Chapter 23

Noah:

My family gathered in the sunroom. Most of the kids had piled onto Reagan, but I had Clare lying on my chest, her head tucked under my chin. They’d been asleep when we’d gotten home, but Pippa sat up at the table, foot tapping on the floor. She didn’t let go of Reagan for ten full minutes.

“Pass the cookies,” Lizzie said, holding a hand out to Pippa, reaching across Reagan. “I don’t want the chips anymore.”

“I want the chips,” Simon said, poking his head up from a pile of pillows. Pippa promptly handed him the chips, while Lizzie got the cookies. One fell on Reagan’s face, which she decided to eat.

“I earned it,” she mumbled around the cookie.

Clare grumbled, shifting around so she could get comfortable. I pushed the blanket off after feeling her forehead with my wrist. Her temp was fine, but a wolf shouldn’t have had any chance of a fever—unless they’d been injured with some kind of magic that kept us from healing.

“You wanna be in a bed?” I asked her.

With a frown and closed eyes, she nodded.

“Okay, I’ll bring you up for a nap.”

When I stood, Allison wanted to come too. I bent down, picking her up with my free arm. I had two girls cuddled up to me, both with their heads on my shoulders.

I took the kids up to my room, laying them both on my bed. Allison fell asleep before I’d even gotten upstairs, and Clare had been a goner since I’d asked if she wanted to move. When I laid them down, the kids scooted closer to each other. Clare put a protective arm around Allison, and I pulled a blanket over both of them.

“Tell me again how you hit her head,” Lizzie said as I stepped back into the sunroom. “Was there a lot of blood?”

“You don’t have a scratch on you,” Jamie said. “How is that even possible? No offense, but you should be in rough shape.”

“I know…” Reagan had a line between her eyebrows when I walked back around the couch again. She stared at nothing, the room glowing dim with the lamps on my desk.

“It’s kinda weird,” Pippa said, turning to face Reagan. “Alex is pretty ruthless. She got kicked out of public school for getting into fights after her mom was killed. That’s why she lives with her aunt and uncle.”

“Did she hurt a lot of humans?” Reagan asked.

“Lots,” Pip said.

I sat back on the couch, everyone adjusting around me. Reagan picked up my arm and put it around her shoulders so she could rest her head on me. She didn’t take my hand, and I had to ask myself if that was because we’d not gotten a chance to work everything out.

“What happened after you kicked Alex’s butt?” Simon asked. “Did everyone clap?”

“No one clapped,” Reagan said. “After it was all over, they took Alex to get healed up and then everyone left. It was nothing to celebrate.”

“A little.” Pippa’s nose wrinkled with a smile. “She tried to humiliate you in front of the pack, and you went full beast on her. I could only imagine the one thing that could have made it better was if you people had fucking let me go with you.”

“Mouth,” I said, pointing at her in warning.

Pippa stuck her tongue out at me. “I mop your floors. I have every right to curse.”

“Not in front of the kids.”

“Most kids in my classes curse,” Jamie said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to me.”

The kids went back and forth on the merits of cursing, which I didn’t like one bit. I had a rule that you couldn’t curse until you were thirteen, but I didn’t think I would be able to keep the kids in line.

“Pip,” Reagan said, her eyes on me. “Could you bring the kids upstairs? I need some time with your brother.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

“I don’t want to leave,” Simon said. “We have all the snacks.”

“When Reagan tells you to do something—” I began.

She patted my leg, getting up. “No, let’s just go upstairs.”

“You sure?” Pippa asked.

“Yup.” Reagan took me by the arm, tugging me to my feet and out of the room.

We moved through the dark house and I had no problem keeping steady on the path. Reagan walked me into her room, only switching on the bedside lamp she had.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“Not really. What gave it away?”

Her arms crossed. “I can feel it when there’s something wrong with you. It’s like a twinge in my chest. The kids were talking, and something changed. What was it?”

