AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How do you know I’m not here with someone else?” he asked, fixing me with an intense stare.
“I would smell them, but you aren’t the only one who’s been stalking. You’ve haven’t even looked at anyone else since we met.” I relished in the detail.
“Fuck you.”
“Ask me in, Dominic.”
“Did I revoke your power to come inside or is that only vampires?”
My lip pulled in a snarl. “I’m being polite.”
He stood aside. “You know I can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked, stepping around him. This was the first I’d heard of it.
“I don’t know how your kind does bonding, but I wasn’t interested in a mate before and after being with you—” He cut himself off and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. All of this is pointless.”
As much as I wanted to press, I decided instead to change directions. Him throwing me out wouldn’t provide a path forward. “How do your people feel about your clear avoidance?”
“They are less than pleased, but I’m young, so they’ve forgiven me for not having heirs yet. There will come a time soon when they notice nothing has come from the quickening.”
I flinched, having learned what the quickening was during my research. It felt so barbaric in the modern world. But it was celebrated as a holiday, or an honor even, by their kind. A day for as many to fuck the unmated alpha as possible. A practice to produce heirs but it turned my stomach. Maybe because I didn’t want anyone else touching what was mine. “Can they force you?”
“I don’t think they can, but I don’t know any alpha who’s made it to his late twenties without an heir to come of the quickening or with his mate.”
I flinched when he said mate. I despised the idea of him with anyone else. “This small talk seems too civil for us.”
“No shit.” He walked past me, farther into the cabin, to the glass of Jack sitting next to his chair.
I stood rooted to my spot for a moment, then followed him, retrieving a glass and the bottle from the counter and sitting on his worn sofa. Dominic had spent a lot of time and effort bringing money into his community, but he still lived like he had none of it. He’d built this retreat himself with only the help of his brothers. It was bare bones, built of logs he’d cut from these woods. Hand-scraped wood floors, sparse on the decorations, only the furniture he needed. He didn’t want any of it, and that part of him had always fascinated me.
I filled a glass and then refilled his. He nodded a thank you, and we sank into a comfortable silence.
“Why don’t you get it over with if you believe it to be inevitable?” I asked, my mouth dry. The pain the idea brought with it was nearly unbearable.
“You think I should go through with it?” There was a bitterness to his tone that I wasn’t fond of. “Just have a child?” He shook his head. “Somedays I feel like you don’t know me at all.”
“If you have no choice. I don’t know.” I glanced at his ceiling. “I’m obviously less than thrilled, but—” I didn’t know where I was going with this. Maybe I thought it would hurt less now than later. He might never give in to having me in his life.
“But what, Vinkettin?”
“Maybe it will hurt less right now.” I was too free with my words tonight. I needed to get myself in check.
He looked away, out the window, to his vast pack lands. To the people he’d sworn to protect. I could read his thoughts. I knew the pressure he was under. I knew the risks. We’d gone over them so many times in the early days when we still had a fantasy about this working. When love came before the demands of our lives. Or maybe it was lust.
“Are you here for what I think you’re here for?” he said at length.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Before I could answer, he continued. “You’ve never kicked me out before. Something was different tonight. What is all of this?”
“I thought maybe I’d wait it out. See if you were right about another life, or maybe it would be worth waiting for the timing to be right, but the more I considered such things, the more I realized you won’t be you in the next life. Even if I believe energy comes back, which I haven’t seen any evidence of, and I’ve been alive a long time. It’s still not going to beyou.”
“My soul will be the same. The tie would be there. You’d know.” He seemed resolved.
“Yes, you will still be my soul tie, and I would probably still be drawn to that version, but it won’t ever be like this again.” I said my words with as little emotion as I could muster, but it broke through in the end, evident in my tone.
“I’m not coming back a wolf again, if that’s what you mean. Once is enough.” He said it so matter of fact, like he could will it into existence. “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t say it. But the more I think about it, the more I know I don’t want to come back at all.” Dominic avoided my eyes with his new admission. “We will repeat this. Death doesn’t dissolve quantum entanglement, and I’m tired.”
