Chapter 21 — My Heart Is a Detonator

Three men, two with guns, one that wanted to kill me, and one that had already killed. My odds did not look good, but that fact couldn’t register on anything but a superficial level. Everything in my body burned with the rage. It choked my throat, making it hard to talk, and my thoughts had slowed down to a single concept. I would not go another step with this man, no matter what he wanted of me.

Dad stepped forward, getting into my face. His hot breath washed across my cheeks as he started to shout. “Do you think this is a game? How many people out there are going to die because you decided this would be a fun way to get back at me?”

“The only person who’s died was that woman inside the station,” I said.

“You are so stupid,” my father said, laughing. He grabbed my arm to haul me up again, and that thing in my brain short circuited. I yanked my arm away from him or tried to. He had such a tight grip that I only managed to wrench my shoulder.

Instead of letting that stop me, I started kicking at my father’s legs. The first blow landed in his thigh, but the second took him in the side of his knee, and he stumbled back. “What the fuck?” he demanded, a snarl in his voice.

But he freed my arm.

One of the men behind me, shoved me. I stumbled forward and looked over my shoulder to see the man with his gun trained at the sky. The rifle looked large, and it should have worried me more. Unfortunately, I had moved past that. I’d moved past all the stupid things that had me standing stock still, terror filling my chest. The only thing that mattered fought with humans on the other side of this building. The life I had been promised, with the people that actually cared about me. Even Brook had stood up to fight for me, and I could hear the cawing of those asphalt birds from where I stood, all of them screaming.

“Start moving,” the man with his rifle said. He clearly thought that he looked intimidating enough that I should listen to him.

Fuck that.

Well, I did start moving, so I suppose I played into his desire slightly. I turned around and nailed him between the legs with one solid kick. I moved fast, but if he had been paying attention, or for a second thought that I would’ve done that, the move would’ve gone nowhere.

The idiot had been standing with his legs apart, just begging someone to nail him where it hurt. The second I did, he wheezed in a truly painful sounding breath, and started to fall forward. The other man went to grab me, but I dashed ahead. I didn’t know how to use one, but I thought that it would keep everyone off my back.

I grabbed the rifle and pointed it at the man in front of me.

The cop stopped, his muzzle aimed at my chest. I could see his face through the helmet and knew that he hadn’t been equipped to deal with this. He looked so young and stupid. That hadn’t stopped him from shooting Verdi, but he didn’t know if he could shoot me. A young girl, who probably looked frazzled and unsure of herself.

“Whilda!” my father shouted, getting to his feet. “You need to put that down, right this second!”

I swallowed thickly but kept the gun in my hands. I only had a few seconds before the other man got to his feet, and I just knew that he would come at me. Three against one, and my odds looked worse every second.

The man in front of me lowered his rifle and put his hands up. He didn’t have anything in them, but I could see so much threat on his person. He had a baton down on his hip, and a handgun on his other hip. I felt certain that he had a knife somewhere on him. He could kill me so easily.

Having his hands up in the air didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.

“Okay… okay,” the man said. “You’re scared, I get it. But you really need to think about your next move, Whilda. It will determine what the rest of your life looks like. I understand that you got in over your head, and now you’re just trying to keep yourself afloat. If you do anything with that gun, we will not be able to help you. Right now, you can get away with a misdemeanor, with the right lawyers and the right people trying to help you. I’m sure plenty of people would testify for you.”

I shifted to the side, and the man compensated me, trying to stay directly in front of me.

“You made some mistakes. It happens to all of us. And sometimes, those mistakes, they can have repercussions that we never thought of. Like having a Nightmare grab you and refuse to let you come home.”

I shifted again, and the man followed me a second time.

“They didn’t grab me,” I said, to keep him talking. “I went with them.”

“I’m sure it seems like that,” the man agreed, nodding along like he talked with an idiot four-year-old. “They probably said all the right things, locked you up somewhere, who knows. Your mind is tricking you into thinking that they are the safest option for you, but they aren’t. It’s not too late to fix all the things that you’ve done.”

My feet kept moving, and the man kept following me, trying to maintain eye contact.

“But you need to really think this through, Whilda. Think about all the things that you’d be giving up. Your father over there, he loves you so much. He’s been worried about you. Every day, he’s come down to the station in person, to see if we found anything new on your case. That’s not the kind of love that you find every day, you know? I don’t think you’d want to give that away so easily.”

