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What was...

Mack’s smile vanished as if he knew she’d picked up something. “Ella, I need to tell you something.”

Those words. He’d said them to her so many times in the past few days and she thought it was another female or his past behavior. None of it mattered.

If they had little time left, she didn’t want to waste it looking back.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re mated now. Whatever it is, I forgive you.”

Mack slid out of her, moving them so they were half sitting and staring at one another as her stomach clenched with dread.

“You’re scaring me.”

“There isn’t a lot of time.” Mack glanced at the door, then back at her. “So much of what I need to tell you is confidential.”

Then he shook his head. “Fuck, it might not matter. You’re my mate, so you have a right to know now.”

“Know what?” Ella frowned, her tummy turning upside down.

“That I’m not just a vampire. I was changed and”—he finally met her eyes—“I’m also a wolf.”

What the fuck?

Her mouth parted.

A...what?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MACK

There was no easy way of sugar coating that announcement. It wasn’t as if Ella was going to ask if she had to take him for a walk every day. #notadog

Still, seeing her turn pale and speechless gutted him, even if he’d expected a similar reaction.

Mack had been through a lot—as had all the wolves—since being changed. The king had sent them to Greenwood, where they had the space and privacy to learn who they were, but it also felt like they were being hidden away.

They were.

Never once had Vincent made them feel like they were anything but victims of the crime against them. And still, it was hard to feel like they were normal.

Vampires lived in secrecy as a species. Add in being a fucking wolf, well, it was a mind fuck.

Kurt said he thought the king would fly the other wolves to the Italian Moretti castle near Rome, where the king had lived for many years before moving to the United States. There, they would be as safe as anyone else on the planet.

At least he hadn’t forgotten them.

For that, he was grateful.

They were his pack, part of his extended family, now. As was Ella—if she didn’t reject him.

His plan had been to tell her before bonding them but given there could be a nuclear war at any moment, Mack refused to wait.

It had been Kurt who had changed his mind.

“Why have you waited?”

“You know why.” Mack shook his head and when Kurt lifted a brow, he’d added, “My wolf.”