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"Yes. I did. And I meant it. Bringing you here, making you start the ritual when we didn't even know each other, that was wrong. We shouldn't have done that. So yes, I release you–"

"But–"

"Until you decide it's what you want. I don’t want you to stay here because you have to. I want you to stay here because you want to be here."

She looked up at him with her beautiful big blue eyes, and his wolf begged to be let out to sniff and rub up against her.

"To tell you the truth… I... I think I do want to want to be here."

Well. It was a start.

Makayla wiped her eyes. "Stupid hormones. They've had me mushy all day. First with the baby kicking, and now this."

"The baby kicked?"

Makayla smiled and put her hand on her stomach. "I'm pretty sure that's what it was."

He wanted to reach for her. To feel the young growing inside her move at his touch, but he refrained.

The oven beeped.

"Oh. That's dinner." She scooted around him and headed into the kitchen.

Caleb watched her bustle into the kitchen and pull something from the oven that smelled like garlic and tomatoes. She’d made dinner. And she’d done laundry. What had happened in the last twenty-four hours to have her changing so much? It couldn’t have been his outburst, could it? His gut clenched as her words replayed in his head.

“I wanted you to come home and see that I'm not such a bad person so you wouldn't kick me out.”

Somethinghadchanged in her. He knew they still had a long way to go if they were to have a real relationship, but for the first time since she arrived, he glimpsed the real Makayla. Not the façade, but the person who she’d been trying to hide the entire time.

* * *

Makayla had to admit,the veggie lasagna wasn't bad. It was Dakota who'd done most of the work, but Makayla had written down the recipe and was sure she could duplicate it. She watched Caleb polish off his fourth helping with a beer.

He smiled. "That was great."

"And it didn't even have any meat in it."

He gave her a roguish grin. "Maybe it would have been better with meat."

She returned his smile. "Maybe it wouldn't."

He snorted. "When did you become a vegetarian? I've honestly never heard of a veggie wolf before."

"Veggie wolf? That's a new one." She picked a piece of squash from the lasagna and examined it. "I don't know. I was maybe nineteen, twenty. My mom was bugging me one night about not eating so I told her I was a vegetarian. She didn't believe me. We argued, and I just decided to stay a vegetarian to prove a point."

"And what point was that?"

"That she was wrong."

Caleb swiped his hand through his shaggy hair making it stick up a bit and chuckled.

"What?"

"That's quite some determination. Giving up bacon and hamburgers for what, five years? Just to prove a point."

"You don't know my mother." Makayla's rib cage tightened. Just thinking about her mom was enough to send her on a tirade. It was, after all, her mom's idea she come to Idaho.

Makayla reached for Caleb's plate but he placed his hand on hers.