I’d trade it for a box of rusted nails at this point.

“And look where he is now. He insisted that he come with us, to talk with you. He said that he’d be able to talk you down.”

It took all my feeble willpower not to give a condescending look as he tried to trick me. I couldn’t, because I had to keep shifting my feet over and over. I had to make the movements look nervous and unsure, rather than purposeful.

“I don’t want to come back,” I said.

“If you don’t, then you’ll be missing out on a lot in your life,” the man said. “Your father will be all alone, and one day, so will you. You’ll wake up and realize what a horrible decision you made, and you’ll want to fix it. You’ll want to fix it so badly, but it won’t matter in the long run, because you can’t. You’ll never get to see him again.”

I stopped my shifting and looked up at the man. His eyes brightened, clearly thinking that he had made some progress with me. I could practically see the thoughts rushing through his head, trying to find the next phrase that would make me pause and listen to him.

So, it must have surprised the hell out of the man when I said, “That’s kind of what I’m hoping for.”

I lifted the butt of the rifle and brought it down on the crown of his partner’s head. He had still been writhing around on the ground, trying to get over the pain I’d given him. When I struck him in the head, using all the power that I could muster up, it cracked against the sidewalk. He went limp, and blood started to pour from the wound I’d delivered.

Without looking at the man I might’ve killed, I lifted the gun back up, so that it aimed at the other officer. He’d lifted his own gun to aim but stopped before pulling the trigger. He wouldn’t dare, not with me aiming at him. Not that I would want to fire. I didn’t know how to use this thing, and I thought that it would dislocate my shoulder. Even holding it for longer than a few seconds had my arms wanting to shake.

The officer kept glancing at his partner, and he looked pale behind his mask. “Why would you do something like that? We can’t help you now… why would you… You’ve ruined your life.”

“She did that the second she left my house,” my father said, also looking down at the man on the ground. He shook his head. “There is no saving her.”

“Why…” the man said. He couldn’t seem to peel his eyes off the guy on the ground. He still breathed, so I hoped that he didn’t die.

The other officer started to lower his gun, as if he couldn’t hold it up anymore.

I took my chance and threw my rifle at him. It collided with his chest in a mad clatter, and the man started to go down. I rushed forward and kicked both of the guns out of the way, hoping like hell they wouldn’t randomly go off. This had to break every gun safety protocol he had been taught.

The two rifles skittered across the ground, making a shit ton of noise on the way.

I shoved the officer in the chest and hooked my leg around his foot at the same time. Both of us went stumbling backward. I landed on his chest, and started to beat him about his head frantically, like I could crack open his skull by doing that.

My father grabbed me by the hair and pulled me away from him. “Stop!” he shouted, so loud that I felt the tremble in my ears.

I didn’t stop.

Now that I couldn’t hit the man, I started to kick. I got him in the stomach and the chest, making it hard for him to breathe.

Dad hauled me backward and threw me. I hit the asphalt shoulder first, and pain rushed through my entire arm. I didn’t bother letting the pain stop me, rolling onto my hands and knees.

Dad advanced on me, his eyes burning like mad. Each step that he took, I felt my chance at freedom getting smaller and smaller. In my head, Kier’s house loomed large, looking like everything that I ever wanted. It had the shelves of books, and the people that made me feel safe and secure. I could hear Amber laughing and Clementine giving a dry, scientific answer to something that Aiden wanted to know.

This man came toward me, and he would take that all away. He would lock me up somewhere he never had to look at me again, and he would do it without caring. I wouldn’t matter to him in the least… because I never mattered to him. Not in the way that I should have. He had spent my entire life being this looming threat, this dangerous thing that I had to avoid.

I got my feet under me as that rage beat just behind my heart. When I knew my legs would remain steady, I launched myself at my father, the man who had given me life. The two of us collided and went over backwards. We hit the ground together, and I shoved my knee into his stomach.

Dad threw an awkward punch into my side. Awkward, but still powerful. Pain pulsed through my ribs for a second, but I knew that they hadn’t been cracked. I’d lived through that before. The pain would’ve been familiar.

I punched my father in the face, right in his nose. It broke underneath my hand, and I felt the crunching of it down to my soul.

Dad hollered, throwing his hands up and over his face. I scrambled off him, rushing toward one of the guns. That voice in my head, the one as quiet as the wind, kept saying that I knew what I had to do. And I did.

