Page 21 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)

~Amanda~

There weren’t many places to sit in the small, enclosed space, so when Troy got up from the bed and moved to the corner with the food supplies, I took his spot on the mattress to keep out of his way and take a minute to gather my thoughts.

He felt it ? Cinder whispered in my head, horror in her tone. Every time?

Guilt swelled in my chest again, just as it had when Troy first said the words.

I had no idea he would feel pain through our bond when another man touched me.

That happened with marked wolves; everyone knew that, but we hadn’t marked each other.

We never accepted our bond so it never even crossed my mind, especially since I never felt anything on my end other than the aching emptiness from being apart from him.

But now I knew I hadn’t felt it because there’d been nothing to feel.

For seven long years, he’d been celibate, and though he hadn’t specified whether that was because no other woman caught his eye or because he didn’t want to cause me pain, it didn’t really matter.

I could still remember the hungry look in his eyes the night of my first shift when we spoke to each other.

He’d been attracted to me then, without a doubt, so his abstinence in the intervening years didn’t stem from a lack of interest in sex.

No, only one conclusion made sense: for seven long years he was alone because of me .

No. I quickly shook my head at the thought. Not only because of me. It was because of him too, because he wouldn’t defy my father to claim me but also wouldn’t let me go. He wouldn’t have had to suffer if he’d rejected me. He chose to hold on.

Even though it caused him pain.

Fuck, what was I supposed to do with that information? I couldn’t tell if I found it sweet or insane, endearing or psychotic.

“Have your cooking skills improved at all since your visit to the Okanagan?”

Troy’s question pulled me out of my head and I blinked twice, forcing myself to concentrate on his words. When I glanced over, he was on his knees, looking through a stack of cans and smiling over at me.

“I didn’t realize you witnessed that debacle.”

His smile vanished at the coldness in my tone, and I winced. That sounded more dismissive than I meant it to, and more than that, the words were a lie. I knew he was there. I always knew when he was nearby.

“I mean, I hoped you’d blocked it out,” I amended, offering a hesitant smile of my own. “The smell was bad enough to cause temporary amnesia.”

A retreat with some of the other future pack leaders in the region had included a cooking class in a winery in the hills above Kelowna.

My father had sent me there to sniff out potential matches for an alliance, but while all the other young men and women produced edible results, mine somehow managed to be both undercooked and burnt at the same time, emitting an odour that quickly emptied the room.

Sensitive werewolf noses found the aroma offensive.

As part of my escort team, Troy stood near the door with the other staff, watching as I did my best to flirt with the future Alphas in attendance as I’d been instructed.

After the cooking class, however, no one seriously considered me as a potential partner.

The men who had seemed interested before that suddenly found themselves too busy for a private discussion before the retreat ended.

“The whole thing was stupid,” I complained, my cheeks heating in embarrassment as the scene played out again in my mind. “No Alpha or Luna is going to be cooking for the pack. They could have given us a more useful activity.”

“Most people think cooking is a fairly useful skill,” he replied, and I could have sworn he was actually teasing me. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you anything in the kitchen?”

“Never. My father didn’t think I should concern myself with it. He said it was beneath the Alpha’s daughter, and his word was law. Nobody dared to go against him.”

Troy understood that better than anyone and his shoulders tensed at the mention of my father. But a second later, he took a deep breath, pushing back to his feet with two cans in his hand. “Well, it’s never too late to learn. Come on over, Alpha.”

The idea of learning how to cook in the ridiculously small ‘kitchen’ was ludicrous, but honestly, what else did I have to do with my time while we were locked up there? I got to my feet and took three steps to bring myself into line with him.

Troy pulled out a utensil from a box on the shelf to his left. “This is a can opener.”

I fixed him with my best unimpressed glare. “I’m not that useless.”

“Alright, alright.” He seemed to be holding back a smile as he handed me the opener and one of the cans. “Go ahead and open that.”

I’d seen people use a can opener before. On TV, maybe? It looked simple enough then, but when I tried to attach the device to the top of the can, it kept slipping off without actually piercing the top.

