two fries left in her palm, I didn’t stop until they were all gone, settling the crunchy treat between her lips.
The slight sheen of oil on there made me swoop down and trace my tongue along them.
“Ew,” she grumbled, making me laugh harder because she didn’t push me away, just moved closer to me, settled her greasy palms on my belly, and leaned in.
When her head came to my pec, and her arms slid around my waist, I found myself curiously choked.
She held me with no guile.
Without the thought of seeking anything for herself or for me.
She held me because she could.
Because I was hers and she was mine.
And it was the most powerful, thoughtful, poignant, emotional moment of my life.
“I’m the lucky one,” I rasped, dipping my chin so I could bestow a kiss upon the crown of her head.
She sighed, squeezing me harder. “I like to think that luck is something we make for ourselves, but this entire situation, this whole new world has kind of taught me otherwise.
“How could I say I’m lucky for what I went through at the carnival?” She shuddered. “Yet it led me here. To this moment.”
I didn’t want to spoil our time together, but we had to broach this subject. She’d already spoken about what happened that night at Ollywood’s, but I was curious to know if her new senses helped her, if they, in any way, gave her an insight that she hadn’t had before.
“Do you remember anything?” I asked softly, not changing my tone, just moving my hand up and down her back, soothing her before she could get riled up—the last thing I wanted was for her to get scared.
“Nothing more than I already told you.” She gulped. “Mostly, I just remember being scared.” She pressed her face into me, rolling inward so that she was hiding from the world around us. “I remember thinking how tired I was of running, and how maybe death would bring me freedom.”
“Do you really think your dad is still after you?”
“He’s a bitter, vengeful, twisted man, and he reigns with fear.”
Her words were simple, but all the more effective for it.
There was no emotion in them this time. No fear or worry. She was stating a fact. A hard proof.
Still, the thought of her embracing death, of being in a fucking world without her in it, even for a day, had me tensing up.
My muscles bunched, and my wolf got in on the action. She hushed me, telling me she sensed the beast’s agitation, and I let her. I also let her pet me, stroking her hand over my arm, her fingers trickling down my side to my back. She soothed me as much as I’d soothed her, which was all kinds of wrong when she was the one who’d gone through all this shit.
On her own too.
My anger didn’t abate at that, and I vowed, “I’ll kill him before he even thinks he’s close to you.”
She tensed, then slowly shook her head. “No. I don’t want you to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because my mother, for whatever stupid reason, loves him.” She frowned—I felt the movement against my skin. “I never understood it, but she always supported him, always backed him. And in my culture, what I did was wrong—”
“You can’t run for the rest of your life because you think the boogeyman wants you. Especially when the boogeyman is a dumb fuck.”
“I’m not going to run anymore,” she promised, evidently sensing my root concern there. No way could I survive her leaving us now that she was mine. Before, it would have been impossible. I’d have had no alternative but to follow her, but now? The thought of us being in any way apart was too unbearable for words.
I knew that, at first, after a claiming, the male was always a little heavy handed. Ultra-possessive, a control freak.
But I wasn’t feeling aggressive in that sense.
I just… The way she’d come to us, her threats were real. Living.
Someone had done this to her. Someone had made her this way, and even though I was grateful for her presence in my world, I couldn’t deny that the danger to her brought something out in me that had always been under the surface before.
I was an enforcer for the pack. I was a protector by nature and choice, but this?
Another level.
She was mine.
No one would touch her.
Ever.
Not her father, not a stray alpha who was trying to fuck with the politics in the pack.