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“You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen,” he says simply. Like it’s not a big deal. Like he’s complimenting my
I can prepare and take care of myself—” “I will take care of you,” he says roughly. Oh. “Oh.” He sighs and runs a hand through his thick, unkempt hair. “Koen, you don’t have to—” “Serena.” I hear it in his voice, how little patience he has to spare.
“Well, this is not really an isolated area, and I haven’t learned how to tune out sounds yet.” “Poor baby Were.” He turns to me. Suddenly, I see compassion in his eyes. “In that case, we’ll find a place where you can be alone in the middle of nowhere.” My heart soars. “Really?” “No,” he says mildly. “Fuck that. You’ll stay where I put you.”
Cute, how she thinks he’d ever let her out of his sight.
It’s cute—and thoughtful, especially considering that I no longer have claws at my disposal. It has a different, deeper kind of heat spreading through me, and I don’t want to overthink it, so I shift my attention to the third thing. And I stop breathing. Because every single thing I glanced at, grazed, examined, eyed, or even considered when we were at the grocery store, every single thing I decided to walk past, every single thing I told myself I didn’t need—every single thing has somehow made it here, inside Koen’s house.
“Come on,” Koen urges calmly. “Say it. What is she?” “Your mate.” “Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about that.” Koen slaps his own temple with the heel of his palm. He continues, monotone, “Since you’re so sure that everyone here despises her, including me, let this be known: fuck with my mate, and I’m going to kill you so slowly, draw it out so long, tectonic plates will move and create whole new mountain ranges. And when the rest of your family comes to avenge you, I’ll do the same to them. And if your friends come, I’m not going to fucking stop. Not even if all that’s left of the pack is me and her.
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He told her that he would never touch her because he didn’t want her enough; in truth, he will never touch her because he wants her too much. The make-believe, he thinks, was kinder to both of them.
The covenant was never a big part of his life. He would forget about it for months, even years. It never felt like a sacrifice, just a simple trade-off, an integral feature of who he was: the Alpha of the Northwest. Then she arrived, assumed total control of him, and left no room for anything but her.
“Good. I need to meet with the Assembly.” His thumb swipes against my cheekbone. “Do you want to come with me?” Yes, with every single cell of my body. “Why would I come with you?” “Because the idea of having you out of my sight makes me want to flip those cars one by one.”
His teeth clench. There’s a flicker of something unreadable in his face. “If I come back and something has happened to you, Serena, I’m going to be so fucking pissed.”
“Say it. After what?” I have to. Out loud. For the very first time. I have no choice but to make this real. “After I die.” The second the words are out, hanging heavy in the air between us, Koen…smiles. He bends further, and there isn’t a single trace of doubt on his face. He’s an immovable object and an unstoppable force. And he says, slowly, “If you think I’m going to let you die, Serena, you know fuck all.”
“Anything that’s going to happen to you,” he promises, voice honest and pitched low in the swish of the breeze, “is going to be over my dead body.”
He easily resigned himself to a lifetime without her, but… Simply put, he is unwilling to contemplate a universe in which she no longer exists.
His duties, the one to his pack and the one to his mate, should be tearing him in two. And yet he has never felt more intact than he does right now.
“I’m going to step down.” I ask, “From what?” But I already know, so I don’t give him time to answer. “Why?” Regrettably, I already know that, too. That only leaves me with “You can’t.”
“You…We talked about this.” I sound shrill. “The pack is too important to you. And you are necessary to the pack.” “Things have changed.” “Things—nothing has changed. You love the Northwest more than anything.” “Not more than anything, Serena.”
My eyes lock with his, willing him to understand. “You are the heart of this pack, Koen.” He nods. Even as he says, “And you are mine, Serena.”
“Just a few days ago you listed several reasons why you had to choose the pack over me. What changed?” He roams the inside of his mouth with his tongue. Waits out the end of a particularly strong gust of breeze. “You told me that you loved me, Serena,” he says simply. His eyes are earnest, liquid. So profoundly good. “And while I’m willing to resign myself to an existence without the person I love, I refuse to condemn you to it.”
