Chapter 9

How could you leave me like that?"

"But I looked for a very long time. I couldn't find you."

He paused. Something in his voice shifted.

"I started to come up with other explanations. I thought maybe you'd been sick. Maybe you'd done that whole trip knowing you didn't have much time. Maybe you'd gone home and were already gone."

"I know that sounds insane. But that thought attached itself to me and wouldn't let go. I went back to the Wildlands. I stood out there and I made a deal — if I could just see you alive and doing well, I'd ask for nothing. I'd spend the next life as a stray dog if that was the price."

"And I found you. Eventually. You were healthy. Working hard. Living quietly."

He stopped.

"Bonded to someone else."

"I didn't go near you. I decided it was already a good outcome. But you didn't seem as happy as you should have been. So I did what I could. I bought the company. I helped your mate get promoted."

"I'd learned how to take what I couldn't have. But the night I found out you'd severed the Bond — I sat on my couch until morning. The next day I got in the car. I still remember coming into this Territory for the first time. The streets were quiet. Flowers along the road. My heart was beating so hard I had to press a hand against it."

"I took over your Pack. I became your Alpha. You were serious and closed off. I thought you were protecting yourself after a hard Bond. But then I watched. You'd look up at birds outside the window during reports. You'd scold your team and then come fight for them anyway. You checked on the orchid on my desk for weeks. You watered it once when I wasn't in."

His expression softened.

"So I knew. Whoever you decided to be at work, you were still you. But I didn't want to push too fast and lose you again. I was slow about it. Patient."

"And then at the inn that night, I moved too fast. I didn't expect that even in that state, you could hold the line and threaten to resign. You're always like that. I never know what to do with you."

"I'm not asking for what we had. I'm just asking — can we at least be friends? Normal, ordinary friends?"

He said all of it in one breath. His chest was rising and falling. He looked down at me, with that focus he always had.

His eyes looked certain but his hands weren't quite steady.

The room went quiet.

Moonlight lay between us like pale sand.

I hadn't said a single word the whole time. It had all been him. Complete and unhurried, like a very serious declaration.

Now.

I lowered my head.

Slowly, I took off my glasses. Folded them carefully and put them in my pocket.

Then I reached up and took hold of both lapels of his coat.

He blinked, surprised. He stayed perfectly still.

Like a doll.

I breathed out.

I pulled him in.

And I kissed him.

He went rigid for a second. Then he reacted — his arms closed around me hard and fast, pulling me completely against him. He was using too much force. I stumbled back and we landed on the couch.

He dropped to his knees, leaning over me, one hand cupped behind my head, and kissed me back like he was trying to take apart everything I'd built.

A moment ago he'd been measured and composed. Now he wasn't.

I held on to his back, feeling muscle and bone through the fabric, and his heartbeat absolutely out of control.

This kiss had five years of distance in it.

It was strange.

Five years had passed.

But in that single moment, everything went back to what it had been.

Like we'd never stopped.

Some amount of time passed that I couldn't track.

He let go. His breathing was ragged. He stared at me.

"You've been drinking."

Moonlight came through the window. It fell on my shoulder, where the fabric had slipped.

He wasn't any tidier.

"So." He was still catching his breath. "Is that a yes?"

I looked at him without answering.

I reached for the front of his shirt.

His whole body locked up.

His lashes trembled, twice.

Shock. Relief. Something that had been held back for a very long time, finally getting a response. All of it moved through those reddening eyes.

"Wren..." His voice was almost gone. There was a slight shake in it. "Can I—?"

I looked at him, and finally said the first words I'd spoken since he started.

"Yes."

Outside, the music went on, faint and distant.

Another world.

This one was just the two of us, breathing, and a reunion that had taken five years to happen.

Cain and I began something quiet and hidden inside the Pack.

The world felt different after that.

Cain felt different too.

What amazed me was how naturally he switched between versions of himself.

In front of people, he was the Alpha: steady, composed, distant.

Alone with me, he was something else. Clingy. Demanding. Occasionally a little unreasonable.