Page 26 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

Love and longing, and he’d refused to let himself believe it or see it because how the fuck was he supposed to live with any of it?

“With all the new 3D printing technology and medical advances, they can make things for anyone, even paralyzed animals. I’ve seen it online. I’ll find someone. Say I have a dog who needs it. I’ll find the best of the best and—”

“I don’t want you to bother.” He wanted to bark it at her, but it came out completely exhausted.

“I want me to bother.”

“Just let it go.”

“No.” She pressed a kiss to his palms. She held his hand when he tried to drag it away, but even he had to admit it was a fucking halfhearted effort on his part at best. “I don’t care if you can’t feel. I don’t believe you, but even if it’s true, even if you refuse, even if you keep blocking it all out, I’ll feel for you. You’re saying you can’t love. It doesn’t matter. I’ll show you love anyway. I’ll show you warmth. I promised you my whole family and pack would and that’s the truth. Everyone deserves to be loved and you will be. I’m not letting it go and I’m not going to stop. I’m not asking you to change. Be who you want to be. Be who you are. But who you are needs to heal. You think there’s no point, but there are so many reasons. Levi and Blake. They’re your reasons.” She kissed his other hand, her tears falling and making wet splashes against his useless fingers. “I felt the way your pulse thrummed against my arm when I asked you about the night Blake was born. You remember. You were there. You felt that love.”

She tried to meet his eyes, but he refused to lift his head.

Prairie Rose continued, “They need you, your sons need you. It was always my dream to be a mother and now I have them. A mother fights for her children. A father does too, even if he’s fighting himself. You’re still a wolf. You’re still the man who believed in peace and goodness even if he never experienced it before he had that dream. You’re still that man who saw with his heart and tried to make a better world. You have a lifetime of memories and thoughts and feelings you haven’t allowed yourself to process, but they’re still all there. One man’s betrayal was not your fault. You are never responsible for anyone else’s actions. You have not failed. Not one single person here hates you. Look at the stars,” she begged.

He did. Fuck, he did, turning his head up to the sky.

“Look at the snow. Look at the world around you. In this moment, we are made new.”

It was too much. He couldn’t just crack himself open after a lifetime of holding himself together so tightly that nothing got in or escaped out. “You can’t just say that and have it be so.”

“Then you can’t just unmake yourself with a word either.”

“I’ll never be able to reciprocate,” he said. Determined not to give her a way in.

“What I’m offering doesn’t depend on your being able to return it.”

“You’ve set the bar painfully low.”

“It’s mine to set it where I will.”

“You don’t want this. Me. You want the idea of it. The family. The mate. The perfect life.”

She had no response to that, but her silence was a response in and of itself. She got off her knees and started searching around in the snow. She found her mittens, but she was still looking.

“What are you doing?”

“That was my favorite thermos, asshole.”

Not that was my favorite thermos, poor, pitiful, crippled, emasculated, defeated, pathetic, shiftless, powerless man.

“Here it is!” She scooped it up out of the snow and twisted the cap off. Poured some of the coffee into it, which was still so hot it steamed like a cauldron up into the black surroundings. She handed him the full cap. “Drink this and let’s go back to the cabin. I’m not leaving you out here anymore. If you want to come out to the woods, you go fully dressed for the weather or you go with me. If you want to just sit in silence, that’s fine.”

The old Agnar never would have let anyone boss him around like this. But Prairie Rose wasn’t trying to command him. She was trying to help, and goddamn it, that warmed him more than the swallows of scalding coffee he dutifully drank back.

“I’m making waffles for breakfast. They’re the boys’ favorite. I’d like if you’d try to eat more.” Her big, liquid eyes shimmered as they met his.

He’d warned her that he’d drag her down to hell with him and she hadn’t listened, but he had no desire to hurt her more, and clearly, watching him deteriorate physically waspainful for those around him. He wasn’t the only one suffering and it was worse that he knew it. He’d known it would be, which was why he’d wanted to leave and spare them.

He needed to start sparing them while he was still here.

He didn’t say anything, but he did slam back the rest of the coffee and stood up to follow her to the cabin.

When they got there, he went right to the boys’ room and shut the door. He wasn’t locking Prairie Rose out. He just needed a minute with his children, and he knew she’d understand.

They slept soundly in the double bed, both on their backs, shoulders touching. They didn’t look troubled in their sleep. They didn’t have nightmares, and he would know. He was awake most of the night, on the floor, listening to them breathing.

He just stood there at the end of the bed, the ache inside him nearly killing him, hardly able to breathe. He remembered both the nights they were born so very clearly. He’d never forget. Not even a surgeon could drill it out of his skull.

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