Page 74 of His Fated Luna

“This is blasphemy, Rose. You turned down a perfectly delicious plate of Lorraine’s homemade waffles for cold bread and jam.” Tony threw his hands up in exasperation.

I nearly dropped my mug of hot coffee. “That plate in the fridge was for me?”

“Who else did you think it was for? Me?” Tony quipped.

“Well… I didn’t think it was for me,” I replied dryly, taking a sip of my coffee.

Tony shook his head.

“See, that’s your problem. You’re walking around on eggshells here. You’ve spent time in this house before, Rose. Why aren’t you making yourself at home? Until you do that, you won’t ever feel comfortable.”

“But this isn’t my home,” I replied. “We both know that, eventually, I’m going to have to leave. Lexia… Lexia should be the one living here. You know it’s what Aiden wants.”

“Why do you seem to view wanting to be with Lexia and wanting to take care of you as two mutually exclusive activities?” Tony challenged.

I was taken aback. He had a point.

“Aiden wants to be there for you, Rose,” Tony said with conviction. “It’s the only reason he didn’t consider option number two, the easier route.”

“The easier route?”

Now I was the one repeating words.

Tony nodded.

“Ezra wanted to take you away. Aiden wouldn’t let him.”

“That’s just his alpha instinct, wanting to care for his pack members and prevent anyone from leaving the pack,” I said with a wave of my hand.

“That’s not true, Rose. He didn’t want you to be taken away from the pack because he knows you love it here.”

I simply looked at Tony, unconvinced.

“OK, well…” Tony heaved a huge sigh. “I wasn’t here for the meeting with the Council of Elders, but they did have a proposition that involved you two uh… you know… sleeping together.” Tony looked at the ground for a minute before looking back up at me. “If you guys did that, Aiden would be able to mind-link you even before your werewolf shift. You guys are mates after all, and if a werewolf mates with their half-human counterpart, the mind-link opens up between them. But Aiden and Ezra got pretty angry over that suggestion. It was one of the older members that suggested it, but Ezra told me Aiden almost jumped across the table and strangled that old lady. He said you deserved better than that. That he wasn’t going to put an option in front of you that made you uncomfortable.”

I gasped. “Why didn’t Aiden at least tell me that was an option?”

There was no room to be embarrassed about any of this. This was actually something worth discussing when it came to my freedom. It wasn’t really that big of a deal if we had to… but my mind immediately shied away from even thinking along those lines. What was wrong with me? Girls younger than me were having casual sex. I could do it too, couldn’t I?

“Would you have agreed to it?” Tony’s eyes were steady as he looked at me, interrupting my thoughts.

“Well… if it meant I didn’t have to live here and keep up this ruse of being a couple… maybe,” I concluded lamely.

In all honesty, I really couldn’t say what I would have done. Maybe I would have just left with my father if given the choice.

“Aiden wouldn’t want you to do that,” Tony said quietly, interlocking his fingers. “He’s… different from me.” Tony’s face was beet red by now. “Look, you’re like my sister…and it’s a bit unsettling to talk about this subject with you. But you need to hear the truth. He didn’t want it to be something you guys had to do. He’s never even had a one-night stand if you want me to be honest with you. He believes in love and making love.”

“So he probably wouldn’t have agreed even if I had,” I prompted, trying to get an unbidden image of myself naked and in bed with Aiden out of my brain. But there really was no going back once I had pictured it. My face began to heat up. “Especially since he’s in love with Lexia.”

“He agreed to mark you, Rose. That’s… it’s…” Tony stopped short.

I remembered Aiden’s words from long ago.

It’s more personal than even sex…

My heart sank a little at the realization. Aiden knew I was a virgin. Was he really making all these decisions based on what he thought my comfort level was? Logically, marking me was more permanent and invasive than having sex with me.

“Once you’re marked, there’s no going back. You have full access to his mind, his feelings, his thoughts,” Tony said quietly. “If either of you are ever intimate with someone else, you’ll feel it even more than you might feel it now. Before the marking, it’s always this uncomfortable feeling, but afterwards it’s unbearable. You really think he can be with Lexia after he marks you? He could never be with her physically.”