For me to keep living, for me to escape this hell, my father had to die.

The officer reached for me, and I reacted without thinking. My foot collided with his face so hard that I felt the reverberation all the way up to my hip. He fell backward, not even screaming. The man didn’t make a sound as he rolled onto his back.

Still scrambling, I grabbed one of the guns, and whipped around, using it as a bludgeon. My father had just been starting to rise, and I smacked him upside the head. He fell to the ground, coughing and choking on the blood that had started to drain down the back of his throat.

I pushed forward and lifted the rifle over my head. I brought it down on his back with as much power as I could. He hit the ground, flat on his chest, and the wheezing sound started to turn into a coughing laugh.

Dad rolled over and stared up at me from the ground. His eyes looked bloodshot and rheumy, but the smile on his face didn’t waver in the least. “You are a stupid little girl,” he said. “Just like your mother was when we met. I told her a thousand times, don’t get pregnant. Don’t you dare get pregnant, because I didn’t want her around. She was this whiney, annoying woman, just like you. And then she did it. She got pregnant. She probably told you a thousand times about how she left to keep you safe, but in reality? I wanted her gone. I only kept seeing you, because I wanted that stupid bitch to remember what she had done and all the mistakes that she made.”

I stared down at my father and shook my head. “I’ve got a gun in my hand, and you’re saying these things? What’s wrong with you?”

My father smiled.

“You think I won’t kill you?”

“You’re going to do whatever the fuck you want, just like your mother did. She was nothing but a stupid whore, looking for someone to save her. Just like you.”

It felt like he wanted to worm his way into my head, but I didn’t know why. He laid on the ground, and I stood above him with a gun. Did he think that pissing me off would turn out well for him? Or did he not care anymore?

“You should have left me alone,” I said.

My father laughed. “You’re right. I should have left you alone. I should have thrown you to the wolves, and watched you suffer. But you belong to me, and I wanted to make sure you remembered that the next time you went whining to someone about how unfairly I treated you. Such a brat.”

The same words that he had used on me my entire life. Stupid. Selfish. Dumb. Brat. Whore. They had worked their way into my head and made a home there. They’d built a camp and waited until the worst moments to come out and poke at me. To prod me into thinking they were true. Weak. Useless. Disaster. They had circled my head so many times that they left me dizzy with the certainty that I would never be anything else. Spoiled. Destructive. Annoying.

I lifted the gun and turned it around to point at my father. He stared at the muzzle with a self-satisfied smile on his face. “You think you can handle that thing? You’re dumber than I thought. In about four seconds, more cops will come running out here, and you’ll never get away from them.”

I didn’t know anything about rifles. Just that they had a lot of power to them. Going under the assumption that the kick back would be a bitch, I aimed for my father’s stomach. It might take him awhile to die, but that had to be better than hearing his voice anymore.

“Is this what you are now?” he asked. “You’re going to become a killer, because, what? You can?”

Because I can’t do this anymore, and you’ll never go away. You’ll hunt me down until I’m dead or dying, and then you’ll laugh in my face. You’ll laugh and say that I couldn’t even run away right.

“You will always be pathet—”

I fired.

The butt of the gun slammed into my shoulder so hard that I stumbled back. The shot had gone wild, but I’d aimed for my father’s stomach. The bullet had gone through his throat. Blood sprayed out from the wound in a starburst pattern, and he made a sad choking sound. I marveled that he could look so surprised after he had been taunting me the way he had.

I stepped closer and looked into his eyes as more blood flowed from his throat. He started to go limp, his eyes staring at nothing. The light faded from them, and his chest stopped working.

The gun dropped to the ground, and I kicked it away.

My father still didn’t move.

Tears touched my eyes, and the rage that I had been coasting off of drifted away. My father… died. He laid there, dead, and I had done that to him. I’d shot a gun and made sure that he wouldn’t ever bother me again. More tears flowed down my cheeks, and my chest started to feel tight.

I backed away from the body—the freaking body that I had put on the ground, the body that I had created. My foot caught on the leg of one of the other officers, and I went over backward, landing hard on my ass. I scrambled away from him, and panicked, thinking that maybe I’d killed one of them by accident.

But no, both men still breathed.

Just my father laid dead.

Whilda! I heard Kier shouting in my head. I covered my head with my arms, trying to escape the sound.

