Page 23

R owan

I’m not entirely sure I’ve heard her.

She lies beneath me, coffee-brown eyes even darker than usual, cheeks flushed, and breaths coming fast.

I want you. That’s what she said to me.

“Alina,” I breathe. I think I’m shaking.

“Just don’t hate me,” she continues, eyes wide and voice trembling. “If I ruin you, please don’t…whatever the consequences are, I’m willing to face them, but only if you promise you won’t hate me for it.”

I press a kiss to her throat, choking back a moan at the hot rush of blood singing beneath her feverish skin. My Mate, my Mate, my Mate. The bond is howling at me, loose threads that have been singed short for so long yearning to be tied tightly together again.

“I could never hate you,” I promise with every fiber of my being. “I’d sooner die.”

With my mouth pressed to her neck, I part my lips and nip at her delicate skin. The breath rushes out of her in one shaky gasp, a silent encouragement. She wants me to mark her, to leave behind an imprint, proof that we have chosen each other, and I don’t hesitate to answer that craving .

I suckle on her skin, then bite down lightly. She presses me closer, and I have to clench my fists to keep myself from losing control right here and now.

“Rowan, please.”

I lift my head and kiss away her tears one by one.

Then, with a stuttering inhale, I press into her.

It feels so fucking good that I drop my head into the crook of her neck, biting her collarbone gently. She whimpers as I sink in just a couple of inches, then pull back out.

Alina is warm and wet and ready for me, our bodies made to fit together without question. Still, I am gentle with her as I thrust deeper, knowing that I’m larger than what usually might be comfortable for a woman who hasn’t been intimate with anyone in a long time.

When I bottom out, our bodies deliciously flush against each other, I pause to kiss her. Her grip on me is so tight that I wonder if she’ll ever let me go.

I start moving again, picking up the pace. The bed creaks softly, but I don’t hear anything except Alina gasping and crying my name.

It doesn’t take long for the rejected bond to respond. My wolf side growls with delight as the tattered tendrils of the bond snake out of their hiding places and tether themselves to Alina’s soul once again.

She tosses her head back and whines with pleasure when the bond snaps into place. It’s even more euphoric than the first time. Now, we are older and stronger and more capable of understanding our desires.

Now, there is no going back.

Because I will never reject her again. She is mine now, just as she has always been mine, and she will be mine for the rest of our lives.

Fuck the prophecy. Fuck Kseniya. Fuck anyone who dares suggest that Alina belongs anywhere other than right here in my arms.

“Rowan…oh, God…”

She climaxes with a sound that resembles a relieved sob, and I think I might be crying, too.

The way her heat pulses around me, squeezing so beautifully tight, sends me over the edge.

Two more thrusts and I’m spilling into her, and it’s only in hindsight, as I collapse beside her on the rumpled duvet, that I wonder if I should have pulled out .

But Alina seems to be thinking the same thing, laughing lightly as she glances down between her thighs where my seed is seeping out of her.

“Well,” she sighs. “Noah has been hinting he’d like a sibling…”

With my face pressed into the pillow, I let out a full-bellied laugh.

Just like that, with the healed Mating bond glimmering between us, nothing seems quite as dire as before. We are Alpha and Luna, and we refuse to be parted again. Nothing, not even the prophetic power of a vague destiny, can get between us again.

I end up staying in bed with Alina for hours. We doze and talk, and make love again and again, but eventually reality comes crashing back in. When Zahra texts Alina, asking what time to drop Noah off, we force ourselves to get dressed.

My son is thrilled to see me when he gets home, and even though Alina’s friend is obviously desperate to know what the hell happened earlier today, I scare her off with one particularly ferocious glare.

I know that I need to get back to my pack. I need to tell them about Alina and Noah, and then I need to explain what the Blackburns attempted today.

I need to convince my father that it’s time to declare war. There is no other solution except to destroy the Blackburn pack once and for all. Samson cannot be allowed to continue his plight to sow chaos and violence. Not when the things I hold most dear are at risk.

