Filed to story: The Wolf Prince’s Fated Love
“Everything okay?” I asked, even though I was suddenly scared the answer was no.
“Not exactly,” he murmured, stopping in front of me. He raked his hand through his hair, and I gasped when I caught sight of his hand.
“For Goddess’s sake, what happened? Did you and Reed get into a fight? Oh, shit. Did Finn’s sleuth come back?” I stood and carefully grabbed his wrist, pulling his hand closer so I could see his bloodied, busted-up knuckles.
“No, nothing like that. Just… got a little angry and decided to box with a tree.”
“Umm.” I stared at him, confused. What the hell had happened in the last twenty minutes that had him beating the fuck out of a tree? “Should I ask what you were angry about?”
His sigh was weary, and his shoulders were tense under my fingertips after I dropped his hand.
“You can tell me anything,” I whispered, searching his face as if the answers were written in the sculpted shape of his eyebrows or the hard line of his jaw. The jaw I wanted to kiss every inch of.
Clearly not the time, Shay,
I scolded myself as he slipped his arms around my back and buried his nose in my hair.
He drew in a few deep breaths, dragging my scent into his lungs as if it was what kept him upright.
“I don’t think we can take the bond any further, but I don’t know how to do that without hurting you.”
Shock and anger whipped through me like a tornado. Whoosh, there went a flying cow, because it was soft concern to unbridled fury in a second flat.
I jerked back like he’d slapped me. “What do you mean, we shouldn’t take the bond further? Why would you say that?”
Chagrin was on his face, but a solemn resolve too. And it really pissed me off.
“It’s for your own good, Shay. I?-“
“Oh, fuck no. Did you really just say that to me? What are you, my father?” I yanked my hand out of his grip and began to pace. “You had better explain yourself right now. Because what I’m hearing is some misguided patriarchal shit, which boils down to you rejecting our mate bond, and I am seriously going to lose it if after everything we’ve been through, you’re going to reject our mate bond for my own good.”
“I am not rejecting our bond. I just don’t know what else to do.” The sorrow in his tone stopped me midstride, and I turned to face him. To study him, really. What had changed?
“You’d better start from the beginning,” I hissed through clenched teeth. I was still hot under the collar-no, scratch that. My wolf was pissed off. She was strong, and she didn’t take kindly to him backing out of the bond. He was ours, damn it.
As soon as I realized it was her riding me so hard, it got a little easier to separate her fury from my own emotions. Confusion, mostly, but there was fear too.
“I’ve been thinking about the vision.”
“The Fetya’s vision?” Okay, that was not at all what I was expecting.
“Yes, that one. They showed me you dying, but you’re still alive. Your fae background meant that you couldn’t die, not really. And as beyond fucking grateful as I am, I’m scared that they might feel cheated that they didn’t get their price.”
I ran my hand over the back of my neck, confused but trying to process what he was saying. “I thought me dying was the price.”
“So did I, but you came back. What if they demand something else in exchange for your life?”
“Like what?” I asked, disbelief and the first trickle of fear starting to win over the fury as my wolf settled. Dirge wasn’t abandoning us; he was concerned for us. We could work through this, right? “Do you think they’ll take your life if I’m immortal?”
He shook his head. “They had the chance to take me, and they didn’t. But Brielle has fertility powers now. What if… what if you get pregnant, and they take our child?”
Shock didn’t feel how I thought it would. I’d experienced it a time or two, like when that assassin had stabbed me. That had felt cold, as if I’d been dunked in a bucket of ice water.
This shock felt numb, as if all the blood had drained out of me between one heartbeat and the next. My fingertips started to tingle, and I forced myself to breathe again. But then my brain caught up, and objections to what he said were popping up left and right like those annoying New Year’s poppers.
“You can’t know that. It’s not set in stone that they would take another life. Your vision only saw me dying, and I did. We have no reason to believe they’d take my immortality out on our unborn children.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s a possibility. And I promise you, I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t bear it if I caused you that pain.” His shoulders slumped under the awful weight of it, and my heart broke at the sight of him. The fury was gone as quickly as it had sprung up, leaving nothing but determination in its wake. He didn’t get to make this choice for me.
I could make my own choices, and I was choosing him.
“No, no. Stop it.” I closed the distance with a speed I didn’t know I possessed, wrapping him in my arms. “This is not your fault. Surely you know that?”
“It is a hundred percent my fault. How could you love me if I cost us our children, our future?” His words were a hoarse whisper, but I felt them like a dagger to my soul. He meant every word, and the pain in that question almost drove me to my knees.
“I could love you because you’re my other half, Dirge. My soul mate. The one the Goddess made for me. Because you’re brave and strong and loving. Because in your arms, I feel safety that I’ve never felt anywhere else. That’s how.”
“But what if?-“
“No.” I put maybe a little too much force behind the word. “No, we’re not going to even consider that possibility.”
“Muzica mea, we have to.” Even as he said it, he gripped me tighter, like he was scared I was going to run away any second.
“No, we don’t. We can’t live our lives in fear like that, okay? We just… no. If these Fetya are so all-powerful, all-knowing, wouldn’t they have known
I was half-fae? That the assassin would stab me and my other side would kick in?”
“I-I hadn’t considered that.” He frowned down at me, brows drawn tight and low.
“Well, do. Because I’m not willing to live apart from my mate for a maybe.”
He studied me carefully, fingertips tracing the line of my jaw before trailing down to my throat. He gripped the back of my neck, pulling me closer.