His powerful body landed in front of mine in a crouch, making me think he had jumped off something. Like maybe the roof. Kier still had his beast form on, but somehow, my brain still interpreted him as safety. When he came closer to me, I huddled into his chest, feeling so, so small.

What happened? he asked.

I looked at the men laying all around the parking lot, and felt my mouth go dry. “I fought back,” I said.

***

Emerald brought me a cup of the foulest coffee I’d ever put in my mouth. All the boys stared at me until I drained the entire cup, and I tried not to throw up after the last drop had been drunk. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Kier, who had changed into a new pair of pants and his old shirt after switching back to his human form, leaned forward. His hair looked longer now. Apparently shifting back to human always made it grow to his chin. He touched my cheeks and wiped at some of the tears that I couldn’t stop from flowing. “You didn’t do anything wrong, I promise you. Those men are on their way to their hospital right this second, and the cops have retreated. They know that they did something stupid in attacking us.”

“I know I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, staring into my empty cup. “I’m still sorry.”

Kier brushed his hands down my hair, and I wanted to huddle into his chest again, like I had done in the back parking lot. I’d felt safe there, like nothing could touch me. A dangerous illusion, at best, but something that I still craved with my entire being. I had to settle for shifting around so that I could almost touch him. He moved around, to sit next to me, and I thought seriously about crawling into his lap like a pathetic loser.

“What happens now?” I asked.

Forrest, sitting at his desk, sighed heavily. “Their captain has backed off. If I had to guess, he got orders from on high, saying that we needed to let you go. I don’t know if they will continue doing so, but they certainly are listening to their superiors right now. My bosses are telling me to keep you safe at all costs, so even if they attack again, we’ll give them another show.”

None of the Nightmares had been hurt. The others, Brook included, had gone to the back room to catch some sleep. I didn’t want to sleep ever again, because whatever images lurked on the backs of my eyelids wouldn’t be pleasant. I already saw my father whenever I blinked. Right before he died, his eyes had looked the worst to me. I kept seeing that, over and over.

My hand started to shake, and I put the empty cup down on the table. “Do you think that they will?” I asked. “Come after me again, I mean?”

“No,” Forrest said.

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really. Sometimes, humans who live in pretty calm towns or cities, they forget that we’re more than capable of killing them. They view our law-abiding nature as weakness and decide to test us. It only takes one lesson for the humans to back off for years. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

I breathed out, leaning against my seat. Kier brushed my hair out of my face, and said, “I won’t let anything touch you, even if they did attack again.”

A small smile stretched my mouth. He’d said that about fourteen times since finding me in the parking lot. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that he felt guilty for not being there for me. The first time he apologized, I told him that I’d taken care of it, and everything would be fine. The second time, I promised him that I just needed to sleep or something. After that, I knew that his guilt wouldn’t go away, so I just tried to hold his hand.

That seemed to work the best.

“Your superiors aren’t mad at me?” I asked.

Forrest shook his head. “No, they’re mad at the human police, and want to teach them another lesson. I think it would be best to avoid that for the time being. Why don’t you two get some sleep before nightfall?”

Kier stood up, dragging me with him. Emerald left at some point, and I hadn’t even heard him open the door. Maybe I did need some sleep.

I paused by the door and looked over my shoulder. “I know that I’ve asked three times, but… Are you sure that those men are going to be okay? The ones that I hit in the head?”

Forrest’s eyes softened, making him look almost paternal. I didn’t like that but maintained eye contact. “Every report that I’ve read said that they’ll be fine and out of the hospital in a couple of days. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’ll tell you that as many times as you need to hear it. Okay?”

My heart relaxed, some tension running out of my chest. “Thank you,” I said.

Kier took my hand, his strong fingers holding on tightly. He brought me out of the room, and once we got into the hallway, he paused to hold me. I rested my cheek against his chest, just like I had been daydreaming about minutes before. “Are you okay?” he asked, rubbing his hands down my back. “And forgive me for the stupid question. I just have to know.”

I looked up at him. “Yeah. I think I am okay.”

He breathed out in relief.

Interlude Kier My alarm went off, and Whilda groaned. I blinked awake only to find I’d crushed the girl in the middle of the night. I lifted off her, and she groaned again, this time sounding even more unhappy.

“I have to turn the alarm off,” I said.

