190

190
The road back to Moonblood felt like it would never end.
Part of it was the long, winding detour we had taken to stay out of Bloodfang's path. Another part was the simple truth that neither Rowan nor I had ever sat behind a wheel in our lives. Cassius used the rest stops as lessons, walking me through the basics of driving. It looked easy from the passenger seat   but gripping that wheel with a steel giant beneath me and the open highway stretching ahead? My nerves said otherwise.
The oncoming traffic scared me most. Just two thin yellow lines stood between life and disaster. It felt like a dare the road kept making.
Luca and I filled the quiet miles talking through our bond. He told me about his father's games, the whispered threats, the carefully planted doubts meant to make Luca believe his siblings were suffering because of him. He also shared news from the investigators he'd hired. Their search had turned up little, but not nothing. Most wolves from my mother's pack, the Winter Wind, had been wiped out when Denraider crushed them. Yet the investigators had a thread to pull   one surviving packmate, still out there somewhere. That was their next destination, and Luca and I both urged them forward.
Still, something sat uneasy beneath our bond. Every time I reached for it, Luca slipped away from the question. The connection between us was deep, but apparently not deep enough to make him an open book.
Rowan was a different kind of silence. He rode in the truck bed in wolf form the entire journey   wouldn't even shift for meals. He'd simply vanish into the tree line whenever we stopped and return on his own, belly full. Cassius said that was just his way. But it felt like distance to me. Deliberate distance.
By the time we were half a day from home, I couldn't keep pretending it didn't bother me. Rowan had fought hardest against the bond between us. And now he was the one pulling away. Was he regretting it?
When Cassius finally pulled off the road to stretch, I slipped out of the cab, ducked behind the truck, and shed my clothes. Rowan had once used his wolf form as a wall between us, a way to keep me at a distance before I could shift. That wall is gone now.
He had already vanished into the trees by the time I landed on four paws. I went after him.
"Rowan, why are you shutting me out?" I pushed through the pack bond.
He could hear me. I knew it.
"Selena, don't wander too far," Cassius called after me, his voice pressing into my mind like a quiet warning. "Your heat is close. Even with two mates, you're still a target."
A frustrated growl rumbled up my throat. That was always the way something pulled me back when I needed to move forward. I pushed deeper into the trees anyway, following the trail I'd seen Rowan take.
"You can't hide from your own pack, Rowan."
"Selena…"
"I know words don't come easy for you   but if you don't talk to me, I'll "
"I know I frighten you. That's what this is."
I felt him before I saw him. His presence filled the forest like a storm waiting to break. Then those golden eyes found me through the shadows, steady and unblinking.
"Is this about what happened with the Bloody Dawn pack?"
"Yes."
I thought back to that moment   the rogue charging, everything moving too fast. "I wasn't afraid of you, Rowan. I "
A sharp crack made me spin. Lightning was threading through my fur   more than I had ever seen before. The sight of it sent a cold tremor through me. Not the lightning itself, but what it meant. Multiple mates was unusual enough. But this? This was something else entirely.
I wasn't a normal wolf. I had stopped pretending otherwise.
Hank had told me once that the power lived in my wolf half not the witch blood running alongside it. Looking at the light crawling across my coat, I believed him.
"See? Even your lightning names me a danger. I'm barely a man anymore, Selena. You shouldn't feel like you have to "
"Rowan." My growl cut clean through his words. "Don't. Don't you dare finish that. I chose you. My wolf chose you. And you of all people know   our wolves aren't something separate from us. They are us."
"We need to get back to the truck." Rowan turned and moved through the trees without waiting for me, his massive form weaving between the shadows. I fell into step behind him.
"You're running away from this conversation." I kept pace with him, refusing to let the distance grow. "Fine. I'll shift and ride in the truck bed with you for the rest of the trip. You won't be able to ignore me then."
A long, heavy exhale moved through our bond, the kind that carries years of something unsaid. He stopped beneath the drooping arms of a spruce tree and turned to face me.
"That rogue should never have gotten that close to you, Selena. I was right there, and I still let it happen. I let you down."
"Rowan, I'm okay. He caught everyone off guard   that's all. I wish I could've gotten answers out of him before it was over, but…" I let the thought go with a small shrug.
"I spent so long telling myself not to get attached. Not to care. But the second you were in danger "
"You protected me." I pushed warmth through the bond, wanting him to feel it. But something underneath his words still escaped me. Why had one frightening moment carved this wall between us?
"I failed you, Selena. I terrified you. And I live in fear of doing it again, of being the one who breaks you."
"What are you saying?"
"I…" He hesitated. "I don't know how to do this. How to be your mate. You're Bonded."
It was almost funny, in a painful way. He believed he scared me   but the truth was the opposite. Every time I moved an inch closer to Rowan, it felt like approaching a wild creature on the edge of the trees, one startled breath away from disappearing forever.
"I won't pretend I have all the answers either," I said carefully, choosing each word like stepping stones across deep water. "When the runes showed up on Lucien and me, none of us saw it coming. But we don't have to figure it all out today. We can learn together   what the witch bond means, what it looks like for a pack like ours."
His hackles rose slowly, making him look even larger and more untamed than usual. "And what if we learn, and it still doesn't "
"One step at a time," I said. "That's all I'm asking. I'm not asking for your bite, Rowan. I won't push for that until you're the one who wants to give it."
"It's not that simple. I've never  I don't " He exhaled. "It's complicated."
Something sharp cracked open inside me.
"Complicated?" The word tasted bitter. "Rowan, my entire life has been complicated. My aunt locked away my magic when I was barely old enough to understand what it was, then tried to rip it from me once I was grown. She cursed me twice. Bloodfang is still hunting me because Darius has convinced himself I belong to him. And when my wolf finally woke up, she came with lightning stitched into her fur." I let that sit between us for a moment. "I am something the old stories barely have a name for. So if complicated is your reason for pulling away " my voice dropped low " then maybe you and I were never going to work."
The moment those words crossed the bond, I wished I could reach in and drag them back.
Rowan went completely still.
I wanted him to argue. To snap back. To tell me I was wrong.
His silence was worse than anything he could have said.
"Cassius would have walked away from the Howling Evergreen just to run beside me," I said quietly, almost to myself. "Luca told me he'd follow me to the ends of the earth. Lucien took down an entire pack to make sure I was safe." I paused. "And you can't even take one step toward me."
"I don't know how to be what they are to you."
"I'm not asking you to be them." Exhaustion bled into my voice. "I chose you because you're nothing like them. That's the point, Rowan. The Howling Evergreen works because we're all different   and every one of them found a way to show up for me. Why won't you even try? Why won't you fight for this?"
His golden gaze held mine for a long moment, unreadable and deep.
"You're not wrong," he finally said. "But I'm still not ready to give you my bite. Or to take yours." A pause. "I'm not sure I ever will be. I don't know if I can carry a witch's mark and still be who I am."
He turned and disappeared back through the trees toward the highway.
With something cracked and bleeding quietly in my chest, I followed.
I got dressed without a word, climbed back into the cab, and shut the door. Cassius reached over and took my hand, pressing his lips to my knuckles. The look he gave me was soft with understanding.