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He looked at Yordan and saw the same thoughts flitting through his expression. Oh damn. Oh hell. He felt his heart sinking fast.
“Wait,” he said as much to himself as to Yordan. “Let’s think this through.”
“How many couples can you name?” Yordan countered. “Just in the last year?”
A ton. “But that doesn’t mean anything. We’re wolves. We’re horny. Sex happens.”
“But how many of them are love matches? Married, happily ever after, until death do us part?” Yordan didn’t wait for him to answer. “Nero was never going to fall in love, ever. And yeah, Laddin is a forever kind of guy, but Bruce? Have you met him? He doesn’t believe in the shit right in front of his eyes. And yet there they went, hand in hand, in love.”
“People do fall in love,” Kit said, hating the note of desperation in his voice. “We are in love.”
“Are we?” Yordan challenged in his customarily blunt way. “I never thought I would.”
“I did,” Kit snapped back. “I’ve loved you for years. Long before Coffee made his bullshit fairy bets.”
“You don’t know that. Coffee made his alliance here as an adolescent.”
“But I didn’t make a bet with him until just before his death. You saw the book. The bet was about me telling my feelings to you.” Kit lifted his chin. “My feelings for you are real, Yordan.” He was sure of it. “They existed long before any of this nonsense.”
Yordan nodded, his expression turning bleak. He didn’t need to speak the words for Kit to know what he was thinking, but Yordan was never one to hold back something he thought was obvious. Sure enough, he spoke, and every word hurt.
“But I didn’t. I didn’t know about how you felt.”
“But you knew me. You noticed me.” He’d said that…right?
Yordan nodded. “Of course I noticed you. I was impressed by you until you quit your pack right when the going got tough in Wisconsin. Then I thought you were a total coward.”
“But you know now that wasn’t true. You know why I quit.” He clenched Yordan’s arm. “I was taken out of the pack! Because a kitten can’t do shit against a lych, and that’s what we were about to fight.”
“Yeah,” Yordan said, though his tone made it clear it didn’t make a difference. “I understand now, but that’s not enough to fall in love with you.”
Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. Yordan had already given up. It didn’t matter if the fairy love spell was a lie. Gamfay had sown enough doubt that Yordan didn’t believe his own feelings. Now what?
“Kit,” Yordan said, his voice strangled. And when Kit looked into his eyes, he saw a bleak despair that shook him down to his toes. He’d lost Yordan.
“Damn it, how can you believe that?”
Yordan didn’t answer. His gaze flickered to the arrow pointed straight at TRUTH. In his mind, everything he felt for Kit was a fairy lie.
“Wait—” Coffee said as he stepped forward. But before he could say anything else, Gamfay jerked hard on his leash. Suddenly, the collar was choking him, and he wheezed as he struggled to breathe.
“Now, now,” Gamfay admonished. “No interference from the peanut gallery.”
Kit jerked forward, grabbing hold of the choking Coffee. “That wasn’t part of the rules!”
“You’re right,” the fairy conceded. “That wasn’t part of your bet, but it was part of his. And I control when my slave talks and when he doesn’t.”
Kit saw misery in Coffee’s eyes and felt his heart lurch. There was nothing he could do right then to help. Nothing but win his current bet.
“Okay, okay,” he said to Gamfay. “But don’t kill him. It’ll really tank the game show ratings, don’t you think?”
“Hmmm,” Gamfay said, clearly unconvinced.
“Pat Sajak never choked his assistant.”
“Fine,” Gamfay said as he held up the leash.
It slowly loosened, and Coffee managed a shuddering breath. Fine. That was something, but it was clear there’d be no more help from Dwayne. Except, there had been something, right? He’d been trying to tell them something.