“You should,” Whilda agreed. “But you make a nice blanket.” She looked over her shoulder at me, and I felt the power of that look all the way through my chest. I wanted nothing more than to get back in the bed, and not move for the rest of the night. It would be nice to hold Whilda for the seven hours we should’ve been at school. Sadly, I had four monsters in the house who would disturb us.

I got out of bed and shut the alarm off.

Whilda sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Why is it across the room? I’ve been meaning to ask that.”

“Because that forces me to get out of bed to turn the damn thing off,” I said. “Also, it gives me the two second walk to keep myself from throwing it. I can’t tell you how many phones I’ve chucked at the wall.” I gestured to the wall by the door and wondered if I could still spot one of the many dents that I had put in the plaster.

Whilda smiled.

In the last week, she’d been getting much better. She still had bad dreams, which had prompted me to forcibly cuddle her in her sleep. Not that Whilda seemed to mind, but I also felt like I crushed her. She looked so small, especially curled up in our bed. I couldn’t fathom how she managed to take up so little space.

“We have to get ready for school,” Whilda said.

I blinked, and nodded, heading into the bathroom. I’d been doing that a lot more lately. Just staring at her. Most of the time, nothing bad came of it. Sometimes, though, sometimes I had to nearly beat my friends to death for making snide comments. I figured that it would be rude to leave their corpses behind, so I managed to control myself around them.

Plus, Whilda usually tugged on my hand, and it brought me down. I didn’t know what kind of logic created that. She could just ask me to calm down, and somehow, I would?

We hadn’t heard anything from the human police in about five days. The last thing we heard, they’d given us their documentation, stating that Whilda no longer had citizenship in their society. Some part of me worried that she would panic upon seeing that, but Whilda hadn’t been bothered. She just breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at me.

Everyone at school had finally gotten used to her, and they stopped their endless staring. Even Brook seemed more okay with Whilda, but I still hadn’t forgiven my aunt for her meddling. Even if it worked out in the end.

I showered and got dressed as quickly as I could and opened the bathroom door. Whilda still sat on the bed. She had one of the books I’d bought her sitting in her lap. She didn’t read it. She hadn’t even opened it. But I watched her fingers running along the edges, and her eyes looking into the distance. I’d catch that look in her eyes on occasion. The one that said she remembered what happened with her father and didn’t know how to feel about it.

We’d talked a lot about that, actually. We had this horrible thing in common, where we had both killed a parent. Or two, in my case. For Whilda, the weirdest part came from the fact that nothing changed. Inside, she felt different, but her world looked the same. She still went to school, read to Amber, played with my other siblings. The world still turned as if nothing had happened. For me, the weirdest part had been killing my parents with the full knowledge that the kids would be mine to protect after that. It had been taking the role as father that weirded me out.

Strangely enough, helping with the kids didn’t seem to bother Whilda in the least. In fact, she gave me an odd look when I asked if she minded.

I walked over to the bed and brushed her hair behind one of her ears. She jumped in surprise, and I waited to see if that surprise would turn to fear. When it didn’t, I said, “You okay?”

Whilda shook her head, as if to clear it, and said, “Yeah, I’m fine.” She jumped out of bed, and I watched her scurry into the bathroom without saying anything.

I had to be careful not to touch her when she didn’t expect it, because sometimes it triggered her. Then sometimes, like now, it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Shaking my head, I made the rounds upstairs, getting everyone up.

Amber insisted on picking her outfit for herself, so she ended up wearing an eye searing orange dress with blue shoes, and tights that had little ducks on them. Clementine threw a pillow at my head, and Aiden walked into his wall when I tried to wake him up. At least Ash just groaned out some profanity and told me to get the hell out. The kids started to make their way downstairs, already throwing demands for breakfast out at me. I heard several options, none of which went together.

I went to check on Whilda.

She had laid down on our bed again but seemed to be in the process of trying to yank up jeans that were too long for her. I’d bought her a couple of extra pairs, against her will, and had to settle on the tall jeans. I hadn’t thought it a problem until right then, while she struggled.

“You know they’ll just fall again, right?” I asked.

Whilda jerked around like someone had shocked her. She cleared her throat and shifted around. I noticed the blush in her cheeks and felt the overwhelming urge to make my way over to her for a kiss. Which we hadn’t done yet, so I stayed put. Unless Whilda told me that she felt comfortable with something, I wouldn’t do it.