I bowed my head and sat on the edge of the bed. “It made me think about when I was a kid, stepping out of line with Dad. I remember my punishments, and what it felt like to break a rule and get caught. I remember what it was like to look in his eyes when I knew pain was coming. So it makes me glad that the kids can outright defy me to my face. It means they aren’t afraid. Pippa can mouth off all she wants, or get pissy about not being allowed to do all the things she thinks she should be able to do. She doesn’t flinch when I look at her.”

“Of course she doesn’t. How could she ever look at you and think you were capable of hurting her?”

My chest ached like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. “It’s easy to say that now. Things change.”

“Not that.” She sounded so sure. I wished I could have been.

“My dad wasn’t always… the way he was at the end. My mom used to tell me stories about how he wouldn’t put me down, carrying me everywhere around the house. He would bring me to the town center, holding me while he worked. I had toys in his office, and I’d play while he sat at his desk.”

Reagan smiled. I might have been smiling too. It could be so, so easy to forget the hurting when you let yourself sink into the prologue. Everything had been simpler then. Softer. Kinder.

“He loved me,” I said. “I have pictures of him playing with me, looking at me…”

“The way you look at the kids?”

I nodded. “You wonder how it gets there. To the part that hurts. You wonder how someone could love you so much, believing truly that you are the absolute center of the world, and then use your head to break a closet door. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a mate, but I know with irrevocable certainty that there’s not a thing that could happen to me that would make me hurt my kids.”

Reagan had tears in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I don’t think there’s a chance those kids ever thought you would hurt them. And I don’t believe you’re capable. There was something wrong with your father. Something broken.”

“I guess there was. Whatever it might have been, the kids at least don’t know. Pippa doesn’t even know half the stuff Dad did to me. It didn’t get bad until Mom died, but he was careful about it. Wolves don’t bruise. Or, we’re not supposed to.”

Reagan looked outright angry, but she maintained her composure. “If your father were alive, I would kill him.”

“I would like to see that,” I said, meaning it.

“Do, um,” Reagan started a few silent minutes later. “Do you have to go call Lucy or something?”

“What? Why would I do that?”

She shrugged as if she had no idea, and yet… “Because you have I don’t know how many days left before the sacrifice, and you don’t seem to think you have a mate. Maybe it’s that you want a different one.”

“Five days.”

Reagan didn’t look pleased with my answer. She glowered. “Five days,” she repeated. “Yeah, so shouldn’t you be talking to Lucy then?”

“I called her last night, actually. Right before I came in to see you.”

“Oh?” Reagan said, her eyebrow raised. Funny, since it sounded like a ‘fuck you’ more than an ‘oh’. “What did you say to her?”

“That it wasn’t going to happen. I don’t feel anything for her.”

Reagan looked away from me. “What are you going to do then? Five days isn’t much time.”

“I know. I failed. Simple as that.”

Her eyes rimmed with tears as she cleared her throat. “So you would rather accept failure than have me be your mate?”

“You know it’s not that. I can’t be your mate. It has to be mutual for this to work, and you aren’t capable of the kind of magic we need.”

“You can say that all you want, but that’s not how it feels. Everything in me, it all points to you. It’s not just our Mend. It feels like you’re my mate.”

I wanted it to be true.. It would have made everything in my life a hundred times easier if I could have her be my mate. Every problem in my life would be solved.

“What exactly do you think I’m trying to do?” I asked.

“I have no idea. You kissed me, which makes me think that at least some part of you might want this. You need a mate and couldn’t find anyone, then I came along perfectly willing, and you say no. What am I supposed to think?”

“I wish you could be my mate,” I admitted. “It would save my pack.”

I hadn’t expected to see hurt in her eyes. “Is that the only reason you would want it? Do you look at me like I’m one of those girls in that file?”

I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “You know I don’t.”

