Rowan shakes his head. “Alina, it’s been years. I haven’t touched anyone but you. I haven’t wanted to touch anyone else. How can you believe otherwise?”
“What do you mean, how? You rejected me.”
But all he does is continue to shake his head. “You don’t understand, do you? You’re my Mate, Alina. Rejection or not, you are the only one I will ever truly want. It sickens me to think of being with someone else.”
Such sweet, honeyed words. Exactly what I want to hear. They would be so easy to believe.
It would be so easy to trust him.
I take a deep breath. “I think you should go. What just happened-it was a mistake.”
Again, he tries to close the distance between us. My lips are swollen from his kiss, my center still aching for more of his touch. I shove all those feelings away and steel my spine.
“I understand that the Blackburns are a threat,” I tell him as calmly as I can, even as I feel myself crumbling apart. “And I appreciate that you would come here to warn us.”
“You have to-“
“I’m speaking,” I interrupt firmly. Rowan swallows hard, struggling to bow to his would-be Luna’s ferocity.
And yet, he nods his head in a gesture for me to continue.
“You cannot pick and choose who to love,” I continue. “You can’t reject me, yet claim Noah as your son. It’s either both of us or neither of us, and since you’ve made no indication that you wish to take back your rejection of the bond, then I’m afraid there is no version of reality where we will be going with you back to Greenbriar territory.”
“That’s not what I want. I never wanted to reject my own Mate.”
“And yet you did. And you still do. Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me you’re willing to ignore Kseniya’s prophecy?”
When Rowan looks away, I have my answer.
“I think you should go,” I whisper.
He flinches, but he doesn’t put up a fight as I jerk my chin toward the door.
That’s the problem, after all. Rowan has never fought for me.
Rowan
Even as my feet carry me back toward Alina’s door, every cell in my body is protesting the separation that yawns between us.
The taste of her lingers on my tongue. It wasn’t nearly enough. Even now, after the dark turn that conversation took, I’m hard for her. I’m aching for her, my muscles shrieking in protest over the fact that I’m not touching her, holding her, claiming her as my own.
She thought I’d spent the past ten years sleeping with others.
She has no idea how much I care about her.
At the door, I pause. She stares up at me, the fury gone from her eyes. Perhaps that should be a good thing, except that it’s been replaced by cold resignation and an impenetrable stubbornness that I remember seeing in her parents when they were alive.
“I’ll go,” I concede, reaching for the knob. “But you need to understand that you-and now Noah-are the center of my universe. No matter what. Nothing can change that. So, even if we can’t be together as proper Mates, you have to know that all I care about is making sure that my son is safe, which then means that his mother must also be safe.”
Even as I say the words aloud, I curse internally. I didn’t phrase that right. Alina isn’t only valuable to me because she is Noah’s mother. The wolf within snaps at me for even suggesting otherwise. Alina is more than a means of procreation. As my Mate, she is the center of my universe.
At least, this is what my wolf side argues. The part of me that is human still struggles to overcome the fear I feel over the prophecy, and maybe that’s why I misspeak. It’s easier for her to think I’m cruel than to admit that I am afraid.
Alina frowns. “I can protect him.”
“I know you can. But you also know that the Blackburns aren’t a threat that you can reasonably handle on your own, if the time comes. At least let me do what I can to protect him from a distance.”
“Even if I say no, you’ll do it, anyway.”
For some reason, that makes me laugh. It’s just a quick breath of humor, more of an exhale than anything, but at least Alina understands me. She knows that there is nothing I won’t do to ensure my pack is safe. Despite her efforts to insist otherwise, she is part of my pack. She always will be.
“You’re a good mother, you know that?”
“Don’t flatter me right now, Rowan.”
I shake my head. “I’m not. It’s the truth. He’s a good kid, and maybe some of that is just his nature, but I can also tell that he’s known nothing but love and patience. You’ve given him a good life, Alina.”
Her throat bobs with a swallow. She looks away, blinking fast.
“Please just go.”
It’s the last thing I want to do. Truly, if life were different, I’d stay. I’d take her in my arms and kiss her again. I’d carry her to her bed-or, maybe, since Noah is close by, I’d pull her outside to a quiet forest clearing. I would take my time with her, like I didn’t bother to do ten years ago.
Kseniya’s words are impossible to ignore, though. They are constantly in the back of my mind, and right now they feel more insistent than ever.
“…beware the beloved heir’s Mate, who shall ruin him in time.”
I open the door, then hesitate for just a moment longer. “Can I see Noah tomorrow? At The Diner, after school, just like the first time?”
Alina sighs. “Yes, fine.”
“All right,” I reply. “Goodnight, Alina.”
She doesn’t say anything, but it’s another good sign that she doesn’t bark out an obscenity or shove me out of her house. She looks more sad than anything else right now.
I leave her house, letting the door fall shut gently behind me.
In the cool night air, I pace around the perimeter of her property several times, tracing ruts in the damp ground without even bothering to shift into my wolf form first. The fresh air calms me, reminds me how to be practical, and assures me that what just happened in there is probably for the best.
It sends a stab of regret through me to think so, but I know that I shouldn’t have kissed her. I definitely shouldn’t have gone down on my knees and tasted the dewiness between her thighs. I shouldn’t have lingered there, relishing the way she came on my tongue.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.