Ryan
I leave Aviva in the bedroom and immediately walk outside into the cool, rainy morning air. I clutch the railing of the deck and hang my head, trying to steady my thundering heart. I can’t go into the village like this. I can barely walk in a straight line with this ache between my legs, but I sure as fuck can’t go back inside because I’ll rip her dress off and pin her to the bed like I wanted to only moments ago.
That little sliver of restraint is all I have left at this point.
I run my fingers through my hair, now wet from the rain. A thick fog hugs the valley, and only the outlines and pitched roofs are visible as my gaze sweeps the village. I had a long list of things to do this morning that are nearly impossible in my condition, and it’s my own damn fault. I didn’t mean to fall asleep with Aviva in my arms last night, but I did, sucked into a kind of peace I don’t think I’ve ever known, and now I’m paying the price in droves.
I can’t get the taste of her out of my mouth, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to. I think of awful things to try to calm myself down, to ease this raging erection that has only one thing on its mind, the woman in my bed. My fucking wife.
I close my eyes and imagine the worst possible thing I think could happen to me; being told Sydney doesn’t want to be king, and suddenly I’m the heir apparent to my father’s title. Even the thought of wearing a stuffy tuxedo and mingling with the rich, wealthy, and powerful Alphas of Crescent Falls does nothing for my condition, because I think of laying Aviva down on the couch in the library and fucking her brains out, her moans echoing throughout the castle, all while she wears a pretty little tiara in her wild hair..
I think of her falling while hunting that goat, and thankfully, that does the trick. With a long, drawn out sigh, I trudge down to the pack house and try not to think of Aviva for the rest of the morning.
Andrew derails that plan the moment I step into his blacksmith shop, of course.
“Well, well, well–”
“Shut the fuck up,” I say by way of greeting and sit down on an old crate. He takes off the thick gloves he wears while working with the forge and sets them down on his work table. It’s not even 8:00 in the morning, and he’s already smeared with soot.
“Bright eyed and bushy tailed as usual,” he grumbles, grabbing his old Wellington University thermos and drinking deeply. The logo is nearly worn off the side of the burgundy colored thermos. It’s strange seeing it here, thousands of miles away from the campus where I met him.
“That thing I asked you to do?” I begin, crossing my arms over my chest as he looks me up and down. I roll my slightly swollen lower lip between my teeth and wonder, as he scans my face, if he can tell how I chose to wake up this morning.
In heaven. Burying my face between Aviva’s legs.
“Aviva’s bow? Yeah, it’s nearly done. I have Seth working on the woodwork because I don’t know shit about it, you know. His dad has him working the saw mill, and he’s getting pretty good at it. He’s talking about building himself a house now.”
I picture eighteen-year-old Seth in my mind, one of our packs only teenagers. His family came to me a few years ago wanting to leave the Crescent City pack and join mine, and I accepted them, which was honestly the beginning of my issues with our neighbors in Crescent Falls. Seth’s dad, Mark, is one of maybe three men older than forty in my entire pack, and he ranked pretty high in the Alpha of Crescent City’s ranks.
Seth is also one of three teenage boys with no women around close in age. At all.
“He wants to build a house so he can have a wife,” I deadpan, meeting Andrew’s gaze as he slips his gloves back on and adjusts the thick, heat proof apron over his chest and waist. I notice the doorknobs and hinges on his worktable, some still smoking from being pulled from the fire. Summer is our only chance to build, and it’s all hands on deck.
“Look, people have been talking, especially the men. You came home with a wife and… for a lot of us, it’s been two years, you know, since…”
“I get it. But I don’t want people thinking this is going to become the norm. We’re not in the Deadlands to take women from the tribes.”
“But if our guys started paying bride prices?” Andrew examines one of the hinges, taking a particular interest in it. “For example, if I paid Freya’s bride price, she could stay. Be my wife.”
I sigh and run my hand over my face. Maybe staying in bed and exploring every sweet inch of Aviva’s body wasn’t such a bad idea despite the fact that she’s not, and will never be, mine. “We’ll be going to the Harvest Festival as a pack this fall. It’s likely some of our people will find their mates there, and next year, after the snow melts, the Roguelands hold a mating festival during the spring.” I didn’t realize bringing home a wife was going to cause such a splash, honestly, but I get it. My pack has a lot of single men of mating age who are building their own houses, farming their own land, living the dream I sold them years ago, with empty houses and cold beds to show for it. My guys… they want families. They want companionship and meaning.
“Just putting the idea into your head. No rush.”
“Well it sounds like there’s a rush.”
“Have you had any coffee today, like, at all?” Andrew toys with his gloves and narrows his eyes at me. “What’s up with you?”
“It was a long night.”
“Ah, yeah, Dahlia and all that.” He looks around the room. “Is Aviva okay? I heard–”
“She’s fine.” I think she’s fine. Watching her spiral into a full blown panic attack had been awful. Guilt sweeps over me, rendering my mind useless as I stare blankly into the forge.
Andrew toys with one of the hinges, watching me. “Can I ask you something without you getting pissed off?”
“What, Andrew?”
He sighs, taking off his gloves again and arranging them neatly on the table just to do something, anything, with his hands. “What’s your deal with Aviva?”
I chew the inside of my cheek, unable to even make eye contact with him.