Instead of taking immediate action, however, Noah asks me to stay for dinner, and I can’t bring myself to say no.

“Dad, do you want to help me set the table?” he asks me, looking so sweet and earnest that I’m certain I’d say yes to any chore he offered me.

“Noah, honey, you can’t pass off your responsibilities to your father like that,” Alina laughs from her place at the stove.

“I’m not!” he protests, batting his eyes innocently. “We’re sharing the responsibility. ”

I grin at him, then offer Alina a fake pout. “Yeah, we’re working together.”

Noah giggles, then tugs me toward the table. “So, Dad, here’s the thing. Mom has a very specific way she likes to set the table. I don’t really know why, but—”

“Because it’s the proper way to do it!” Alina calls from within the kitchen.

I wink at my son. “I know better than to argue with your mother. Show me how to do it her way, kiddo.”

“Okay, so the forks have to go on this side…”

I smile the whole time, chuckling when Alina comes in to offer mischievous corrections and claiming that I laid out the knives crooked. It becomes a game for us, and the moment feels so sweet and perfect that I’m almost afraid it will shatter.

But it didn’t. It was perfect.

Later, after Noah had gone up to bed, I told Alina that spending the night in her bed might be too confusing for him this soon in our relationship, so my solution is to shift into wolf form and curl up on her doorstep just like during those first few days.

In the morning, though, I’m determined to do my duty.

I make sure Noah gets on the school bus without trouble, and then I confirm that Alina has no plans to go to work today.

She’s still not convinced that her idiot manager is the cause of the attack, but she also promised to believe me and trust me, so she obeys my loving command to stay home until I can come back to her.

When I get back to Greenbriar territory and reach the main town, I don’t go to my father’s house. Nor do I seek out Cal.

Rather, I hunt down Kseniya.

It’s easy to find her. She’s at her tiny cabin on the outskirts of the town, tending to her extensive garden of herbs and medicinal flora.

I park in the narrow driveway and hop out.

She rises from where she was kneeling in a thicket of rhododendrons—miraculously blossoming way before full spring has come—and stares at me for a long moment in complete silence.

The wise woman is tall, nearly six feet in height, just like her foremothers, and has long silver hair that she wears in a loose braid down her stooped back .

She seems to know exactly why I’m here, because she doesn’t question me as I stride across the yard and come to stand in front of her.

“Alpha prince, you’ve been up to many things behind the scenes,” she murmurs in lieu of a normal greeting. “You wear your Mate’s love like a cloak.”

I frown at her. “Alina doesn’t lo—”

“Do not speak things aloud that are untrue when you stand in my garden, child.”

I resent being referred to as child, but Kseniya is pushing ninety, so I suppose she’s earned the right to call me something so diminutive.

Deciding to get right to the point, I plant my hands on my hips and say, “The prophecy, Kseniya. I need you to clarify it.”

“‘Glory be to the ocean-eyed Alpha, ninth of his line. Yet beware the beloved heir’s mate, who shall ruin him in time’,” she recites.

“Yes,” I snap. “I know it by heart by now. I just need you to give me the specifics, for fuck’s sake.”

If the old woman is offended by my cursing, she doesn’t show it. She merely sighs and shrugs her narrow shoulders, crooked with age.

“I don’t know the details, Rowan. Like the wise women who came before me, I only know what the wind tells me and nothing more.”

“But you’ve never been wrong before.”

Again, she shrugs. “Ruination can come in many forms, young Alpha. And I wonder if it is necessarily a bad thing to be ruined by the one you love.”

I’m beginning to wonder the same thing. Because, really, I don’t feel ruined. I feel strong and joyous and optimistic. I feel inspired and hopeful. I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time. If that’s what it is to be ruined, it’s not so bad.

“I need to know,” I press. “I don’t care if Alina ruins me, but the pack…and what if she is also ruined? What will I do then?”

Kseniya’s wrinkly eyes crease further at the corners, and she opens her mouth to answer, but then her gaze flicks to a point just over my shoulder.

