Page 164 of The Ashpaw: Part One

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He gathered his clothes, and just before he departed, Fern called out to him.

“Aye?”

“I can’t last the day without you.”

Darion’s expression fell. “I know.”

“Can… can you call the healer? I wish to be asleep until you return.”

He looked at her for a moment, thinking, and then nodded once. “It will be done.”

Darion left, and not twenty minutes later, Serich returned with the medicine, just as Darion had said.

And she wept, knowing all of the previous promises he’d made had been broken because he’d never cared before now.

Chapter 40

Darion

Even after a long bath and vigorous scrubbing, Fern’s scent was still everywhere. Under his nails, in his hair, even seeping through his pores.

He knew it was probably a bad sign to start a mating ceremony so thoroughly drenched in another she-wolf’s perfume, but Darion could not keep himself from smiling every time he got a whiff of her.

Tending Fern through her heat had been a revelation.

It was like every aspect of her being was meant to draw him in, from her scent, to the softness of her skin, to the pitch of her voice, and to a sex that could actually take a knot.

He was getting hard just thinking about it.

He’d always known on a surface level that omegas were supposed to be special, but thought the other alphas far too forgiving of her disrupting behavior before. She was rare, but that didn’t mean she was above clan rules.

It was only by leaving everything at the door—his own preconceptions, his biases, the promise made to keep Fern at arm’s distance—that he was finally able to see her as his father, uncles, and brother did.

As someone deserving of far more than he’d been giving her.

And now, as he approached the temple, he had to find a way to explain all this to Kyntha.

Kyntha was special, too, and he could see how entering a courtship and discovering halfway through that your alpha had claimed an omega Naravekh could be disorienting.

And so he’d forgiven her outbursts, her tantrums, her demands. He’d soothed her worries night after night, when what he should have been doing was preparing her for Fern’s inclusion. And now he feared all he’d done was make things worse for her.

You did not break a horse by offering carrots and then expect it to take a harness simply because you were kind.

The temple lay just at the edge of the forest, flowers already scattered and torches lit.

Built from dark timber weathered silver at the edges, it rose in steep tiers of slanted roofs, each one narrower than the last. Wolf heads jutted from the corners of the beams, their mouths open toward the sky.

Carved in the doorway were depictions of the gods. Lurei, the moon goddess and mother to the wolfkin, was center, of course. To her right was her lover Solas, god of the sun and father to humans, and her sister Veratia, the goddess of truth and quittance, was on her left. The other gods filled in the sides, and Darion brought his fingers to his lips and raised them to the heavens as he passed the threshold.

The antechamber where he had readied himself for the start of the courtship sixty days ago was waiting for him, but he needed to speak to Kyntha first. He owed her a debt of his apology, for breaking his promise and for the change of heart regarding Fern’s placement in his home, and could not enter the union with it still unpaid.

He approached the door to her antechamber nervously, knowing it was the right thing to do and yet not wanting her to be upset.

It would be a bad look for her to be crying before the altar.

Darion steeled himself, raising his fist to knock, when he heard her and her mother’s voices through the door.