“Then fucking tell me that. Stop talking about us like it’s some business deal and pretend for a few minutes that we’re just normal people. What would you do if I was nothing more than a girl you met one day, and you were just some guy living his life? What would you do with me then?”

Pure instinct took over when I pressed my mouth to hers. Reagan responded in an instant, her lips parting. It was more than kissing. Every movement I made, she matched, compensating for me. I reached for her hips, and she was already moving onto my lap. I went to cup her face, and she’d tilted it to give me room.

I felt her skin on my palm, and I didn’t feel fear. I didn’t worry I would hurt her. I didn’t wait for her to be disgusted, pulling away and not being able to look me in the eyes. She could feel that old worry, and it felt like she wanted to dispel it.

Reagan took my hands, putting them on the edge of her shirt. She curled my fingers around the hem, pulling back only to give me a knowing look. I yanked the shirt off of her before I tossed it onto the floor. She grinned, then pressed her mouth back to mine, pushing me onto the bed.

She could be mine. I knew that now. I only wanted Reagan, and she was mine for the taking. My wolf seemed convinced we already had her, getting angry with me when I denied it. He thought he knew better than I did. He didn’t consider the fact that it could mean the death of our people.

Reagan went for the button of my jeans for the second time in two days. For the second time in two days, I hated myself as I stopped her.

“We can’t,” I said.

She huffed, sitting up. “God, Noah, what do you think’s gonna happen? You have five days left. Do you hope you meet someone else in that time?”

“No. I just… I just want you.”

She gestured to her half naked self. “Here I am. It is what it is, so we might as well see it through. Like it or not, I’m your very best option for the sacrifice.”

But that wasn’t my only option. If I let someone challenge me and win, then it was a guarantee my pack made it through. I didn’t want it, but I might have needed it.

“We can’t,” I repeated.

Reagan took a long, slow breath. “You are the most frustrating person on this planet.”

She started pulling my sweater off me, ignoring my grunts and complaints. I’d misunderstood why she did it.

“And I’m sleeping in this,” Reagan said, holding the sweater up as she got off the bed.

“Okay,” I said.

“And I’m keeping it,” she added, eyebrows knit together with frustration.

“Okay.”

“Your job is gonna be to wear this when it stops smelling like you.”

“Okay.”

She glared at me again for some reason before she turned to head to the bathroom. On her way, she took her bra off and dropped it onto the floor. Next went the pants, leaving her in a pair of green panties with little caterpillar patterns on them. I only saw her backside before she went into the bathroom and shut the door. Anymore and I might have died.

Maybe death wouldn’t be the worst thing.

I needed to brush my teeth, so I went into the bathroom too. Reagan already had my sweater on, but that still left her legs bare as she brushed her teeth at the sink. I stared and I stared hard. Reagan noticed, looking over her shoulder at me before she bent down to spit into the sink.

Walking stiffly, I went to my side of the sink to start brushing my teeth. It went silent again, which didn’t do any good for anyone.

Reagan was on her way out before I said anything, stopping her in her tracks.

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” I said, the water rinsing my toothbrush clean.

“What?”

I took a breath. “You haven’t been out of that place for a month, and you already have a werewolf in love with you. It’s not fair.”

Her eyes went wide. Did she not already figure it out? It couldn’t have been news to her.

“You aren’t taking advantage of anything,” Reagan said. “I can decide for myself what I do and don’t want, regardless of where I came from. I want all the things life has to offer. That includes you.”

“It’s just really soon.”

“You might see it that way. I see it like I spent years missing out on the most basic of things, so now I’m playing catch up. I’m not naïve. I’m not exactly an expert on the outside world, but I can navigate a relationship. You and I have the same level of experience. So how are you taking advantage?”

I didn’t have anything to say.

Reagan hung on the doorframe, still watching me. “Whose room are you sleeping in tonight?”

“My bed is full.”

She nodded, then left.

