in all honesty, we’re all at the whim of the alpha and the Council.
“Have you talked to your parents?”
I shrug. “Not about anything important. They’ve asked how things are going here, and I’m being vague. They’re really quiet. Have you heard any rumors coming out of Lunar? I’m worried they’re going through something and they’re not telling me.”
He picks at the grass, spinning a blade between his massive fingers and watching it dance. “I haven’t heard anything since that day.” He gazes up. “I’m going to start telling people I want you out, though.”
My stomach twists, but I hold my excitement in. Jonah and I still have a long way to go and one huge obstacle in our way. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if something comes out and you’re implicated?”
“What could come out, Kinsey? That’s why we need proof.”
He’s been pushing the DNA test, and I agree with him. Asking my Mom and Dad to do that for me, though, is another thing entirely. It’ll hurt them, I’m sure of it. Shifters are proud beings, and my parents have already had to deal with this shit enough. What will having their own daughter asking for proof do to them?
He reaches out, tugs on my arm, and tugs me into his lap. I dust my hands off behind his back before wrapping my hands around him. He sniffs my neck. “You smell amazing.”
“It’s the dirt,” I tell him, biting my lip as he kisses a trail over the curve of my throat.
He chuckles into my ear. “It’s you, Kinsey.” He runs his palm up and down my back. It’s been hard to keep our hands off of each other after we broke that first time. “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t put you in here.”
We both know it wasn’t just him. It was the Pack Council, too. If they object to a match, they put through the same paperwork, and it doesn’t matter what the fated pairs want. Sure, he did it, and he’s apologized, but he was never the biggest problem. I’ve been holding my thoughts in about all this, but I’m bursting at the seams.
I pull back. “Can I talk to you about something?” He retreats and nods, so I blow out a breath. “Don’t you think it’s wrong that the Pack Council has so much say in pairings? If it’s fated to be this way, what can they even object to?”
He swallows. Jonah is very pack oriented, and it’s hard for him to see another way. I’ve been watching him wrestle with this, and I don’t envy him. I’m predisposed not to trust other people, but he’s basically a pack cheerleader, an enforcer. He’ll be the one keeping all of Lunar safe, so to think that something might be rotten internally is a big deal to him. “That’s how it’s always been.”
“But it hasn’t, though,” I tell him. “You know the history as well as I do. They only started instituting this when the packs started to die off.”
“And it worked,” Jonah cuts in.
“Did it? Maybe it was all coincidence. It’s wrong for us to believe that we know better than fate.”
Jonah’s lips thin. “I’m going to say something, but I want to make it clear first that I don’t think this is about you. Just as there are bad humans, there are bad shifters.”
I tune him out. I know where he’s going with this. It’s what we were told when we were young. They’re weeding out the bad apples. I stare down at my garden and the little pile of seeds I have. Some of these seeds won’t make it. Some of them might grow only to get an illness and die. But does that mean that they shouldn’t get a chance to live? Not planting them just because they might die seems like messing with fate too much for me.
He cups my chin and forces my gaze to his again. “I’m sorry, Kinsey. I don’t know what to believe in every case, but I know what to believe in this one. You were made for me. I have zero doubt fate got it right with us.”
His words make the hair on my neck stand at attention. I’ll be much more appreciative of his endearments as soon as we’re out from under the shade of Greystone Academy because right now, words do little else than make me feel good. I need more. I need the hell out of this academy.
“I’ll get