Page 25 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

He could have told Prairie Rose all this, but he didn’t.

“I wasn’t there.” The lie burst out of him, poisoning his tongue. His voice, though, was neutral and he knew that his body gave zero evidence of his falseness. “If I had been, I would have been like any other male. I would have thanked my mate for a son and dutifully protected and raised him. That’s what I have done.” He had to stop. His throat ached. He wasn’t used to the sensation, but in the past three weeks, he knew what that meant. It was unthinkable that a man like him, even as reduced as he was, should break down.

Prairie Rose’s arms tightened around him. He exhaled steadily, slowing his pulse purposefully. “Agnar…”

“I have all our photos and files backed up online,” he cut in abruptly. “You’ll need them. I’ll give you the password. The boys have false IDs, as most of us do. I have them in a security box. They’re in Arizona and I left the keys with my lawyer. Yes, he’s a shifter living in a human world. I’ll leave everything to you. Any documents that have to be signed, I’ll make sure they’re taken care of. I wanted the boys to be warriors…” Another long inhale. He drew out the exhale, counting heartbeats. Army breathing, people called it, but he’d always thought of it as battle breaths. “But they can choose their own path. They’re their own people. I have no right to choose for them. I have no right to anything anymore.”

In an instant, Prairie Rose swung herself around. She landed in his lap, surprising the hell out of him even though it shouldn’t have been possible. She grasped the front of his jacket, balling it up in her mittens. He could feel her fingers digging through everything. She was sensationally vicious, dazzling him with her magical windswept beauty. She had an honest beauty that needed no augmentation at all, and it could wind a man. He looked at her because he couldn’t look away, a goddess that turned him to stone.

“Do I have to hurt you to make you feel anything?”

“I’ve been hurt many times before,” he huffed. “You won’t succeed where others have failed.”

He was no longer so certain about that. It took all of his strength not to lean forward and taste her mouth. He wanted to taste his mate. Eat her mouth. Her beautiful, tempting breasts. Her pussy, swollen and wet and ready for him.

She pulled off her mitt and slapped him, the impact echoing through the dark, bouncing off the trees around them. It was true what he’d said. He hardly registered it.

“I know you felt that! You feel everything. You’re blocking it out. You’re doing it on purpose.”

He was never going to let her know that half of the reason he couldn’t sleep was because he was tortured by her. She was so close. She’d vowed to fight for him, or what was left of him. She was beautiful, whole, and good. She was in her element, in her own home, in her pack. She carried on like she had a backbone of steel. She got the boys up in the morning, got them to the pack’s school, took care of her cabin, helped members of her pack, visited her family. She made all their meals. She tried so hard to help the boys grieve their lost packmates and adjust to having him there. He didn’t participate in anything. He haunted her home, and his own sons like he was already gone a wraith slowly disintegrating as he withdrew from them all. But she tried. She tried so, so hard. He failed her over and over again, and every time he saw the sorrow and the renewed determination on her face, he wanted to make sure he never saw it again.

This conversation had to be over, and she needed to leave. He couldn’t even thinkabout her. She was infinitely beyond his reach. “If that’s what you need, then yes, of course. That’s what I’m doing. I trained it out of me. We all did.”

That soft pink flooded her cheeks again. “That’s a lie. You’ve felt. You do. You felt and you feel.”

She stood up, the slight weight of her the only thing that was anchoring him to the world.

She unzipped her snowsuit and started peeling it away. He felt something then. Panic. He was not going to ask her what she was doing. He was going to sit there and fucking not make a sound. He focused on a spot above her shoulder so that when she kicked off her boots and ripped at her clothes, he didn’t see any of her nakedness.

He could no longer just sit there telling himself he didn’t care. She could freeze to death trying to make a point. He was learning that she was stubborn enough to do it. “Stop! Prairie Rose!”

She shifted. His eyes were drawn to it and once again, he was captivated by the sheer beauty of her sleek, white wolf. The yellow eyes that studied him as her wolf circled, growling, were anything but serene. The wolf wasn’t afraid of him, and honestly, Prairie Rose wasn’t either. He’d ceased to be something that could inspire fear or respect in any living thing. Probably nature too. These trees probably looked down on him and laughed at the futility of his mortality.

Her wolf lifted her head and gave a throaty howl. She pawed the snow. She was magnificent and he sat like she’d cast a spell at him, even when she charged right for him. He didn’t put up his hands to shield her or fight her off as she knocked him back and her teeth closed over his neck. One fang found his jugular. She halted like that, frozen and deadly against the very spot that gave him life. One breath. Two. Another.

She moved first. He watched her shift back above him, the motions somehow elegant in a way he’d never realized they could be. Something happened to his insides. He felt like he’d been liquified and boiled alive. She crouched above him, her hair falling around her, blocking out the world and most of her body below her chin. Her lips came back to his neck and found that same spot where her teeth had just rested. She lapped there gently, tasting him with her tongue before she pulled back.

“Why wouldn’t you shift?”

If he owed her anything, and he did owe this woman so much more than he could ever repay for what her pack had done for what was left of his and for what she’d done for his sons, he owed her the truth. “The wolf is crippled. My hands, the damage in them… as a man I don’t walk on my hands, but the wolf can’t. They won’t hold him anymore. Do you want me in the dirt, crawling? My wolf is maimed for life.”

“No!” She reeled back, but not in disgust. “No!” He watched her jaw quiver and then a shiver tore through her. She retreated, grabbing her clothes up and sliding into them. He didn’t watch, but he heard her struggling. She was wet and cold, and the fabric wouldn’t give.

Eventually, the snowsuit zipped up. It was like a scream in the night.

He finally looked at her and found her back. She was hunched over, crouched into herself. She was still shivering. No. No, she wasn’t. She was crying and she didn’t want him to see.

This was it. The moment she finally realized it was hopeless and so was he. The moment she finally cut him loose and gave up. He’d waited weeks for her to come around to the truth of that and adjust accordingly. He knew it wouldn’t take six months, but why did his head start throbbing so painfully? He felt himself flinch, which was more than he’d done facing down any sort of danger over the years.

She stood up and dashed away her tears. “I won’t accept that.”

She crouched before him and took his hands. He hadn’t even gotten up out of the snow. He was just sitting there again, unable to move. He let her turn his palms and look at the object of his great shame. He’d told her he was no longer a man, but the truth was he was no longer a wolf.

“There must be some kind of braces that could be made or something that could be done.”

She only looked intently and then she traced the scars that ran over his palms, wrists, and forearms. She stroked the fingers that wouldn’t straighten all the way or curl back in. He could no longer make a fist. And, like his adversary predicted, he could no longer hold any sort of weapon. He couldn’t even get a decent grip on an axe to chop wood. He’d hidden as much of it from the boys as he could. They didn’t press him to talk to them. They didn’t ask him for anything. They existed so close together, but it was like he wasn’t even there. Not because they didn’t want to. They were trying to give him time to come back to himself without forcing him to do it. They didn’t think he was pathetic or weak or useless. He was still their father. He’d seen the way they looked at him when they thought he couldn’t see.

With love shining in their eyes.

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