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“Oh, I know you too well, my dear. I know you better than you know yourself. You’re afraid of love. At Alma Venus, you never felt like you belonged. You never felt wanted. So, when Max came along and offered you all those things you’d craved for, you got scared and pulled back. It’s a simple system of self-defense, of self-preservati
on. As much as you wanted to let go and take the love and protection he was giving you, you were also frightened that it wouldn’t last, that it would hurt so much more to have and then lose these things, than to never experience them at all. You stubbornly focused on your initial plan to escape, because that was your comfort zone.”
Avelyn’s eyes were wide with disbelief. She didn’t know what to do. She felt like laughing, and she would have really liked to laugh in Christine’s face, but, at the same time, the old woman had touched on some things Avelyn had always preferred to keep buried deep down. The insecurities, the painful feeling that no one wanted her… Her mother didn’t want her, since she left her at Alma Venus. Alma Venus didn’t want her either. Monique Delacroix had assessed the situation and decided she was worth buying, but that didn’t count as anything but pure business. The frustration of always having everything thrust upon her: classes, workshops, interviews, a husband. The impossibility of taking control of her own life, of being happy and accomplished on her own terms. Christine was spot on. Avelyn clenched her jaw.
“Avelyn… It comes from Latin. “Avis” means bird.” The she-wolf gave her a warm, kind smile. “It was the first thing I asked you when you came here, but you didn’t want to answer me. I knew the answer all along, I just wanted to hear it from you.”
“It would have sounded ironical at that particular moment.” Her voice cracked slightly, but she swallowed her impending tears and willed her mind to stay clear.
“You’ve always been the only one to trap yourself. No one else. That was the moment to spread your wings and claim your freedom. Running away to some distant country, trying to make it among strangers… you would have forever avoided love, protection, and happiness because they would’ve been states you never knew and understood, and the only one who could teach you how to live with them would have been left behind, here, at the Schloss. But you know now.”
Avelyn was silent, thoughtful for a few minutes. The clock was ticking the time away as she was trying to decide how she should react. She was still mad at Christine for having lied to her and done exactly the opposite of what she had asked, but that was ancient history now, anyway. It had been her own fault for foolishly believing the elder of Clan Blackmane would disobey her Alpha. She reached over to the tray on the table and lifted the lid off the bowl of soup in one swift motion. She took it in her hands, enjoying the warmth it gave off, and sank the spoon to scoop up a piece of carrot.
“What about Sabine?” she asked. “Was there any time when you believed she was his soul mate?”
Christine sighed. “No. As much as I adored Sabine, I always knew she wasn’t right for Max. He tried to save her and protect her. Maybe he even learned to love her after he brought her to the Schloss, but she was never the one for him.”
“Adored her?” Avelyn huffed, then blew gently on her soup and gulped it down, enjoying the way it burned her throat. “You kept her locked up down there and almost sedated.”
“And it pained me to do it, but it was for her own good. The herbal teas I made her were meant to calm her down and reduce her anxiety. I know it’s hard for you to believe me, but I care a lot about Sabine. She’s just a broken soul who lost everything, then found herself thrown into a new world she had to adapt to. The moment she turned, she wasn’t herself anymore. She hadn’t only lost her family, but she had also lost herself, that human part which connected her to her past. If I had been there when Max found her and decided to save her and bring her home, I would have tried to talk him out of it. You can’t fix what someone else has broken. It always ends badly, especially when the broken one doesn’t want to be fixed, or when the mending would take too much of a toll on them.”
“So, you would have let her die.”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in the she-wolf’s voice. “It would have been easier for her.”
“Wow! And you still claim you care about her.”
“Caring is thinking of the other’s well-being, making the choice that’s good for them, not for you.”
“Max healed her and saved her for her own good.”
“No, he did it for himself.”
Avelyn raised her left eyebrow, indicating she didn’t see the logic.
“Karl and his Dark Wolves had raided the village and killed Sabine’s family. Max saved her because he needed to feel better about himself. He needed to be the good brother.”
“That’s… that’s just fucked up.”
Christine laughed cheerfully at Avelyn’s blunt choice of words. “I guess you could say that.”
“So… Karl really did kill her family. She didn’t lie about that. Tell me the whole story.”
“No. That is something Max has to do. You two still have a lot to talk about. It’s his turn to come out clean, and you should give him the chance to regain your trust. This is a new beginning for the both of you. If you want to be happy, Avelyn, then you have to do this right. You and Max have started on the wrong foot, and this may well be the last chance you’ve got to start over. Take it and make the best of it.”
“And then what?” Avelyn set the bowl down and placed her hands on her lap, palms facing up, as a sign of defeat and resignation. “What will happen after the full moon, when I’ll most likely lose my unborn baby and never be able to have children ever again?”
Christine rose from her chair, rounded the table, and crouched beside her. She squeezed her knee in a firm grip and made her look into her green eyes. “There’s an entire lifetime until then, and it’s filled with possibilities and solutions you can’t see now.”
Avelyn laughed weakly. “How do you know that? Do you have some sort of clairvoyant abilities I don’t know about?”
“Maybe I do.”
***
Avelyn arched her back and pulled gently at Max’s hair, as he was swirling his wicked tongue around her hard nub. She moaned, then chuckled when he bit her lightly, the graze of his teeth sending a pleasant shudder up her spine. His tongue went lower to clean the juices off her swollen folds and dip inside her entrance for more. She bucked her hips into his mouth, and felt his strong hands squeezing her butt encouragingly. Her Alpha had always liked it when she took control of her own pleasure and showed him exactly what made her lose her mind. Maybe that was why he had preferred a fiery vixen instead of an obedient Lupi wife. He wasn’t a typical Alpha wolf just as she wasn’t a typical shifter-bride. There were shades and nuances there, and they were discovering them together.
Max stroked her delicious clit with the tip of his tongue, enjoying the way she shuddered under him. He inhaled her intoxicating scent, and marveled at the new note he felt in it. She was still human all right, but there was something else hidden there, just under her skin; the werewolf venom that was slowly taking over her body. The new smell drove him mad with lust. The combination of human frailty and raw animal desire she exuded made it so hard for him to make love to her at a slow pace. One good thing that would come out of her transformation would be that he’d finally be able to take her fast and hard anytime he wanted, without having to hold back or worry he might hurt her. She moaned louder and he knew she was close to release. To his surprise, her hands pulled slightly harder at his hair, urging him to look up and see what was wrong.
