"Can we go inside?"
She went up the steps past him and opened the door. The cottage was dim, the stove cold, the end of the daylight coming through the kitchen windows in pale rectangles on the stone floor. She lit the lamp on the worktable and turned to face him.
He closed the door and stood in her kitchen. The same kitchen where she'd kissed him, where he'd built her a fire,where they'd eaten eggs that morning. The table was between them.
"Sit down," she said.
"I'd rather stand for this."
Her expression shifted to the look of someone who'd learned the hard way that honesty usually came with a cost.
"Alright," she said.
He'd rehearsed this on the porch. He'd rehearsed it on the walk. None of it sounded right because there was no right way to say it, only the honest way, and honest was what he owed her after everything he'd already withheld.
"The first time I touched you," he said. "Outside the inn. When I grabbed your wrist."
"I remember."
"Something happened. Not to you. To me." He kept his eyes on hers. "My wolf recognized you. Instantly. Completely. The way wolves recognize one thing and one thing only."
She didn't move. Her hands stayed at her sides against the counter.
"You're my mate, Isla. Fated. I've known since that first touch. Every interaction we've had since then, every conversation, every night in this cottage, I've known."
The lamp flame flickered. The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of the lake through the closed windows, steady, rhythmic, indifferent to what was happening inside these walls.
"Say that again," she said.
"You're my mate."
"And you've known since the inn."
"Yes."
"Since before you fixed my shutter. Before the storm night. Before the counter." Her voice was level but her jaw had tightened. "Before you slept on my floor. Before you asked me tocome work on your ship. Before you sat at this table and told me you cared about me."
"Yes."
"How long is that? In days?"
"Just over a week."
"Hmm." She pushed off the counter. Not toward him. Sideways, to the window, where she stood with her back to him looking out at the lake. "So for about eight or so days you've been carrying this and you didn't tell me."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you were dealing with a note left at your door by a man who uses information as leverage. Then Malrick spent a morning telling you that every man in your life wants something from your power. And if I'd told you the first night, or the second, or the fifth, it would have sounded like exactly what he accused me of. Another alpha staking a claim on a powerful woman for his own reasons."
"So you decided for me. What I could handle and when."
"I decided to wait until you trusted me enough to hear it without it sounding like a trap."
She turned around. Her eyes were bright, but not with tears.
"I need you to explain what it means," she said. "In your terms. Not the romantic version. The real one."
