Page 25 of Chasing the Wolf (Dark Wing #7)

Chapter 25

Xavier

S he's snuggled up against my arm. We're both looking across the other sofa and out to the ocean beyond the captain's large balcony. I want her to stay right here—against my skin, with me, forever. But if it's not what she wants, I'll let her go. It will kill me. But I'll do it if that's what's going to make her happy.

The two of us are talking again, looking at the ocean but not each other. Early this morning, in the middle of talking to Fletcher, it occurred to me. It's not that I hurt her when we were cubs—or rather, when she was a cub. There's more. She's got a family here. And the snowstorm cake? Yeah, she started making them because she didn't like when we had a big storm. It gave her something to look forward to. More than that, I saw how much it bothered her that she couldn't help last night. Helpers have to help, and that's Mac.

"So say it," I tell her.

"I don't know what you mean?"

"Well, maybe I misunderstood. I can't be Alpha and run the company. Both of them are full-time jobs. Fletcher's a good CFO, but he doesn't like it. He's a people person. Being the numbers guy? It's not his thing. He'd left the mill before it closed—I think you were in college—and worked at the lumberyard until we started Raw Timberline. Then he came on board as my CFO. He bought the lumberyard last year. A hobby, he calls it. But the days he works there, he's a different guy. A happier one. So I find a new CFO, he runs his lumbermill and is Alpha. I run the business."

"He wants to be Alpha?"

I rub my beard. It's something we've talked about a lot. About why we were coming up with the plan. We both had this romanticized notion of what we would say to our scum dad. But we both knew it wasn't going to go down that way. But talking it through was cathartic. "I don't have to live in Maine. A lot of my days I'm remote, anyway. I do travel quite a lot. Being the face of the brand. I have to visit spas."

She lifts her head from my arm and rolls until she's lying in my lap, gazing up at me. "You don't have to go back to Maine?"

"I didn't say that. It's the location of one of our factories and our headquarters. But it's no longer our only factory. I don't have to live in Maine. And I'm not going to be Alpha. I do want to be your mate, though." I reach for her hand. "If you can forgive me?"

"Yes," she says softly.

I'm frozen, staring at her puffy perfect lips, her blue eyes, and the way the hair in her messy bun is falling around my lap.

Lava followed by adrenaline shoots through my veins. "Yes! Wait, yes to you forgive me or yes to?—"