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“I don’t understand. I want a future with you. I want to be your mate. But love?”
I couldn’t take it anymore. The storm of emotions bleeding through our connection was making my own head spin.
“Come sit with me. Come talk. You don’t have to say anything back. Fate never once required us to love. I will take whatever it is that you feel. Love. Admiration. Caring in general.”
She looked like a skittish animal. Like she’d been wounded, and we had a sign that said, ‘approach with caution.’ The heat of her skin under my hand gave me comfort and as she released her vice grip on her other hand, I took a deep breath. At least she let me touch her.
My own chest started to ache, and I wasn’t sure I could process why. Could she reject me? Could she leave even after she’d been marked?
Fuck.
“Kiara, breathe. I don’t understand. Love or not, I am here for you. We can learn to love each other. No one said that the moon goddess made it all make sense just because we’ve been marked as mates.”
“Love? What is love?”
She was on repeat even as I pulled her over to our bed. It hadn’t been long since she’d be rescued. This was all related, I was certain. She seemed secure and happy, and then she spiraled. And I couldn’t blame her. I shouldn’t have spoken in such haste. My father might have been a bit of a bastard to me, but he’d loved my mother and I’d wanted that. I’d seen that when I’d been young.
“Love, Kiara, for me… It’s the want to wake to you every morning. It’s the feeling that you’re the touch I crave. Love, to me, means that I’d do nearly anything for you. You’re the missing piece of my soul.”
She was cradled in my lap.
“Have I ever been loved?”
She finally looked up at me and stopped repeating herself.
“I loved you the moment I met you, but what your pack did to you? That was never love.”
My wolf wanted to push this love thing, but in his own way, and I wondered if that was the best. As a wolf, my feelings were so different from the human.
“Come with me for a run?”
It had never occurred to me that not only has she never felt a part of a pack that she could remember, but she hadn’t ever felt genuine love. I hadn’t exactly started out as the most accommodating.
“Yes, a run. I need to think.”
I was certain the look I gave her told her my confusion.
“You accept fate, but you can’t accept someone would love you?”
She shook her head that then turned into a nod.
“Fate chose someone for me. The goddess decided we would do as needed for the future of your pack. But love? It’s a choice. You can choose to love. You just accept fate.”
Choose?
Choice?
I shook my head and started to pull off her dress.
“I think your wolf might be able to help you separate the human logic and instinct. The emotions. Loving you wasn’t a choice. I don’t give fate the credit. I believe fate chose you for me because you're the one I would love even without being told to. You’re like the air in my lungs.”
She nodded and let the dress fall to the floor.
I stripped out of my own clothes, and then I pulled her with me.
I didn’t understand why this would matter. Why would the words change anything? I simply put a name to what we were. To how it felt to be near her. To try to atone for what I’d done by abandoning her.
Maybe I was using the words as a tool to try to remove my own guilt. But I couldn’t help it either. I did love her and maybe what she wanted to know was the why.
