She crawls under the covers next to Ethan.
I get to the other side of the bed and climb in.
Ethan stirs, rolls toward the warmth of me by instinct, and then stops, caught between us. He makes a small sound, resettles, and goes still again with his head close to Miranda’s arm.
As a silence falls over the room, I look at Miranda, who has her eyes closed. “Don’t ever treat your life like it’s worthless again.”
She doesn’t answer immediately, and just when I think she must have fallen asleep, she whispers, “I didn’t mean to worry you like that.”
“You thought I wouldn’t care.”
A soft exhale from her. “I don’t know what I thought, but I wanted it to be over.”
I reach out and lace my fingers with hers, where they’re resting on top of Ethan. “You’re not alone, Miranda.”
Her eyes don’t open, but her grip on my fingers tightens.
She doesn’t say anything after that.
I lie still and watch her. I listen to her breathing change, that gradual loosening that means sleep is taking her. It takes longer than it should. She lies rigid for a while, as if she’s not willing to allow it, and then her body decides the matter without her permission, and her breath goes even and deep.
Ethan has curved himself against her side.
Her arm has shifted in her sleep so it rests across his back.
I watch them.
The room is dark, and the house is quiet, and for a long moment, I just let myself look at the two of them, trying not to let this misery consume me.
She’ll leave.
I know that.
She’ll leave and build the life she should have had before any of this. A nursing job in some city far from here. Someone who doesn’t stand on the wrong side of every law that governs my world. She’ll be happy.
The idea of it makes my wolf bare its teeth, and I’m not far behind it.
I reach out slowly and move a strand of hair off her cheek with two fingers. She doesn’t stir. Her face in sleep is very still, the sharpness of her expression smoothed out, and she looks younger than she ever lets herself look when she’s awake.
I leave my hand near her face for a moment. Then I pull it back.
Sera’s voice comes back to me. The healing magic will mess with her head. Her survival instincts were numbed.
I want to believe that so desperately, but the part of me that knows this woman knows that it was more than that. She cracked. Under all that pressure and every door closing in her face, she cracked, and she didn’t have the strength to get back up anymore.
I look at her in the dark, Ethan’s face pressed close to her arm. Her chest rising and falling steady and slow. And it hits me.
This isn’t the fated mate bond. This is different. This feeling stems from all our conversations and bickering and the way she dotes on my son. It stems from the flashes of rare vulnerabilityshe sometimes allows me to see, her sheer strength as she carries the burdens the world has forced on her shoulders.
I love her.
She’s everything I never knew I wanted and now can’t stop craving.
Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this beautiful, impossible woman, and now…
Now I have no idea how to let her go.
The howl pullsme out of sleep.
