Page 70 of Before the Bond
“We’ve flirted.”
“You flirted,” I said.
Elias almost retorted, but instead, he took a small breath. “That doesn’t change anything. You know what does?”
He held my gaze.
“The fact that this is my choice.”
The clarity in his voice, his lower tone, his lack of flourishes and jokes… all of it landed differently than anything he'd said before.
“What does that have to do with Caleb?” I asked.
“Everything!” he insisted. “I like you not because fate drew an arrow and put your name at the end of it. But because I paid attention, and I made a decision."
I kept very still.
Elias’s feet began to slow down. So did mine. The fog continued to surround us. Part of me was thankful it was blocking most of my expression.
"He loves you because it’s an instinct," Elias said simply — almost gently. "I want you because you’re… funny. And pretty. And honestly, it’s fun to tease you.”
“That’s not love, either,” I said.
“But it could be,” he insisted. “If you gave it a chance. It would be, without question, a chosen relationship. I merely thought you deserve to know that.”
He dug into his pocket.
He pulled out a slip of paper. The bright red ink glared against it, showing a cellphone number. A devil’s handshake.
“If you change your mind,” he said. “Or are finally brave enough to ask what you don’t want to.”
The fog shifted somewhere to my left. A branch cracked in the tree line behind him — a deer, probably, or the wind, or something I wasn't going to think about. I focused on the ground between us.
Elias jogged away.
I wanted to say he didn’t know what he was talking about. That he didn’t know Caleb.
Didn’t know what I’d seen — the restraint, the way Caleb held himself back when it would’ve been easier not to, the way every step he’d taken toward me had felt… chosen.
I almost said that.
But the problem wasn’t that Elias sounded convincing. It was that I didn’t have a clean answer.
I made my way back to the inner jogging track.
I ran faster than I needed to.
Not a sprint. Just enough to keep my body busy, lungs working, legs burning lightly by the time I looped past the ridge and back toward the estate.
Does Caleb love me, or does his wolf tell him to?
That was the easy part — or at least the uncomplicated part. Caleb proved time and time again that he was dedicated to me. Bond or not, it was something real.
And, while Elias wasn’t the one who asked the question, the discussion let another one bubble toward the surface.
One that I was too scared to ask myself, but one I knew I had to.
And what about me?
