Page 17

I’m lucky my grandfather built this home with good, reliable hardwood flooring. If this was cheap laminate, I surely would have worn a groove in the wood from all the pacing.

My bedroom is washed in the deep purple of twilight, and Kira is downstairs in the kitchen, cooking something that smells amazing—sweet and zingy, savory and mouth-watering—but I’m holed up in here.

I’ll wait until Emin arrives to go downstairs, because I’m not sure I can trust myself around her until we have him between us.

As I pace, I think about the look on her face when I pulled back, how she’d stared after me with those huge pupils, her fingers stretching and curling at her sides. It took every ounce of my strength to keep from stepping back into her.

But I know, from the fact that her scent is swirling through this house, pooling thick and heady, that she’s going into her heat soon. And her behavior—kissing me, pressing her body to mine—is likely just the result of that.

After everything I’ve done to Kira Argent, I will not take advantage of her. Not when I’ve brought her into my home, and not when I haven’t done enough to apologize. To atone. For the bullying, for the night I rejected her.

Part of me demands that I go and do it now—just get it all out in the open.

I’ve said the words already, but it doesn’t feel like enough. And I haven’t told her the truth—that I want her as my mate. Partly, it’s because I’m terrified she’s going to reject me, and partly because it just doesn’t feel like the right time. Not with her brother coming to dinner.

It has never felt like the right time. Not when I first saw her at the market, and not now. But I need to gather the courage to do it soon, because my self-control is waning fast, and her heat is coming. Fear congests in my throat as I wonder, for the thousandth time, if I’ll be able to control myself.

If Kira rejects me, if she still wants nothing to do with me even after an apology? Even after I admit to her that I want her as my mate, then what?

I’ll have to shift, go into the woods. Stay there until her heat is over, until it’s safe to come into the house. And even then, there’s just the mere fact of her existing to make me feel out of control.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a quick, uncertain knock at the front door.

Emin .

Feet reacting before my brain, I’m in the hallway and making my way down the steps, toward the front door. I am not going to let Kira be the one to answer—if Emin wants to come over here and apologize for what he’s done, it’s going to be completely on her terms.

The house is filled with various scents—Kira’s the strongest, then the cooking, so when I catch Emin’s scent from outside, I’m not that concerned that it’s slightly different. Being around Kira going into heat, is likely scrambling my senses.

When I open the door, the first thing I see is Emin’s face. I’d expected him to look nervous, maybe contrite, but instead, he looks downright terrified.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low. “I tried to tell them—”

At first, I don’t understand what he’s getting at, but then I realize he is not alone. His mother and father come to stand behind him on the porch, Mhairi Argent holding a glass pan and peering happily at me.

“Dorian,” she says brightly. “We were so excited to hear that—”

“Absolutely not,” I growl, the words coming out of me fast and low, the anger rising in my stomach like a tidal wave. I played my own part in Kira’s leaving our pack years ago, but so did her parents. And they turned her away when she showed back up, needing a place to stay after a traumatic event, so many years later.

It’s no secret to me—and to everyone else—that the Argents have been clawing their way up in the standing in this pack since before my grandfather was the alpha leader. But to sacrifice their own daughter—to let her leave the pack and not worry over her wellbeing—for the sake of their standing?

It makes me sick. And when I have children of my own, I would never treat them like that.

“What’s—”

Kira appears beside me, and I shift slightly so our arms don’t touch. I’m not sure I could handle it, don’t know if I wouldn’t just slam the door in the Argents’ faces and grab her, carry her up the stairs, take her the way my body is pleading me to.

“Mom,” Kira says, and the way she says it guts me. The hurt of a daughter, the pain of a little girl, staring people in the face who abandoned her in her moment of need. “Dad.”

“Kira,” Kellen says, and to my surprise, his voice breaks, too. Despite his firm stance that she’s a liar, that my grandfather’s death rests firmly on her shoulders, he’s here, staring at her like he’s seen a ghost. “Gods, it’s good to see you.”

“What are you guys doing here?” she asks, voice small.

I know what they’re doing here, and Emin does too, judging by the look on his face. They were ready to write off their daughter before, when they thought her reputation couldn’t fall any lower.

But they also know that she is still my mate, despite the way I rejected her. And I brought her back from that market, have been keeping her in my home. It doesn’t take a genius to realize I don’t blame her for my grandfather’s death.

A week in the alpha leader’s house is an honor no other person in this pack has received, and that makes Kira something special.

And now that she’s something special, it appears her parents are here to make sure they attach their names to her again, grab a ride on the way up.

Emin meets my eyes, and there’s something specifically pleading there I don’t understand. For a moment, I wish we were shifted, in our wolf forms, because then he would be able to tell me without saying a thing.

“We came for supper,” Mrs. Argent finally says, and then, holding up the dish in her hands, “And hopefully, dessert.”

My muscles tense, and I grab the door, ready to tell them to get lost, but when I look at Kira, there’s something else in her expression.

I expect her to hate them, to see the way they’re taking advantage of her and tell them to get lost. And surely she does know who they are and what they prioritize. I was there the night they turned her away, and she had to come home with me.

But there’s something else in her gaze.

Forgiveness.

At first, it makes me furious that she would ever think about forgiving these people, after everything they’ve done to her. Then, in a moment of startling clarity, I realize that I, too, am asking for her forgiveness, and it would make me a hypocrite to turn them away now.

I bite my tongue and look at her parents, paying attention to the ways in which I’m attuned to them, trying to figure out if they’re truly sorry, and here to make amends, or if this is just a ploy for recognition.

When I can’t find a clear answer, I look back at Kira, and the way she gazes at me makes her request clear: Let them stay.

“Fine,” I grunt out, stepping back and opening up the door, watching as the three of them step into my home, standing near my mate, taking their shoes off, and looking around.

“I’m sorry,” Emin says, hanging back as Mrs. Argent starts talking to Kira animatedly. “They ambushed me, followed me here in their own car. I have no idea how they even—”

I hold my hand up, eyes locked on Kira, who is smiling up at her father.

“Seems like she wants them here,” I say, voice low, rough. “That’s enough for me. But they are on thin fucking ice, Argent.”

“Heard,” he says, just as Kira’s voice comes from the direction of the dining room.

“Come on, you two,” she calls, sounding far happier than she was just a moment ago. “Dinner is served!”