but at what cost?” I implore. “Let’s give your theory the benefit of the doubt. We fuck, somehow seal the bond, and you are in fact Chosen. What happens tomorrow when you walk out to train with your Sentinel runes? You think just those markings alone will make my other Chosen accept you?” I shake my head. “It would fracture us. They would continue to think you’re untrustworthy, and they would turn those same eyes on to me too.”
“They accepted Torrez,” he argues.
“Torrez was very different.”
“How?” he challenges.
“Torrez came to them first. He told them that he wanted to be a mate, and then he backed off and waited for a decision. They didn’t object to him like they do to you. Maybe that’s not fair in your eyes, but it is what it is. I didn’t know how I felt about Torrez until I had to look at a future without him in it.”
“But you say you don’t know how you feel about us too,” Enoch points out.
“No, I say that the bond with you, Kallan, and Nash doesn’t feel the same as my bonds with my Chosen. It feels different to me.”
“Yeah, but you felt different about Torrez, too. You rejected him in the beginning just like you’re rejecting us now.”
“No, Enoch, it’s not the same.” I run my fingers through my hair and try to select the words that will help put all the pieces in place for him and for me. “Torrez and I had a connection from the very beginning, but I didn’t know myself well enough then to identify what that meant. I know myself better now, and what I wanted from Torrez was different from what I want from you, Kallan, and Nash.”
Enoch turns his head away from me to stare off into the dark, and I put a hand on his cheek and move his eyes back to mine. “I feel a connection with you, Enoch. We train well together, we think similarly in how we fight, our drive to win is the same. You push me to be better, and then you show me how to achieve that. I’m comfortable around you, it’s easy to be in your presence, and I trust you. You feel…I don’t know…like family maybe, like we’ll always be friends, always watch each other’s backs,” I explain, my eyes begging his to understand.
He sighs. “So I’ve been friend-zoned,” he quips, and I roll my eyes.
“Honestly, Enoch, I think if you really look inside your soul and study the truth there, you’d realize that you don’t actually want me. You want these.” I point to the runes on my arms and hands.
Enoch’s blue eyes frost over, and he opens his mouth to argue.
“Fine, you want me in all of my glory, and the runes mean nothing to you?” I challenge. “Then don’t you want to win me the right way? By proving yourself to my Chosen, by earning their unwavering trust and loyalty? If you had that, then why would they object to us fucking for answers. If you had that, and it turned out you were right all along about being Chosen, they would welcome you with open arms. You’d have earned a place as one of them, instead of stealing it in the night, behind their backs, knowing how they would feel about it.”
He watches me for a moment and then nods his head.
“Okay, I’ll earn you then, Vinna.”
And with that, he pushes off the fallen tree and disappears back into the night.
15
I take a deep breath. “Okay, but what if I turn into a wolf?” I ask again for the tenth time, and Torrez shakes his head.
“Would that really be the worst thing?” Torrez asks.
“No, it would probably be amazing, but I just don’t think I can deal with that on top of everything else going on right now,” I tell him, my tone a little more hysterical than I mean for it to be. After my talk with Enoch, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I blame that for my current state of panic.
“Listen, Witch, the only thing you need to fear turning into right now is a chicken. So stop clucking, and let’s see what your new runes do.”
“You suck at pep talks,” I snark.
Valen grabs the back of my neck and pulls me toward him. “Sentinel up, or none of us will be sucking on anything for the next week.” He lets go of my neck, and I lean back to