Page 9 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
I don't answer immediately.
The fire pops. Upstairs, she shifts in her sleep—the soft sound of movement, the creak of the bed frame—and my wolf goes immediately, embarrassingly alert. I press the heel of my hand against my sternum and breathe through it.
Stop.
Another pause on the line. Longer this time. And then, quietly: "Oh."
"Yeah."
"She's your mate."
I close my eyes. "Yeah."
The word sits between us over the phone line, and Mateo, to his credit, doesn't say anything right away. He lets it land properly, which is one of the reasons he's been my Beta for six years and not merely the closest thing I have to a brother.
"How certain?" he finally asks.
"Completely."
"From the moment you saw her?"
"From the moment she looked at me."
He exhales slowly. "Okay. Okay, how is she? Does she know?"
"She doesn't know anything. She's human, Mateo. She showed up on my porch in a wedding dress at eleven at night, and she's been crying for hours, and she doesn't know what I am or what any of this is." I lean forward and put my elbows on my knees. "She thinks she's staying the night until her car gets sorted."
"Right." He's quiet for a moment, working through it the way he works through everything—methodically, from all angles. "Her car. Where is it?"
"South road, past the granite outcrop. Overheating, she said. Probably the coolant system." I straighten. "I need to get it off the road before anyone sees it and starts asking questions. Can you get Garrett up early?"
"I'll call him now. Meet at the south turnoff at first light?"
"Yeah. I'll be there." I pause. "I need to be back before she wakes up."
"Understood." A beat. "Logan."
"I know."
"You can't?—"
"I know, Mateo."
He lets it go. For now. "Get some sleep if you can. Five-thirty."
I hang up and sit in the quiet for a while longer than I need to.
The fire has dropped to low embers. I should let it go—I'll be out the door before four hours of sleep would do me much good anyway—but I add another log anyway, mostly to have something to do with my hands. The flames catch, and the light shifts across the room, and I sit back and look at the ceiling and try to be reasonable about this.
She is upstairs. She is asleep. She is a human woman who has had a catastrophic day and stumbled onto my mountain by accident, and she is my fated mate, and she is completely unaware of all of that, and there is absolutely nothing I am going to do about any of it tonight.
My wolf disagrees with this position at length and with enormous conviction.
I ignore it and close my eyes.
At five-fifteen,I leave a note on the kitchen counter—back before morning, door's unlocked—and step out into the pre-dawn dark.
The temperature has dropped hard overnight, breath coming out in vapor, and pine needles are brittle underfoot. I move quickly down the south trail and reach the logging road in under twenty minutes. Garrett's truck is already idling at the turnoff, exhaust curling white in the headlights.
