Page 79 of Arranged Wolf's Nanny
He tightened his arm around her. He wanted to rage. To shout and snarl his anger, his pain, his betrayal. But his daughter was already sad, already scared.
He would not scare her further.
“I’m sorry that you miss her,” he said, his voice strangled. “I…I miss her, too.”
It was the truth. He could not lie, not to his daughter. He missed Rosalia. He missed the female he had thought she was. The female she had pretended to be.
He was a fool for ever having trusted her.
Eva relaxed by degrees, like a small animal settling in a nest. He felt the moment her muscles let go.
“Did you and Rosalia have a fight?” she asked into his shirt.
He could lie. He could varnish the truth and call it diplomacy. He could push her away with half-answers and tell himself he was protecting her from the weight of adult things.
He did none of those.
“We had a…hard talk,” he said. “I spoke when I should have been quiet.”
Eva tipped her head back so she could see his face. There was something deeply unflattering about the way children looked at you, as if their eyes were a mirror polished sharper than steel. “Did you use your big voice?”
“A little.”
She considered this gravely. “Maybe next time, use your small voice first.”
An unexpected laugh pulled at him, brief and low. “That seems wise.”
She blinked up at him. “I like when you’re wise.”
“You and me both.”
Silence pooled for a beat, heavy but not uncomfortable. He shifted, reaching for the throw folded along the back of the settee. He shook it out one-handed and draped it over her legs. She settled against his chest, and he relished the comforting warmth of his pup against him. At least she was here, safe in his arms.
“Will you tell me a story?” Eva asked.
“What kind of story?”
“The moon one,” she said, “about the wolf who falls in love with the moon.”
He didn’t remember ever telling it like that, but perhaps Rosalia had, at the piano or in the library or curled into a cornerof the sofa while he paced the hall.The Wolf and The Moon, Eva had called it once, her favorite. He cleared his throat and found the cadence he used only for her, the one that smoothed the rasp from his voice.
“Once,” he began softly, “there was a wolf who believed he knew the whole forest because he could see it all. He ran the ridges and counted the paths and kept the border so clean that even the rabbits knew where to stop. He ruled the trees, taking what he wanted, thinking that because he was the biggest and the best, everything would be alright. All that mattered was how impressive his forest was. One night, the moon slipped behind a bank of clouds. The wolf was angry because he used her light to look after his kingdom. He howled for her to come back, and when she didn’t, he decided he couldn’t trust what he couldn’t see.”
Eva made a small, sympathetic sound.
“So he ran,” Rick continued, “nose to the ground, eyes narrowed, teeth bared, for the border, for the places where trouble grows. But the trees are darker when you look at them that way. And the ground is meaner. And the wolf’s paws began to hurt, and still the moon did not come back. Then he heard something that wasn’t a sound.”
“What?” Eva whispered.
“Breathing,” he said. “Not his own. Something small and brave, asleep in a den the wolf had forgotten to check. A rabbit. He stopped. There were other creatures there, bad ones. Ones who wanted to hunt the rabbit down. To eat her all up for dinner. And then he realized. The moon wasn’t hiding from him; she was hiding the small rabbit from sight.”
Eva gasped, even though she had heard this story a hundred times before.
“And then, the wolf realized that all this time he had gotten it wrong. It didn’t matter how impressive his forest was. How much everyone admired him. He had been given his strength to protect those who lived in the forest. And so, he drove away the nasty beasts, so that the little rabbit was safe. Only then did the moon come out again, shining brighter than ever before.”
Eva made a pleased hum. “She was just testing him.”
“She was. She had fallen in love with the wolf that protected the forest. When she came to him that night, he apologized for not trusting her. For forgetting what really mattered.”
