Chapter Seventy-Three

Sleepy light brown eyes peered up at him, the gold surrounding the pupils bold and appearing extra dilated.

Relief and awe coursed through him as he brushed his fingers through the tangled knots of her silver hair.

“Hi,” he whispered, leaning forward, his gaze fixed on her.

Her eyelids fluttered close for a moment, and he feared that she had once again drifted off before they fluttered back open once again.

“Hi,” she replied, her tone soft yet scratchy due to disuse.

His gaze raked her form, starting from the tips of her toes up to the beginning of her hairline, checking to make sure that everything was in perfect condition before he allowed his gaze to meet hers once again, meeting soft brown eyes that he thought he was never going to see again.

Need coiled in his gut at that moment, a hunger unlike anything he had ever experienced assaulting him until all he knew and could think of was her and the heat emanating from her body, where they were pressed together.

The hand raking through her hair froze its movement as he swallowed hard, fighting against the onslaught of emotions that were threatening to destabilize him.

Now was not the time for what his body was demanding. He needed to set some things straight, and she needed sustenance, not a mating.

His free hand moved against her cheek, cupping her jaw reverently, his thumb brushing over her bottom lip. “I didn’t think you’d wake up soon,” he stated, letting his guard down, and allowing her to see the true extent of his fear. “When you shifted back into human form and didn’t wake up, I…” he trailed off, his thumb pressing hard on her lip as he took his gaze off of her, a growl escaping from his lips.

He puffed out a breath, not wanting to risk scaring her when she had just gone through a cycle of healing–something she wouldn’t have gone through if it wasn’t for him.

“You saved my life, I….”

“And I would do that again, thousand times over, with no regrets,” she pressed her hand to his jaw, effectively cutting off his tirade as she rose to a sitting position and pressed a soft kiss against his lips. “You don’t have to feel guilty about it. I made a choice to jump in front of you, Ryder, because you’re my mate. That’s what mates do, they protect each other, always and forever.”

“But…”

“No buts,” she cut him off again, shaking her head gently. “You need to get over it.”

Ryder sighed against her palm, forcing the guilt and the innate need for blood and war over her attack to the back of his mind.

She was right, mates protected each other, always and forever. But what she forgot to mention was that they didn’t put each other in harm’s way.

His decision to send her off had been the catalyst for her own decision to jump in the line of fire and take the bullet that had been meant for him.

If he hadn’t formulated the plan to have her reunite with her family just so he could hide her from his father, then none of what had happened would have happened.

His father was something he also needed to talk to her about.

“There’s something we need to talk about,” he stated, echoing his thoughts, his tone carrying a steel edge that surprised even him. But he wasn’t all that surprised, a lot had happened–a lot of things that he was still finding hard to process–between the moment she had woken in her wolf form to when she had shifted back into her human form.

He had no idea how she was going to take the information he was about to dump in her lap, but he knew that it was a conversation that they needed to get out of the way if they were to start building toward the future he had been planning.

“Can’t it wait till later?” she asked, her tone breathy, as she ran her fingers over his very naked chest.

“No,” he replied, his tone coming out as a growl, as he caught her hands in one of his large palms when they began to trail down towards his boxers. “It can’t.”

She pouted, her pupils wide and innocent, as she gazed at his body with open interest and need.

And for a moment, Ryder thought about indulging her for a while, but the rational part of his brain knew that they needed to have that conversation before anything else could happen between them.

He felt guilty enough about being the reason why she was in a coma for weeks, and if he mated with her without telling her the truth, then guilt wasn’t the only thing he would be feeling, but betrayal also.

He would betray her trust if he continued to hide the truth from her. So, before his libido could get the better of him, he parted his lips and began to tell all that he had learned about her captivity and his father’s hand in the destruction of her family.

Saffron listened attentively as Ryder recounted all that she had missed in the past two weeks she had been out, the desire she felt slowly ebbing away, the more Ryder talked, fury taking hold of her.

She carefully absorbed the information about how his father had manipulated her mother’s mate into killing her, how he had basically pushed her into falling in love with a human and having an affair with him, how he had whispered about the said affair to her husband’s ears, how all the torture sessions Saffron had experienced was because he had been trying to force her wolf out, just so he could claim her as his mate, thereby earning the right to challenge Silver Moon Pack’s Alpha for his territory, and how he had been working on enhancing the werewolf genes using some drugs, hence the birth of the mutations Alex Vaughn had told her to warn Ryder about.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, no longer caring to listen to what Ryder was saying. It was a lot to process, and she had had enough of listening to the carefully orchestrated plans of his father, which had broken one pack, and almost led to the end of another.

She looked down, realizing for the first time since she had woken up that she was gloriously naked and that they had been having a life-changing conversation while she had been wearing her birthday suit.

Ryder must have really been worried if he hadn’t been moved by her naked state.

She turned back to her mate and stared at him, shutting him off with one look as she rose to her feet.

“You aren’t your father, and I will not let you blame yourself for what he has done. We can only move forward from here on out and heal whatever wounds he has inflicted, but for that, we need to be able to let go of the past. I will never forgive him for what he has done, but I will not let that get in the way of my future,” she said sternly, her expression turning soft as she met his gaze. “My future with you.”

Ryder’s eyes shimmered with emotion, and though he hadn’t said a word, his eyes told her exactly what his lips were unable to say.

A passionate thirst, unlike anything before, slammed into her, and without thinking, she launched herself against him, knocking him against the mattress with a loud thump.

His eyes widened at her bold move, but she didn’t let him voice out any concern or rebuttal because her lips were on his, and he was helpless to refuse her.