“Do you like her?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just….” He sucks in an annoyed breath and postures, puffing out his chest a bit. “Look, dude. That night you made her that wager, before the hunt? I’ve never seen anyone, and I mean anyone, especially not a girl, step up to you like that and win. I don’t even think you let her win that one, man. The look on her face when she told you the two of you were hunting in whatever the fuck that valley is called…your life flashed before your eyes. You looked like–”
Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it.
“You looked like a guy who just saw their mate for the first time.”
I look down at my boots. “I have a mate.”
“Had.”
I look up at him, running my tongue over my teeth. “I don’t get a second chance at the mate bond.”
“Yeah, you do. Plenty of people lose their mates and find new ones–”
“I didn’t lose my mate. I killed Hadley.”
Andrew holds my gaze, unblinking. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say her name.”
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“Then why did you come here this morning?” His tone takes on an edge I’m not used to hearing from him. “You come here, smelling like Aviva, like your fucking wife, acting like this isn’t significant.”
“I don’t know her scent. Do you get what that means?” I stand, gesturing to my chest. “I killed my fucking mate, Andrew. I tore out her throat. That goes against everything the Goddess stands for. I was supposed to protect her. I do not get a second chance.”
“She was going to kill Sarah. Probably your nephew, too, if he’d been there. She was going to kill Dahlia!”
I cover my face with my hands and fight the urge to scream. The scream would have come from a deep, dark place I buried over two years ago when I looked up at Sarah and saw the horror and anguish on her face as she reached for me, tears in her eyes. Not tears for her traitorous friend. No, tears at what I’d done. What I’d sacrificed.
No one has looked at me the same since then.
Andrew clutches the work table and turns from me, his head hanging. “There’s been talk.”
“About what?” I croak, smoothing my hair out of my face. “Me still being capable of being Alpha?”
“No, never that.” He exhales, long and slow. “Between me, Jacob, and James.”
The mention of James spurs fresh, hot, displaced anger. I curl my hands into fists.
“You need to move on. We thought–Jacob and I–when we watched you get married… the way you looked at her.” His eyes meet mine. “I never saw you look at anyone like that. I never saw you look at Hadley like that.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not Aviva’s mate, Andrew. She’s twenty-two. She’d feel it–”
“Not if you’re not able to feel it.”
I grit my teeth, shaking my head. “She isn’t my mate. Her mate is out there.”
“And you’re going to do what? Go hunt for him? Unite them, and spend the rest of your life in fucking purgatory?” He takes a single step in my direction, his hands raised in surrender. “I fucking hate this, man. I hate seeing you like this. Jacob–fuck, man–we all want you back. The old Ryan would’ve been fucking grinning from ear to ear right now after what you were up to this morning. You’d be telling us about it. Talking the same old shit–”
“That’s my fucking wife you’re talking about right now. That’s my business.”
For whatever reason, his mouth ticks into a smile. “Like I said, don’t act like whatever we just went through in Endova wasn’t significant.”
I didn’t need this this morning. This was the last fucking thing I needed. I’m acutely aware how people see me now. Hadley’s murder wasn’t kept a secret. Word spread like wildfire through my family, through my own pack, and no one said a fucking thing.
I’m treated like a head case, like something people have to be careful around. My brother is the worst offender, which is why when Ryatt came to me and asked if I wanted to leave, if I wanted to claim this territory as my own and be as far away from everyone, and everything, I accepted.
He understands what it’s like to be the outcast, the cursed one, the enemy.
The last thing I ever wanted was for anyone to worry about me. Now my friends were staging an intervention.
“Jacob and I are going to Endova the second this rain clears. We’ll leave tonight if we have to. I need you to step in for James while we’re gone. He deserves the break.”
Andrew grumbles under his breath, turning from me.
“That’s what I came here for,” I grind out, turning for the door. “You’re the Beta until James feels that Dahlia and the baby are settled.”
“Does he know?”
He’s about to. I leave Andrew’s shop and walk in the direction of James’s house just as the fog begins to lift, and the sun peeks through the clouds. Green grass sparkles in the early morning sunlight, setting everyone out and about in a soft glow.
Aviva walks with Shoshannah toward the field where we keep the sheep, falling in step with Freya, who spins in the lifting fog. Aviva turns to look over her shoulder, spotting me. Her cheeks go slightly pink, but her lips… they curve into a smile that instantly lifts the heavy feelings weighing down my chest.
This isn’t fair to her in the slightest. We got married. I am her husband. I made her a vow. I made her people, her family, a vow that I’d be good to her, and I haven’t been.
I keep walking as she disappears into the rolling fog and quietly enter James’s house. Justine is just leaving, smiling kindly at me as she tells me to keep quiet, that Dahlia and the baby girl are asleep.
I slowly, carefully open the door to their bedroom, and I’m met with a sight that makes my heart squeeze with both happiness, and admittedly, a pang of jealousy.
James sits on the side of the bed, his hand resting on the swell of Dahlia’s hip as she sleeps on her side. The baby is sleeping beside Dahlia, her small, round face washed in dreary sunlight. James looks up at me as I hang back in the doorway, and I speak into his mind without meaning to. Maybe it’s because Andrew just ripped me a new one, or there’s just something in the air after his daughter’s. It’s summer. A season of change. A season of decisions that affect the outcome of the months, and years, to follow.
‘Can we talk?’ I ask through the mind-link, and he nods.