wing, not for a while yet. I keep waiting for it to hurt. It doesn’t. My own classroom, a roomful of young lionesses looking to me to teach them who they are. I wanted that my whole life. I still do. But I picture standing at the front of that room with a newborn cub at home, and the want doesn’t die. It just moves over to make room. There’s no rush on an old dream when a better one is kicking its way toward you.
I glance over at Aaron and smooth my face out. I promised myself I’d leave it alone today. He’s been off all week, quiet in the wrong places, too tender in others, watching me when he thinks I’ve drifted off in my head. Every time I press him I get the same answer:it’s not the pregnancy, baby, I swear it isn’t.Then heshuts his mouth on the rest and won’t give it to me. We fought a whole war learning how to talk to each other. Now I’m back to begging my own mate to tell me what’s wrong.
And I can’t read him. I’ve always caught his moods off the air, the coffee and sandalwood of him going sharp, going sweet. All week, nothing. His scent comes to me flat, his own magic clamped down over it. I don’t even know what he’s hiding from. From me? From the cub we made? I push it all down where it can’t ruin today. When he stands and reaches for me, I go to him.
