“A little late, Bennett.”
He reached for me.
I knocked his hand away.
“You don’t understand.”
I snorted. “There’s a world of things I don’t understand, I’m sure. But I’m a witch without a pack, and you don’t get to tell me shit. Not anymore.”
He was getting angry. “So—what. Poor you, huh? Poor Gordo, having to stay behind for the good of his pack. Doing what his Alpha told him. Protecting the territory and fucking anything that moves.”
I felt dirty. Nasty. “You wouldn’t touch me,” I said flatly. “Remember? I kissed you. I touched you. I begged for it. I would have let you fuck me, Mark. I would have let you put your mouth on me, but you told me no. You told me I had to wait. That things weren’t right, that the timing wasn’t right. That you couldn’t be distracted. You had responsibilities. And then you disappeared. For months on end. No calls. No check-ins. No how you doin’, Gordo? How you been? Remember me? Your mate?” I rubbed a couple of fingers against the mark on my neck. It burned so good. “I would have let you do so much to me.”
His eyes burned. His teeth were sharper. “Gordo,” he growled, sounding more wolf than man.
I took a step toward him.
He tracked every movement, ever the predator.
“You can, you know,” I told him quietly. “You can have me. Right now. Here. Choose me. Mark. Choose me. Stay here. Or don’t. We can go anywhere you want. We can leave right now. You and me. Fuck everything else. No packs, no Alphas. No wolves. Just… us.”
“You would have me be an Omega?”
“No. Because I can be your tether. You can still be mine. And we can be together. Mark, I’m asking you, for once in your life, to choose me.”
And he said, “No.”
I expected it. I really did.
It still hurt more than I thought it would.
For a moment my magic felt wild. Like it couldn’t be controlled. Like it would burst from me and destroy everything in sight.
I was my father’s son, after all.
But the moment passed, and left in its wake was nothing but a smoking crater.
He said, “Gordo. I can’t—you can’t expect me to—it’s not like that—”
I took a step back.
His anger was gone. Only fear remained.
“Of course you can’t,” I said, voice hoarse. “What was I thinking?”
I turned and went back into the house, leaving the door wide open.
He didn’t follow.
The unknown man was blinking blearily as I went back into my bedroom. “What’s going on?”
I didn’t answer. I went to the nightstand and opened the drawer. Inside was a box, and in this box was a stone wolf I’d taken out time and time again, a promise broken over and over. I turned on my heels and was back down the hall, my mother’s voice in my head, telling me wolves lie, they lie, Gordo, they use you, and you may think they love you, they might even tell you they do, but they lie.
They always do.
I was a human.
I had no place with wolves.