Page 12 of Deep Love

Chapter Five

Delphi

Mason scooped me upinto his arms and charged down the hallway, pushing a door open with his foot. The fact that he’d revealed himself to be a werewolf should have blown my mind, but I’d always known Mason was different from the other guys I’d dated. He had this vibe surrounding him that was equal parts compassionate and intense. I’d seen him show great kindness to people he’d encountered, but I’d also witnessed him be singularly focused on his goals. Was that a result of being a werewolf or was that merely Mason’s unique personality?

Also, how could a former human turned angel turned human again judge anyone else for being something more than what they appeared to be?

“You said you were born a werewolf,” I said as he deposited me on the bed in the apartment’s only bedroom. “Does that mean your family members are werewolves too?”

Mason nodded as he crawled onto the bed and stretched out beside me. “My parents are werewolves. You met my mom, remember?”

“Yes. She didn’t like me.” The woman had been less than welcoming when Mason had taken me to see her at the house where he’d grown up. She’d pretty much glared at me the entire night.

Mason rubbed his bearded jaw and winced. “She had a reason.” He rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling for a few quiet moments. “Werewolves and humans aren’t supposed to be mates. It’s another one of the rules.”

“Werewolves have a lot of rules.” I draped my arm over his chest, needing the contact.

“Indeed they do.” He dragged his rough fingertips along my forearm. It goosebumped my flesh everywhere. “The Moon Goddess, Lunai, is in charge of werewolf fated mates. She creates the pair bonds between werewolves and approves the unions. She never would have approved a union between us.”

“Is that why we didn’t get married?”

Mason turned his head to look at me, and I loved staring back into his pretty blue eyes again. “No. I wanted to marry you, Delphi. More than anything. I’d planned to ask you when I returned from that first tour of duty with the Army as we’d always talked about.” He flattened my hand over his heart. “I swear.”

“I believe you.” I kissed his shoulder. “But your family wouldn’t have approved of us, right?”

“Probably not, but I was prepared to leave my pack to be with you,” Mason said. “The Ferguson pack—my mother’s pack—is comprised of a bunch of disorderly wolves who I spend more time trying to discipline than anything else. My cousins are one headache after another. The only wolf I actually care about in the pack is my sister.”

“Sylvie, right?”

“Yes. She’s the only one who has her head screwed on right in that pack. My mother has become as bad as the rest of them since my father left her and returned to his pack in New York. He couldn’t deal with how unruly the Ferguson pack is.”

“Which leaves you to deal with the unruliness?” I guessed.

“Pretty much. Our pack currently has no Alpha. My sister thinks I should step up, but my cousins don’t listen to me. They’ll never respect me as an Alpha, and honestly, I don’t want the job anyway.”

“You’d make an excellent leader.” I remembered how Mason had always taken charge of whatever he was doing.

Mason rolled his eyes. “Now you sound like Sylvie, but I understand my father leaving the pack more and more. I was angry at him at first, but the bullshit my cousins pull is downright juvenile. They’re drunk or high most of the time and are running our pack’s construction company into the ground with their irresponsibility while Sylvie tries to keep it afloat. I wish the pack would implode and be done with it.”

“Or you could take control of it and lead them to the next level.” I slid my hand free from under his and traced a finger along his whiskered jaw. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of being a werewolf pack’s Alpha, but I have no doubt in my mind that you’d rock the role.”

Mason took my hand and dropped featherlight kisses to the tips of my fingers, a faint smile turning up his lips. “You were always my biggest cheerleader.”

“Easy to cheer for the best.” I pressed another kiss to his shoulder, wishing all our clothes were gone.

Patience.

We needed this time to get caught up and to deal with the fact that werewolves and angels were both real.

“Why are you not still in the military?” I asked, deciding to get all the important conversations out of the way and confirming if what Jessica had told me at the diner was true.

Mason did a crunch to sit up and removed his T-shirt. He angled so his back was facing me. “Turn on the light there.”

I rolled away from him and flicked on the bedside lamp. When I rolled back, a circular scar on Mason’s back was visible in the shadowy light. I ran my fingers over it, causing Mason to suck in a shuddery breath.

“I was shot in the line of duty,” he said. When he turned to face me, he pointed to a matching circle to the left of his belly button. “The bullet went straight through, but of course, military protocol was to ship me off to the hospital because vital organs had been hit. By the time the ambulance pulled up to the hospital, however, that bullet wound was healing due to werewolf abilities. I’d actually had to put my finger in the wound three times on the drive to keep it from sealing.”

“Oh no.”