Page 2 of Fate, Interrupted

“The wolf would have accepted that,” he said. “It would have stayed where it was. You would have gone on with your life.” He paused. “I would have gone on with mine.”

“Could you have?”

He considered lying. The honest answer was the harder one, and she deserved it. “No. But I would have tried, because what you chose had to be yours. That’s the version of this that is most important. You, knowing before what’s between us goes too far, is critical in your decision. You, having the opportunity to explore your options, is part of a woman’s choice.”

Her cheeks turned a brighter shade of red at that. “I can’t imagine fooling around behind your back, even if you say it’s acceptable.”

“It’s not fooling around if it’s part of our ritual, our culture. It gives you the chance to exercise your free choice. Because there should be no reservations in anyone’s head when the woman comes to the man’s bed.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, trying to read his expression. “There’s something you haven’t told me.”

He’d been working toward it for weeks. There were no words that were true without being frightening, and he’d finally accepted that frightening and true would have to suffice.

“The wolf,” he said. “I need to tell you about what it is. What it can do when it’s fully forward.” He leaned his forearms on his knees. “I can’t promise you containment in every situation. I can’t promise you a reasonable response to an unreasonable threat. If something came for you—if something came for our children—what surfaces in me in that moment is not the man you’re sitting across from right now. It’s older than I am. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t stop.”

The room was quiet.

“I’m telling you this,” he said, “because you deserve to know it before tomorrow. The man and the wolf are the same person. You don’t get one without the other.”

Audrey was quiet for a long moment. Then she pushed off the worktable and stood in front of him and put both hands on either side of his face.

“I know what you are,” she said. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about raising children who are part wolf. I’ve stood in the dark at two in the morning and looked at all of it, and I still choose you. I’m not afraid of what you are, Elias.” Her thumbs pressed lightly against his cheek. “I’m afraid of a life where I let fear make that decision for me.”

He put his hands over hers.

“After the ceremony,” he said, “we’ll break ground on the house. The plot behind my parents’ place, close enough that you’ll have people around you when I’m working late.”

“Your mother wants to show me the best place to plant a garden.”

“Don’t let her boss you into planting chard. I hate chard.”

“And the business?” She glanced around the laundry—the pressing machines, the manifests, the route boards on the wall with their color-coded runs. Her eyes moved across it, taking it in.

“A second facility on the north side, within three years. Closer to the new development going up on Ridge. Our own trucks by then, not contracted. It’s going to be enough. More than enough.”

“I know it will,” she said simply.

He breathed out, reassured by her confidence. She’d never asked for proof, never asked questions that doubted his vision or desire to build the family business into an empire. She’d only believed in him. Completely and without reservation. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve her.

He stood and kissed her. She came into it easily, her hands moving from his face to his collar, the cold of outside still on her skin and warming fast against him. The laundry was quiet, the last employee gone an hour ago. Audrey would spend the night in his parents’ guest bedroom, and Greer would arrive later to mark the eve of the ceremony, which with Greer meant Irish whiskey and very few words.

He had been on his feet since five that morning, driving two delivery routes himself because their one driver was out sick. He’d eaten lunch standing at the dock because there hadn’t been time to sit down. None of it had touched him. He was twenty-three years old, and tomorrow he was going to stand in front of the pack elders with Audrey beside him and say the fated mate claiming words out loud for the first time.

This was their life. Tomorrow already certain. He was not a man who counted his luck, but tonight he was going to start.

They heard the trucks before the headlights came through the window.

Audrey straightened. Her hands dropped from his collar.

“That’s my uncle’s truck,” she said.

There were two of them, by the sound—the rough idle of well-used farm vehicles. Elias was already moving before the door opened, the wolf forward before his mind had formed a question.

Corvin Marsh came through first. Elias knew him to be a hardscrabble farmer of two hundred acres of failing wheat outside Larkin. A man who watched as the land gave back less and less each season while Larkin grew and the men who’d built things in it prospered. According to Audrey, he wasn’t a stupid man, only bitter. He’d watched the wolves of Larkin build businesses, buy property, hire human workers, and send their children to the same schools as everyone else. Somewhere in those years he had decided this explained what had gone wrong for him.

Three others came in behind him—farmers Elias recognized from the local hardware counter, from the edge of every gathering place where men from the outlying farms came to spend money they didn’t have and resent the people who had more of it.

They were not drunk. They were deliberate. Someone had planned what they wanted to happen tonight.