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“And, baby?” Kylian grips my chin and angles my face toward him. “Having kids doesn’t make you defective. Not having kids doesn’t make you defective. You arenotdefective. Got it?”
His fierce expression dares me to disagree.
I give him a watery smile. “Got it.”
He nods. “Good.”
I study him as a thought I’ve been having with increasing frequency rears its head. “You’re not the playboy alpha at all, are you?”
He gives me a searching look and then says, “Everyone has a way of keeping people at a distance. The big Cajun likes to pretend he’s a country bumpkin.”
Rune growls, but his eyes dance with amusement.
Kylian nods at Cian. “And the quiet one over there will often resemble a stone if he decides he wants to clam up.”
“And you?” I whisper. “How do you keep people out?”
“By letting them think I’ve let them in, when they don’t know the first thing about me.” His lips quirk in a smile as his fingers graze my jaw. “That’s how.”
For a moment, it’s just me and Kylian. “Hali told me about what your dad did to your mom. I’m not sure she should have told me something so personal, but—”
“Do you know where I was when she was telling you my big, dark secret?” he interrupts.
I shake my head.
“I was leaning on the wall outside your room, having asked her to do it. And I was waiting for you to decide you could never see a future with someone who could kill a person in cold blood.” Tension hardens his jaw. “It’s not the first time I’ve done it, and I doubt it’ll be the last. There’s nothing I won’t do for those I love. Even kill.”
This isn’t the first time I’m hearing him talk about love.
It isn’t even the second.
“The morning after my heat, Hali told me that there’s nothing you won’t do for those you love,” I say, my mouth dry.
His smile is faint. “Did she now?”
I clear my throat. “Was that something you told her to say? Or was that—”
“Me,” he interrupts quietly. “Those words were mine.”
He’s telling me he loves me. Right now. Just like he did that morning after my heat. And just like he did in the car outside the Almeida Clinic.
So many times, and I was too bloody blind to see it.
Even now, after I’ve told him I want to stay with him, he’sstillwaiting for me to decide not to be with him.
He’s let me see him as he really is. The good, the bad, and the ugly, and he’s waiting for me to reject him for it.
“Rune showed me something,” I say slowly, not looking away from Kylian. “When I do this thing, I want you to know it’s because I love you, I choose you, and I willalwayschoose you. Regardless of your past, your present, and your future.”
His eyes slowly heat as his shoulders relax. “What thing is that?”
I grip the front of his shirt, pull him toward me, and kiss the very tip of his nose. “He said the Cajun in him appreciated affection. What about you?”
Kylian chokes out a laugh and drags me into his lap to claim my lips in a fierce kiss. “I think you could do that to me five hundred million times a day and it would never be enough, Everleigh Deane.”
I grin up at him. “Ashe.”
He cocks his head in confusion. “What?”
