Page 103 of The Cuddle Clause
Chapter 27
Maggie
I staredat my eggs like they’d betrayed me.
They were too yellow, too cheerful, too aggressively optimistic for the state of my soul. Roman sat across from me at the kitchen island, nursing his coffee as if it was his last remaining friend in the world. We hadn’t said more than two words since we woke up in separate rooms. The silence between us was thick enough to chew on.
We were mated.
Sort of.
Fake mated. Publicly bonded. Magically adjacent.
I was still trying to figure out how exactly I’d gone from “traumatized woman escaping a messy breakup” to “fake soul-bound lover of a drama queen werewolf with commitment issues.”
I glanced at Roman. His hair was a mess, like he’d rolled around in his sheets all night trying not to feel things. He had a smear of egg on his wrist. He looked… normal. He didn’t look like someone who’d pretended to claim me in front of an entire mansion full of magical elders.
Still, the silence was going to kill me if I didn’t break it.
“So,” I said, poking at my eggs. “What’s the plan now?”
He looked up, startled like he hadn’t expected me to speak. “What?”
“You know,” I said, gesturing vaguely with my fork. “Now that we’rebonded. Which we’re obviously not. What happens when Lucien finds out?”
Roman rubbed his jaw, eyes dropping to his mug. “I was hoping to buy myself some time. That’s all. Just a little breathing room to figure out how to get out of this mess.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Right. Because faking a magical soul bond is such a chill little detour on the road to figuring shit out.”
His mouth tilted like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “Lucien wants me to rise in the ranks. He wants me to be his beta, eventually. But once he finds out I lied about this, he might exile me.”
I sipped my coffee slowly, letting that sit for a second. “Would that really be the worst thing?”
His head jerked up. “What?”
“I mean… you don’t exactly seem thrilled about any of this. You’re constantly annoyed with the pack, you roll your eyes at every ceremony, you act like Lucien’s parties are a personal attack. Why do you care so much about making everyone happy?”
He sighed and leaned back, fingers threading through his hair. “Because this is all I’ve got, Mags. The pack. Lucien. It’s the only family I’ve ever known. My parents died when I was a kid. I don’t have siblings. Lucien pulled me in, trained me, gave me a place where I belonged.”
His words were calm, but there was a weight in them, a sadness that sat behind his ribs and pressed outward.
“Okay. But is that enough? Just because it’s all you’ve known, it doesn’t mean it’s all you have to be. Do you actually want to be his beta?” I asked. “Or are you just doing this because Lucien said so?”
He looked away. That told me everything.
“Roman, you don’t need to lose yourself just to stay in someone else’s good graces. You get that, right? You’re allowed to want something different. You’re allowed to have boundaries, even with people who helped you once.”
He didn’t say a word.
“You need to think long and hard about what you actually want. Not what Lucien wants. Not what looks good on paper. And if beta isn’t it, then you need to have a serious conversation with him. Enough of this pussy-footing around. You’re not a side character in your own damn life.”
He stared at me, but the look on his face told me I hadn’t overstepped. I’d said something he’d needed to hear.
“That’s…” He blew out a breath. “That’s really good advice.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, stabbing another piece of egg. “I’m not just good looks and sarcasm.”
His smile was small but real.
