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I raised my face to the moon and let it soak into my skin. I loved sunshine, but there was nothing like the moon's tender light. The pain of the past faded as I let the animal rise to the surface, and then I was on four feet, padding back toward Stone.
He met me as an enormous black wolf. He nosed me, the two of us greeting each other in our wolf form. Now, the feelings were warm and comfortable and simple between us.
We were pack. We had a bond. We belonged together. That truth got lost in the complications when we were human, but was unavoidable when we were wolves.
We ran through the night, chasing one another and playing.
We tumbled over each other in the bushes, and then shot away through the trees at top speed. He raced me, then I was racing him, and then we were tumbling over and over, each of us trying to scramble for dominance. The past receded completely, and joy rose. I saw it in his eyes too, bright and blue like the ocean and filled with magic too.
But as wereached the edge of the clearing where the house was, the sky softened from comforting dark to a soft gray.
We slowed to a walk and then stopped. We stood by silent agreement at the edge of the pines. Perhaps we didn't want to leave each other. Stone turned his head to look at me, and I turned to stare at him.
Then as I walked forward toward the house, I shifted back to being human. There was no point in hiding in the wolf anymore.
No matter how much we might long for life as wolves, in the end, we had to leave the forest and the moon and the simple truth.
Sorrow swept through me all over again as I tried to leave Stone behind.
But it was impossible, because he walked with me to my room.
“Making sure I don’t run again?” I asked as we headed up the stairs.
He scoffed. “I know you won’t run again.”
I didn’t want to ask him why he was so sure.
CHAPTER33
Stone
When I knewshe was safe, I went back out to the cottage.
It was dangerous for her to be out here, between the two packs. The Longroad pack was still a threat to her, and the need to crush them, to ensure she was safe, almost made me rage and shift and run to destroy them.
But there was no amount of murder that would bring light into her eyes. The sorrowful way she’d looked at me just before she went into the house clung to me.
I wasn’t fucking worthy of her.
She should have Brennan.
But he was dead, and I was alive, and I had to find a way to take care of her. I had to prove to her that this could be her home. That she could be safe here.
I would make this my territory, so I could make it hers.
And so I began to tear down the scorched beams, the sad remnants of the cottage. She had loved this place once, but Nathan had tried to destroy it like he had tried to destroy her.
Fuck that guy. He wasn’t going to take anything away from Amelia besides the one thing I could never replace: Brennan.
But she could be loved. She could be safe. She could have this home.
I could have had a hundred men here to do the work for me.
But I was the one who began to tear away the wreckage, to rebuild the cottage. I would need their help soon, and I would call them out here to help me raise new walls and then to start the finer work I wasn’t capable of. But I needed to begin myself.
I was good at destroying things.
I would make her a safe place to live… even if it was away from me.