“I know,” she said. “But I need to get them up, so that I can get my shoes on without the jeans getting caught… It made sense to me…”

I smiled and came further into the room. “Allow me to help,” I said, kneeling down. I got her feet in both shoes, without the jeans getting in the way. When I looked up again, Whilda’s cheeks had flushed once more, bringing some color to her face.

She squirmed. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make four different breakfasts and act like that doesn’t bother me.” I stood up, turning toward the door. I had to rearrange my features so that I didn’t look too irritated. Huntress knew that Amber would pick up on something immediately.

“Kier?” Whilda said.

I paused and looked over my shoulder.

She squirmed in her seat before standing up and coming toward me. I recognized the determined look she got in her eyes whenever she wanted to do something that gave her anxiety. That look appeared now, and I braced myself for anything. She could tell me that she wanted to leave, or that she didn’t want to be my mate. Hell, she could just say that she didn’t want to go to school that day, and it would give her anxiety. That asshole father of hers really fucked with Whilda’s head. No matter what, she felt like she did something wrong.

Whilda planted her hands on my shoulders and stood on her tiptoes to lay her lips against mine. The move surprised me, because I hadn’t gotten any indication that she’d been thinking about this. Normally, I would’ve known. She’d have given some kind of hint.

Instead of dwelling on that, I turned toward her fully. She squeaked when my hands landed on her hips, and I dragged her against my body. Everything about her felt soft and sweet. Her lips felt like velvet and tasted of her toothpaste. I could smell the soap that we shared and the shampoo coming from her hair.

Whilda stood on tiptoe again, pushing her mouth against mine harder. Her nails dug into my shoulders, but she could have flayed me alive, and I would’ve been fine with the pain.

I worked her mouth open, and Whilda complied easily. She had melted against me, becoming all soft skin and loose limbs.

I dragged my tongue across her bottom lip, and she made that squeaking sound again. It drove straight into my brain, threatening to drown me. My hands tightened on her sides, and I lifted her feet right off the ground.

She pulled away then, blinking. My head felt like fog had filled it. Whilda still had her arms around me, probably because she didn’t want to fall. I lowered her back to her feet, and she smiled. “Um… that was nice,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. Even with her feet on the ground, I didn’t want to lose contact with her. My hands remained on her hips, and the thought of letting go actually bothered me. I rubbed my thumb across the pocket of her jeans, wondering if the kids would notice if we didn’t come downstairs.

Whilda wiggled, and I dropped my hands.

She grabbed my shoulders again and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss me once more. It took a lot of willpower not to toss her on the bed and turn this into an appropriate make out session.

Something crashed downstairs, and Whilda dropped back to her feet. Her cheeks had heated, and I loved that look so much. “Um… you should probably go check on what that was.”

“Probably,” I agreed, brushing some hair out of her face. “On the other hand, I could stay in here, and we could continue to do this until the smell of fire became really concerning.”

“You could lose the house if it caught on fire,” Whilda pointed out.

“I could live with that,” I said, eyeing her mouth.

She smiled and ducked her head. When I couldn’t see those beautiful blue eyes anymore, I knew that I’d lost this round, and rocked back on my heels. “All right, I’ll make sure that we don’t lose the house. But know that I do this against my will. I’d much rather stay in here.”

“That’s good to know,” Whilda said, nodding.

I turned toward the door.

“Um, Kier?”

“Yeah?”

“If I… if I agreed to be your Chosen, would that have to change anything between us? Would we have to go faster or something?”

When I glanced over my shoulder, Whilda looked away, trying to hide her embarrassment through lack of eye contact. I walked right up to her, cupped her face, and tilted her head back so that she would look at me. “Nothing ever has to change if you don’t want it to,” I said. “We could be like this for the rest of our lives, and it wouldn’t bother me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then, I’d like to agree. Ya know… to being… um…”

I smirked. “My mate?”

Her cheeks got hot underneath my hands, and I brushed my thumbs down them.

“Yes.”

I rested my forehead against hers and thought of the thousands of things that I could’ve said. All of them would’ve been nice, sweet things that would’ve made Whilda uncomfortable. So, I settled for something simple. “You couldn’t have made my day better if you tried.”

She squirmed. “You should, uh, probably check on what happened downstairs. For safety purposes.”

“I love you,” I said, and turned away before she felt obligated to say it back. God knew that Whilda would feel guilty otherwise.

I’d opened the door when she said, “I love you, too.”