The smart thing would have been to go into my room anyway. The safe thing. I knew exactly what would happen if I got into that bed. I did it anyway. I did it because of that.

Reagan faced away from me, the lights already turned out. I only wore my boxers, which was the most dangerous game I could play. Almost. It was even more dangerous that I hadn’t bothered to stop by the medical wing to get protection when I could feel my will slipping further and further away from resistance.

I laid on my back, waiting to feel tired. It didn’t happen. I had too much on my mind.

Grumbling with irritation, I gave in and put my arm around Reagan. She giggled at me, clearly amused. Then she pushed her butt against me, giving a wiggle.

My scent covered her. Our scents mixed together in this room. My room. Our home. I couldn’t escape it, and I didn’t want to.

I squeezed Reagan by the hip, making her look over her shoulder. “Hmm?”

I bent my neck, letting my nose trail a line behind her ear. She let out a breath, allowing me to take her scent in even deeper. It felt right, being surrounded by her.

My voice was low at her ear, and terribly desperate. “I want to touch you.”

Reagan turned onto her back, eyes on mine. “You can. I’m not the one with reservations. I’m sure about you.”

My head dipped. “I don’t know if it can be enough, you and me. If I fail them, then every life lost is on me.”

“I know.” Reagan put her hand on my face, holding me. “The moon is supposed to give you what you need. Maybe it gave us each other.”

I still didn’t know. I couldn’t make up my mind on anything.

“Okay,” Reagan said. “I get that everything is really complicated. All I want to do is make you feel better. We don’t have to talk about it. We don’t have to figure anything out tonight. If you want to just touch me, then you can.”

“Reagan…”

“One night,” she said firmly. “I’ll give you one night where I don’t push, but I’m not going to accept halves. Either we’re together or we’re not when the sun comes up. Separate beds, separate rooms. I’m either your mate, or I’m not. I can’t let myself be open to even more heartbreak. I’ve lived through enough.”

She had. I knew she had.

“I love you,” I whispered.

Reagan put her hand around the back of my neck, pulling me down for a kiss. I lost myself in it, being selfish and turning my mind off. Or, I tried to. The wolf didn’t go away, growling at me for being foolish. He said Reagan was his mate, and I was too stupid to accept it.

My hand found her thigh, the warmth and softness making me lose my breath. I forgot to breathe when Reagan’s legs opened, her nails pressing harder into my neck. I listened to her heart, hearing the steady but fast beats. Ours matched.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Reagan kissed me again, mumbling a yes against my mouth.

I wished the only thing in my mind could have been Reagan. My thoughts flooded with warnings, reminding me that I could only ruin. Reagan didn’t know it yet. If she did, then she wouldn’t have let me near her.

“I love you,” I said again, trying to breath as my hand slipped under the thin fabric between Reagan’s legs. She tensed, gasping. I waited, worried she finally felt the wrongness in me. But then Reagan adjusted, moving around until she was comfortable.

The wolf felt triumphant with every gasp and whimper Reagan made. I could hardly pay attention to him, waiting for that awful moment to come. No one would be this close to me and not feel something wrong. Especially Reagan, who could search inside of me like she had the key to my soul. Worse, she had the other half of it.

I kept waiting, braced for pain. Instead, I got pain of another kind when Reagan’s nails tore little wounds into my shoulder as she bit down on her lip. It was over, and then she let me hold her.

The wolf went quiet and I didn’t know why.. I saw it then, this silent, calm hurting. It was the way peroxide stung when you put it in a wound. You knew it was helping, but the healing hurt. Bittersweet might have been a better way to put it. I’d brought something good from something awful. I didn’t know what to do with that fact. I couldn’t tell what I was feeling. It was like fire at the same time it was the water that cooled it. Like sunlight, and a pleasant burn when you look up at the sky on a clear day. It was sugar and rest and the glow I felt when Reagan took my hand.

Happy? My wolf offered.

Maybe, but how would I know?