I turn around to find, of all people, my mother and father walking down the dirt lane toward Kseniya’s cabin. When my mother sees me, she smiles in her lovely way, and my father waves good-naturedly. In contrast, I find it difficult to return the gesture.

And, as they get closer and come through the gated fence marking Kseniya’s property, my mother gasps, and the easy smile melts off my father’s face.

Both of them halt in their tracks just a few feet away from me.

They can smell her. I know they can.

Alina’s scent won’t smell the same to them as it does to me, but it will be obvious to them that it belongs not just to any Greenbriar, but to my Mate. My parents are Alpha and Luna, too, after all. They recognize their own kind, and it is doused all over my skin right now.

Kseniya remains where she is, hovering off to the side, observing silently.

Naturally, my father is the first to speak.

“You found her.”

It’s not a question. Still, I nod in confirmation.

“And?”

I stare at him. “And…I have repaired the bond I rejected.”

My mother gasps again, one hand pressed to her lips in surprise.

My father, on the other hand, betrays a rare flash of anger.

“You can’t be serious, Rowan,” he grumbles, stepping closer.

I stand my ground. “I am serious. I love her. I never stopped loving her. That is why I’ve come to Kseniya today. I hoped to gain some clarity on the prophecy.”

My father throws a look at Kseniya, but turns his attention back to me. “And did you? Gain clarity?”

“I don’t—”

“Because you risk everything by bonding with your Mate,” he interrupts.

“You risk your future as Alpha, and therefore risk the entire pack. Wherever your runaway Mate has been all these years, she has not been here in Greenbriar territory serving the community. She has abandoned you, abandoned all of us.”

“Enough,” snaps my mother.

Both me and my father startle at the vehemence in her tone. It is the Luna speaking, the wolf queen who has only ever been gentle and sweet even at the worst of times .

She narrows her eyes at my father, her mate.

“With all due respect to Kseniya, we have allowed her prophecy to rule our son for his entire life. He has lived in fear because of it. He has lived unhappily, unfulfilled. He will make a perfect Alpha, I am certain of it, but I have also worried that there is a darkness inside him that grows stronger without the love of his Mate. Each passing year, I have been so afraid for him, my love.”

Something clicks in the back of my mind, but my father grunts in frustration before I can latch on to it for long.

“Rowan knows what his primary responsibility is—to lead this pack. The Alpha gene is patrilineal, and that has been the tradition of our bloodline for centuries. Since before we even occupied this land. I will not allow anything to stand in the way of my son ruling his people!”

“And what about my son?” I blurt.

Dead silence falls on the wise woman’s garden.

Kseniya hums under her breath, almost thoughtfully.

My father is staring at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“What are you talking about, Rowan?”

I clear my throat and meet his ferocious gaze.

“I have a son with my Mate. He is almost ten years of age. His name is Noah. He and Alina have been living in the Whiterose pack for the past decade, practically right under my nose. The boy is just like me, Father. And he is destined to rule this pack someday, too. But, more importantly than that, my Mate is destined to rule this pack at my side. I don’t care what the prophecy says. I know that to be true.”

Kseniya speaks up before my father can continue arguing.

“Alpha, perhaps I might invite you inside, and we can consult the scrying bones together? I must humbly admit that my prophecy was, indeed, vague.”

“The idea of being ruined is not vague to me,” huffs my father.

But, when it comes down to it, he’s a reasonable man and a just ruler. So, when Kseniya beckons to him, he nods once and marches past me, heading for her cabin so that he can consult the spirits of our ancient bloodline with the wise woman.

My mother and I are left standing out in the garden. Beside me, the rhododendrons are already buzzing with bees. Soon, the lilacs will bloom, too—the flowers that dominate Alina’s beautiful aroma.

My mother approaches me, placing a gentle hand on my arm. She smiles.

“Go to her, Rowan,” she whispers to me. “Bring her home. Tell her that she has always been one of us.”