Page 106 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
“Where should I start?” he asked. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“A simple question. A complex answer.” He drank. “On the one hand, my part with you is quite simple. Ever since the first time I saw you, my wolf and I have been drawn to you, like a magnet to metal. I don’t know why or how it happened. But something about you calls to me, Sylvie. When I’m not around you, I …”
His fingers curled around the table until the wood creaked. He glanced down, and with visible effort made himself relax.
I took a sip of water, looking away and trying to stay composed. Being alone with him like this, despite everything,was more difficult than I’d expected. Especially when he went ahead and said things like that to me.
“All I knew,” he continued eventually after recomposing himself, “is that I needed to spend more time with you. That was a problem, however, in the eyes of the elders.”
“Elders.” I chewed on my lower lip. “That would be the group of retirement home men who looked like they should be playing shuffleboard, not fighting evil?”
Lincoln snickered. “Shuffleboard. Oh, yes, I’ll have to rememberthatone.”
“I don’t understand, though,” I said, placing both hands on the table. “I am fairly confident that I’ve never met them before. Any of them. And I know I certainly have never done anything to offend them so badly.”
“I know.” Lincoln’s eyes softened with unexpected compassion, throwing me wildly off balance. “They’ve never met you either, not before tonight. But theyhavemet your grandmother.”
“What?”
He nodded. “They’re convinced she was an agent of evil. Thus, through her, you are too. Which is why they didn’t want me to spend time around you. Which was not an option for me. That was the one thing I knew Ihadto do. So I told them my plan was to get close to you, to verify that you weren’t this agent of evil they suspected.”
“So you were using me. Lying to me, just to prove something.” I sighed.
“What?” Lincoln cried. “No. That’s not it at all. You’re not understanding.”
“I think I am,” I told him. “You had ulterior motives while seeing me.”
“But that’s not …”
I leveled a finger, quieting him. “You did too, Lincoln. You pried into my life. You asked questions that weren’t natural conversation. You needed to know things about me. You were trying to figure out if I was using you.”
“Fine! Yes. I was.”
“I thought so.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “You’ve still got it all wrong, though. I was trying to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“If what I was feeling was genuine, or if you had put me under some sort of spell.” He laughed bitterly. “I lied to my pack for you, Sylvie. So that I could spend more time with you. I’m their alpha, I’m supposed to lead by example. But instead, I lied to them, to see more of you. Because I—”
His fist came down, smashing the table and cracking it. “It was a lot less scary to believe you had enchanted me than it was to think I was falling so hard and so fast for you naturally. All right?” He tossed his hands in the air helplessly, not something I saw often from him. “There. You have the truth now. All of it.”
I sat back, thinking of what to do next. He seemed so passionate. So honest, and most of all, so … unsure. Had he never fallen for someone before?
“So,” I asked, taking one thing and latching on to it. “AmI an agent of evil?”
He snorted. “I’ve been convinced you weren’t since the first time we exchanged words in the forest. But that wasn’t enough. You know the secret I must protect now, the people I lead. I had to make totally sure. For them too, not just for me. If you have to hate me for that, so be it. But I won’t do them more harm. I already lied to them.”
I didn’t want to hate him. Just the opposite. But it was hard. I’d suffered a lot. The betrayal of my most recent romantic relationship, of course. Losing my grandmother. Nearly being killed several times. The revelation of this whole new world.
“Tell me more about the Chained,” I said. “And why do your elders believe my grandmother would be aligned with it? She was a good person.”
“The Chained,” he echoed, pausing to take a drink of water and emptying his glass this time.
“What is it?”