Troy let me struggle for a minute or so before intervening. “Do you want a tutorial?”

“Yes,” I admitted through gritted teeth. “Don’t do it, just show me how it works.”

Taking the can from my hand, he placed it down on the narrow counter space before wrapping his hand around mine, the one that held the can opener.

Sparks instantly sizzled up my arm, sending a wave of heat and excitement through my body that I did my best to ignore.

Shifting to stand behind me, he placed his other hand on top of mine to guide it into place.

“This metal disc is what’s going to open the can, so you need to position it along the lip’s edge, just here. Squeeze it together to get a good grip.”

The opener made a satisfying pffft sound as the disc pierced through the lid.

“Now that it’s hooked, use the knob to rotate it around the top.”

His hand moved over mine, twisting the handle as the metal drew a perfect circle around the can’s lid. When it had completed the full rotation, the lid detached with a sharp snap.

“Good.” Troy abruptly dropped his hands from mine and Cinder whimpered in my head, already craving his touch. “Now, open the other one on your own.”

I didn’t get it hooked quite as smoothly as he had but I did eventually get it, and when I smiled up at him in satisfaction at completing my task, he was gazing down at me with an expression so full of longing, of admiration , that Cinder let out another needy mewl.

I cleared my throat as I placed the opener down. “Now what?”

“Now, we make soup.”

The cans we’d opened contained a condensed cream of celery soup and evaporated milk, which Troy explained needed to be mixed together and heated.

He stood back and let me handle it, providing prompts when necessary as I set up a saucepan on the hot plate and stirred the milk.

Soon, gentle bubbles had formed in the thick, creamy liquid and a pleasant aroma, not at all offensive, filled the small space.

Under his supervision, I poured the soup into two bowls and we each took one and a spoon and returned to the narrow bed to sit and eat.

“Not bad for your first meal,” he said as he lifted a steaming mouthful to his mouth.

“It barely counts as cooking,” I protested even though I did feel rather stupidly proud of it.

Troy’s smile suggested I wasn’t fooling him. “My stomach says it counts.”

Wanting the attention off me, I shifted it to him instead. “Where did you learn to cook? Did your mother teach you?”

“My aunt did. I never knew my mother.”

My spoon stopped halfway to my mouth. “What do you mean?”

I’d seen him with an older woman before at pack events. They hadn’t seemed particularly close, but I’d seen them together often enough that I assumed it must be his mother.

“Just what it sounds like. My mother left the pack when I was young and left me with my aunt. Apparently, my father came from a neighbouring pack and I was the result of a drunken hook-up. He was never interested in me but she kept trying. She went to see him when I was two and never came back. I don’t know what happened to her. ”

“Goddess, Troy. That’s awful.”

How did I not know this about him?

How much more was there that I didn’t know?

He gave a half-hearted shrug as he put another full spoon into his mouth.

“I came to terms with it a long time ago, as best as I could. When I turned 18, I went looking for her. I knew the pack name, the Battle River pack, but not my father’s name and no one there would talk to me.

The trail went cold pretty quickly. I’d like to know if she’s still alive, but I don’t think she is.

If she were, I think she would have come back. I’d like to think so, anyway.”

My throat tightened so much that even swallowing the soup became difficult.

“My aunt raised me. She never had children of her own, never wanted them, but she made sure I had what I needed. Taught me to take care of myself.”

It wasn’t hard to read between the lines of what he said: it seemed she provided what he needed physically, but little more.

He’d basically raised himself while I was the pampered, spoiled Lota who couldn’t even open a can of soup without help. Did he think I was as much of a liability as the men at that retreat had? Was that why he wouldn’t take a chance on me when my father forbade our mating?

No, that didn’t make sense. If he truly thought me beyond help, he would have just rejected me, not hung on all these years.

Something didn’t add up, and perhaps the time had finally come to hear his point of view on the whole situation.

“Troy.”

He immediately stopped eating when I said his name and put his spoon down, giving me his full attention.

“Tell me what happened when you spoke to my father.”