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“Are we okay, Freya?”
Her expression softened into an almost-smile, then her eyes hardened. “If you can stop being an asshole for more than five minutes.”
I laughed. “Challenge accepted.” Then I swiped my thumb across her lower lip. “But only for you.”
She smirked and threw her hands up. “Alphas!”
Then she stepped into the shower. I crowded in after her, glad she was willing and able to care for herself again. Despite that, I poured shampoo in my hands and began lathering it through Freya’s hair. She groaned in pleasure, which didn’t help my boner situation.
“You don’t have to bathe me anymore, you know,” she said as I carefully guarded her eyes when I rinsed the shampoo from her hair.
I smirked. “Now you tell me.”
It was nice, though, taking care of her without fighting to keep her in the bathtub in her insatiable quest for more cock. Her heat had been so different, not at all like the heat I’d spent with the other wolf. Freya had been more demanding, and her heat had ended more abruptly than I remembered with the widowed wolf.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I wasn’t going to bring it up. We had enough to wonder about with Freya’s dreams of Rowan, who she’d never met. I had to admit, though, the details she’d described from her dream seemed dead right. And she’d called his name during the heat. It was just so extraordinary — and so was she.
“Heath…” Freya pulled my wandering thoughts back to the bathroom. “I need you to be honest with me.”
“Of course, little wolf.”
“Did Gage bite me as part of the deal? Like, just to protect me? Am I just a temporary packmate or…”
“Freya, no,” I growled, my hands coming down on her shoulders. “Gage doesn’t give temporary pack status to anyone — not pack followers, contractors, or anyone else who helps us with jobs. He bit you so that you would be one of us. You’re here to stay. You’re a true Howling Echo wolf now.”
She shook her head. “I’m not a wolf, though.” She squared her shoulders, raising her eyes to mine. “If Gage cast me out, would you go with me?” Her snow-blue eyes pierced my soul. “Do you care about me, now that the heat is over? Or am I still just…” She waved a hand at my dick. “Your plaything.”
“Freya…”
I wanted to take her in my arms and give her proof that I cared about her. But the way that my mind and body wanted to worship her wouldn’t prove anything to her. The deal had convinced her we just wanted her body, not her.
Her jaw tightened, and I cursed at myself for hesitating and being bad at relationships. “Just give me a second to get my thoughts together.”
What could I say to reassure her? Freya knocked me off-kilter, and after five days of almost no sleep, my thoughts felt sluggish. What would Flint say to her in this situation?
“I’m sorry for making you feel like that’s all you are to me. But the truth is, yes, I care about you. And I want to see where things go with us. I’m not fighting it now. But, even if you decide you don’t want me, you’ll still be my packmate, and that means more than you know. When your wolf arrives, you’ll see. You’ll be able to hear all of us when we run together… your wolf will know her place is with us.”
“But Gage—”
“I’ll fight Gage myself if he says any different. But Freya, I think he wants you in the pack as much as any of us. I’ve known Gage a long time, and… I’ve never seen him look at someone the way he looks at you.”
It twisted my heart to admit it, but it was true. Gage would never reciprocate my feelings for him. I’d come to terms with that long ago, and I kept them tightly under wraps. More than once, I’d seen him publicly reject male wolves who came onto him, and he could be brutal about it if he felt pushed too hard. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I’d get a different result if I made the same mistake.
But I wanted both Freya and Gage to be happy, and since they brought happiness to each other, I would do whatever it took to keep them together.
“Look, I know you have trust issues, and I get it. After what I saw in there—” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder back toward the bedroom, “I really understand. You’ve never had a pack you could depend on. So let us prove it to you, little by little, day by day. Let us earn your trust.”
As the water cascaded over both of us, I pulled her slender fingers to my lips. On each of her small knuckles, I planted a soft kiss.
“Let me earn back your trust, little wolf. Yes, the deal is over, but that means you set the rules for where things go from here. I promise you, whatever happens, I go where you go.”
Cursing myself, I knew that’s what I should have said the moment she asked. The moment was just so tense, I acted by reflex to diffuse the tension.
“But just so you know… you’ll be a lot harder to follow without the scent of your heat. So don’t leave without me.”
A smile quirked at Freya’s lips, but I could see in her eyes that she didn’t fully believe me; she didn’t completely trust my words. So, I would have to earn back her trust through my actions instead. Somehow.
When Flint suddenly burst into the room, her face lit up with such undiluted joy, it trapped the air in my lungs. I wish she would look that way at me… I wished I’d never messed things up.
