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“I mean, nothing is set in stone. Until Lupercalia, of course.” He nods toward my bowl. “You don’t care for the soup?”
“It’s delicious.” I’m dizzied by the turn in conversation. “I’m just not used to eating so close to detonating bombshells.”
His laugh is loud and tooth-grindingly arrogant, and I hate that it makes him hotter to me than he was before. If I want to be with a man who infantilizes me and finds me “intriguing,” I might still be able to marry Ashton.
“Why am I here?” Before he can answer, I add, “It’s not just because I intrigue you—”
“On the contrary, I find you quite—”
I keep on going. “—or to apologize for dancing with me. You’re not stupid. You know that me being here is just making the scandal worse.”
“And yet, here you are.” He lifts his glass as if in a toast.
I nod slowly. “Here I am.”
“Then you must not be worried about causing a scandal.” He has me there and he knows it. “Or you know that defying your parents and your fiancé might work to your advantage.”
“Okay. Fair.” I narrow my eyes. “This isn’t going how I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Before I can answer, his voice takes on a darker tone that promises I’m not totally safe from the big, bad wolf in him. “Tell me the truth.”
The truth is, I thought by now we’d have given in to whatever it is that sizzles the air around us. But I can’t describe it that way. “Based on the way you look at me, I assumed I was here to leave with my virtue in tatters.”
Worse. So much worse. Why did I choose those archaic words? It would have been better if I just said, “I thought we’d fuck.”
He raises one eyebrow. “You have my word that you will leave tonight with your virtue intact.”
Why is that so disappointing to me? And why doesn’t it seem more disappointing to him?
Then he adds, “There will be other nights.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Oh, will there be?”
He just nods and goes back to his soup.
Though I want to assert that he can’t be so sure about that, he can. He has all the power here. He can command my presence every night, if he wants to. And he seems to know that as long as he does, I’ll come running. Anything to make my fiancé potentially break the pact.
We eat in silence for while. The lack of talking should be uncomfortable, but my mind is reeling. There are paintings on the walls, portraits of past kings and queens of the pack, their legacies carrying on even into the new king’s personal space.
It casts my predicament in a much different light. I’m worried about shaming my family, but at least I don’t have to worry about ruining an entire pack.
“Why did you invoke the Right of Accord?” I ask him. “Your specific reasons. ‘Because I could’ isn’t an answer.”
“It’s an answer. It’s just not one you want.” He isn’t wrong, but he doesn’t play coy. “A lifetime commitment to anything should be considered thoroughly, especially if one is indoctrinated to believe that commitment is desirable rather than having the consequences and responsibilities explained to them.”
“Like joining a hetero-normative society that demands breeding at all costs?” I think about Hannah and Ryan and all they have to hide.
“That, and the reality that once you accept the transformation, your life is no longer your own. Most of us aren’t prepared to live in a world outside of the pack. It’s easy to tell our young that without us, they can’t survive.” He lifts his glass toward me again. “But you survived.”
“Barely.” But that isn’t true. I certainly didn’t have designer clothes or a mansion to go home to. There were no lavish dinners or garden parties. My father paid for everything, but I did have to learn to survive in a world where no one laundered my clothes or did my grocery shopping or drove me around. And while the humans I met in their world were perfectly capable of doing those things, no one bothered to teach them to us. We were promised a life where none of that would ever come up.
All sense of playfulness flees the room. Nathan stares intently into my eyes as he speaks. “You survived. And you saw how different things can be. For better or worse. The two of us…we know things none of these other werewolves know. Imagine how different life could be for our children.”
“There’s that ‘our’ again.” I chuckle nervously. “Maybe the rest of the pack isn’t interested in co-parenting with their pack leader.”
“I wasn’t talking about their children. I was talking about our children.”
I choke on my soup and frantically cover my mouth with my napkin.
He doesn’t wait for me to finish being shocked. “I’ve decided to pursue you, Bailey. You would make an excellent queen and mate for me.”
