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“I got him targeted. If I hadn’t gone to that school, if I wasn’t looking for the drug dealer, they never would have done that to him.” My voice cracked as I admitted it, hating the truth of the statement.

“You can’t blame yourself for everything that happens. Stick to just the things you do, not the unintended consequences. If you blamed yourself for everything else, you’d never get any sleep, given what chaos you tend to have around you.” His joke was no better than mine, but it somehow helped. The bit of levity eased the guilt inside me, or at least let me ignore it for a short while. I didn’t have to think about what was going on, what I’d done, none of it.

He stood, then took both cups into the kitchen. The ease with which he walked around my house surprised me, but Galen seemed at ease everywhere, didn’t he?

He was solid in a way few things really were. He showed up when I needed him, never backed down even when a smart man would. He’d been my first introduction to my new life, to the Spirit world, and in the years since I’d changed into what I now was, he’d never wavered in that support.

It made me wonder what my life would be like if I lost that, if I no longer had him at my back.

I couldn’t fathom it, honestly. That was how important he’d become to me, how vital to my everyday life.

Which made me wonder again why I always resisted, why I pushed him away, why I fought against what seemed inevitable.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I walked up behind him as he rinsed the cups in the sink. I wrapped my arms around him, his frame leaner than one would expect from the alpha of all the Weres. I rested my forehead against his back, breathing in his clean, wild scent.

“Grey…” he said, his voice deeper than before. Every word vibrated through his back, the warning soft.

“Is this what instinct says you should do?” I whispered. “I mean, I don’t have the same instinct you have, but I know whatmypassenger is saying.”

The same thing my crow had said for the past five years—that Galen was dangerous as fuck but I should climb on and enjoy the ride, at least for a while.

He shuddered, then set the cups in the drying rack. With all the energy rushing through him I would have expected him to just toss them aside, shattering them if he had to. Who really cared, after all? What was some ceramic in the face of what we had both wanted for years?

He gripped my wrists.

This was it. Would he turn us both and plant my ass up on the counter? Fuck me here in the kitchen?

In front of my precious dishes?

Sounded like a good end to a weird day to me!

Except he pulled my arm away from him, didn’t grab me again. He moved out of my grasp. “I should get going.”

Wait…what?

For a moment I wondered if this was some kinky game, then I remembered this was Galen we were talking about. I was pretty sure the idea of kink might just make him faint.

“You don’t have to,” I said, trying to press, to play coy but also make it clear that I was being extremely easy at the moment.

“Yeah, I think it’s best.”

Shot down.

That was embarrassing, really, a rejection that final, that sure. The only thing worse would be if he took a look at my naked body and then noped out.

Was it because of Kelvin? Because of earlier?

I’d showered!

I managed to keep my mouth shut and not blurt that out, since I doubted it would help my case at all. Galen wanted to leave instead of sleeping with me, and no matter how little I liked that, I had to accept it.

So I plastered on a smile to hide the cracks in my confidence. “Sure. It’s been a long day. Guess I’ll see you in two days.”

He nodded, took a step toward me, then paused and shook his head. “Sleep well,” he offered in a rush before leaving just as Porter had.

It left me there, alone in the house, wondering just what the hell had happened.

Was I losing my touch? I scratched my head and figured that there was nothing I could do to work it out right now. It wasn’t like I could control how he felt, what he wanted and what he didn’t.