Page 22 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)

~Troy~

For years, I’d been waiting for this opportunity. Years . I’d imagined it in multiple different locations and scenarios, though I never imagined the two of us locked into a small underground bunker together.

The setting didn’t really matter. What was important was that Alpha Warren’s threat no longer hung over us and Amanda seemed open and willing to listen to my side of the story.

When I told Jasper about it just a few hours earlier, I said I wanted to earn Amanda’s trust first before asking her to trust me on this, but now that she’d asked me about it outright, putting it off any longer didn’t feel like the right decision.

For the first time, it felt like she might actually give me a chance to explain.

I started slowly, picking my spoon back up and taking another mouthful of soup before speaking in a subtle attempt to ensure she continued to eat too. It worked; my mate mimicked my action, swallowing her spoonful of soup while I did the same.

“I came to the pack house that morning like you told me to. I asked for you, but you were asleep. I said I’d wait, but before I got a chance to see you, your father called me in. He’d already guessed why I was there.”

Amanda nodded stiffly. “I suppose it didn’t take a genius to figure it out: a man turning up out of the blue, asking for me right after I got my wolf. I had hoped to warm him up to the idea a little first. I didn’t mean to oversleep.”

That sounded dangerously close to an apology, one I’d never felt entitled to. She hadn’t done anything wrong that day.

“The first shift takes an awful lot out of you. I should have anticipated you would need more sleep than usual, if I’d thought about it logically. Logic didn’t factor into it, though; I just wanted to see you.”

Her head dipped, hiding her eyes from me, but not before I caught a flash of something that almost looked like regret in them. “What did he say?”

This part of the conversation, I’d never looked forward to.

How did you tell someone their own father threatened to kill them?

True, she’d recently overthrown that very father to take control of the pack, but that hadn’t been personal.

Whereas the things he said about her were as personal as they could get.

I might have been tempted to gloss over it, but after what Jasper suggested that afternoon about her father potentially still working against her, it had only become more important for her to know the whole story.

To buy myself a few more seconds to figure out how to phrase it, I lifted the bowl of soup to my lips and finished the rest of it. Canned cream of celery soup had honestly never tasted so good as it did knowing that my mate had made it for me.

Amanda didn’t drain hers like I did but she did raise her spoon to her mouth again, her eyes still downcast as she waited for me to speak.“First, he spent some time disparaging me, calling me an unranked bastard, among other things.”

Her head lifted at that, indignation clear in the tightening of her eyebrows. Seeing her get angry on my behalf instead of at me made such a welcome change that I almost laughed.

“I mean, if we’re being pedantic, my parents weren’t mated, so I’m technically a bastard, and my mother had no rank within the pack. If my father had a rank, I don’t know what it is. I don’t consider being unranked or a bastard an insult. Those things are facts which are out of my control.”

She let out a frustrated huff. “I’m sure his tone made it an insult.”

“Oh, absolutely. You’d have thought I committed the worst crime any werewolf ever had because, aside from being an unranked bastard, I also had the nerve to be mated to you. Which we all know I had total control over.”

My sarcastic tone drew a reluctant, rueful smile from Amanda. “I’m sorry he spoke to you that way.”

I shrugged, not wanting her apology for that either. “You didn’t choose your family any more than I chose mine.”

She hesitated for a moment, thinking that over before nodding to herself. “Then what?”

“Well, he believed that we were mates, which was something, but he said there was no way you would have agreed to even entertain the idea of accepting me. I must have manipulated you in some way. When I told him you were capable of making your own decisions, he assured me I was wrong.”

It hurt to see the way she winced at those words, but there were worse to come so I pushed ahead.

“He ordered me to stay away from you and never tell anyone we were mates or we would both be exiled.”

Her jaw clenched, her fingers tightening around the handle of her spoon. The movements were subtle but I’d spent so long studying her, I could have written a thesis on what each move meant. “You already told me that.”

And it wasn’t enough, Hunter reminded me. He’d kept silent for this entire conversation so far, but he chimed in now with the encouragement I needed. You need to tell her the rest. It’s time.

“That wasn’t all he said.”

A small flaring of her nostrils, a slight incline of her head. More signals, more unspoken communication that I understood on a cellular level. She wanted to hear more.

“He said that once we were exiled, you’d be dead to him, and he’d make sure you were dead to everyone else too. He swore he’d put a bounty on your head. He swore he’d kill you.”

I paused there to let the words sink in, taking no pleasure in the way her cheeks paled, her blinking turning more rapid.

When I thought she’d absorbed it, I carried on.

“Only you would die, though. He’d give strict orders to leave me alive.

I would have to watch you die, feel the mate bond rip apart inside me, drown in the agony of it, and know that I was responsible for all of it.

His description of it was very… vivid . He’d put some thought into it. ”

A grimace pulled at my lips as she continued to stare at me, not speaking a word.

“I didn’t know what to do, Amanda. I had no idea how I could protect you.

I’m not rich, I don’t have any important friends or connections.

Outside the pack, I could have offered you a basic existence but no true protection.

How could I ask you to risk your life for me?

I didn’t want to. The thought of losing you, even then, even when our bond was only hours old, devastated me.

I would have rather seen you happy with someone else than cold in the ground because of me. ”

Her tongue slowly moved across the seam of her lips. No doubt her mouth had gone dry just as mine did every time I thought about her father’s ultimatum. “Why…”

Her voice cracked but she cleared her throat and tried again.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“He made me promise not to. He made me promise not to say a word about why I couldn’t accept you.

He said you’d find my unwillingness to fight for you unforgivable and cut yourself off from me without the need for any further intervention.

If you ever said another word about me to him after that day, he’d assume I told you and he’d carry out all his threats just the same.

Now, you know him better than I do, and maybe you’re going to tell me he didn’t mean any of that and he exaggerated to scare me, but I couldn’t take that chance. I couldn’t, not when it came to you.”

Taking a deep breath, I leaned back in my chair, my heart thumping heavily in my chest. I actually did it. After all this time, I finally disobeyed the Alpha’s orders, and now, I could only wait and see if my mate believed me.