mated to a human.”
“You said it. He’s an Alpha. Yes, he’s been fighting challengers for thirty years, and yes, he can handle himself, but I was the one who made the decision to let Thea stay, so if things go wrong, I am responsible. I am the Alpha. There is no one else above me.”
He keeps soaping up the washcloth.
“And when the time comes and you’re…” His voice fades out as he looks at the foamy mass between his hands.
“When I’ve recovered enough to be fertile again?”
His biceps quiver, his jaw slides forward.
“You’ll fuck Poul then?”
“Yes.”
“You know he doesn’t give a damn about Evie. He only wants the Alpha.” He tosses the washcloth into the sink.
“I know.”
I’m tired and Thea has gotten hold of a picture she says we need to deal with now. And the truth is no amount of explaining is going to make him understand that a Pack is stability in the middle of chaos. A thing of tradition and our tradition requires strong wolves to mate with stronger wolves to make still stronger wolves.
“Constantine…”
“I’m not going to do this,” he says. He bends over, grabbing his clothes, and starts for the door. “I’m going swimming. But don’t worry. By the time I’m done, no one will know what I have done. That I have committed the crime of touching the woman I love.”
Love?
He’s already halfway to Home Pond by the time I open the door. He doesn’t turn around and I can’t call to him.
I’m not doing well.
He dumps his clothes on the chair at the end of the dock.
Turn around, Constantine.
He shakes out his arms, the arms that have held me and made me feel secure. He stretches out his legs, the legs that have supported both of us when my thighs were tight around his hips and he was buried deep inside me.
See me.
Then he dives off the end and disappears into the cold and quiet where no one can find him.
“Alpha?”
With a sigh, I turn away.
Chapter 30
Constantine
After my parents died, I had been angry. Over and over, I was angry. Angry that they were dead. Angry that they had lied to me. Angry that I hadn’t had a chance to confront them about those lies before they died. Angry at being sent to August. Angry at being different, but without knowing exactly how I was different. By the time I was in my twenties, anger had burned through me so often that there was no longer any tinder in my soul for it to burn.
Now there is. I feel the hard, dry knot of things that are hard to disentangle: My fury over being erased. My confusing need for Evie to be both bigger than life and small enough to be mine alone. My anger at myself for becoming one more thing she needs to worry about, when I promised myself I wouldn’t.
The wind is blowing hard from the west, bringing with it a wall of gray and projecting bright light against clouds like an old movie theater before smoking was outlawed. Slow and deliberate, I swim back toward the Great Hall. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. Not sorry, wolves don’t understand sorry, but something.
The problem is she is surrounded as she so often is: Tara, Silver, and Tiberius. She looks at something on a laptop and closes her eyes and stretches out two fingers on her right bicep.
It’s a thing she does, to keep count of her worries.
The back door bangs shut behind Elijah’s hulking form. He rolls his shoulders back, then forward again and turns his head, eyeing every wolf in the room, challenging them all. To what I don’t know, until I see the woman with the black hair, Thea Villalobos, the Goddess of the City of Wolves, blocked by his bulk.
The Alpha listens to the human, sliding two more fingers next to the two already splayed. The human pulls out her camera and flicks through something with her thumb, then shows the screen to the other wolves. Two fingers emerge on the opposite bicep.
Evie’s eyes catch mine, her mouth open as though she wants to say something, but she closes it again. I head out the back.
The air is stiller now, if possible, and pregnant. The wall of black clouds trailing graphite streaks comes closer. A wolf sleeping near the cold frame lifts his muzzle, his mouth open, and tastes the wind. Shaking himself off, he saunters toward the trees.
I follow him.
No longer bothering