“There is something specific that has to happen for us to complete the Luminary bond, but basically…yes.”
“Listen, Drake—”
“Wait,” he said. “There’s more.”
“I don’t think I can take much more.”
He sighed, though the breath did little to release the tension hardening his body to stone. “As the new Alpha, it’s expected that I have heirs to the throne, but a female turned werewolf has never survived giving birth when the father is an Alpha. Our young are too powerful, even in the womb. Only a pure-blooded born werewolf would be strong enough to live through the experience.”
Emelia looked sick, holding her stomach as if the words soured her dinner.
“Let me get this straight. You’re an Alpha, need heirs, and I’m your Luminary, the one who is supposed to give them to you, but since I wasn’t born a werewolf, I won’t survive the birth?”
“Right.” He nodded. “And neither will the children.”
“Holy mother, Drake! How can you expect me to be on board with all of this? I mean, last month I was fine. My life was fine. I mean, it sucked hard, but at least I could wrap my mind around what the hell was going on. This…all of this…it’s too much.”
Drake’s greatest fear unfolded before his eyes. He could sense Emelia shutting down and clamming up. He should’ve waited to tell her about the issues with having children. He should’ve saved the bomb for when her feelings weren’t so clouded by the mind-fuck of transition.
He tried to analyze his own feelings instead, but they were a jumbled mess of duty and honor and a pinching in his heart that smarted a lot like love. If being with Emelia meant that he would never have children, never have an heir, he’d have to be satisfied with that, and deal with the ramifications of the pack when they crossed that bridge. It was the only thing he could do.
But his decision wasn’t the only one to consider.
If Emelia mated with another wolf, she could have children just fine. In essence, he was asking Emelia to choose between a future with him and a future with children. The thought made his gut clench into a solid rock. The only way he had a shot was if Emelia didn’t want children to begin with.
“A month ago,” he said softly, “when you looked into your future, did you see children?”
“I just thought of something else.” Her hand went soft in his. “I’m not just Silas’s ticket to everything, I’m yours. Is that why you’ve been being so nice to me lately? Because you want to use me to satisfy some power trip and become Alpha? Is that why you’ve been letting me drive your car, taking me out, and—ah shit, I let you take me to bed.”
“Do you really think I’ve been using you so that I could take control over my pack?”
“I know I had a vision of who you were before I met you. The person I envisioned would’ve stopped at nothing to claim what he believed to be his. Two weeks ago, it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that you were going to use me to get ahead in some twisted family game.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. What Drake wouldn’t give to know what she was really thinking. “But now, I feel something different. I don’t think you’d do something like that, but…hell, I haven’t known you long enough to know how or why you do anything. This whole thing doesn’t sit well with me. It doesn’t…feel right.”
“Think about it logically,” Drake said. “If I wanted to use you against my brother, I would’ve bonded with you already and moved packmates around to different corners of Seattle. There would’ve been some commands ordered. There would’ve been massive pack movement the second I heard you were in danger.”
“That easy, huh? Screw the woman, conquer the world? You know, like the line from that show?”
“I think you mean something else, but given the circumstances, the logic makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Nothing about this makes sense, so you can’t expect me to rely on logic.” She took her last bite of pasta and pushed the bowl aside. “Sometimes you have to follow your gut and go with what you feel, and if you don’t know what your gut’s telling you, you wait until you do. Don’t you ever base a decision on feeling alone?”
As Drake thought back over every business deal he’d ever made, Emelia’s smile flickered like a half-watted lightbulb. Every move he’d made had been based on facts, including the decision to keep Emelia’s bar in his possession so he could invest in the area and ramp up business. He’d been right to keep the Knight Owl. When things settled down, she could run it. They would own it together. If profits didn’t climb, they’d sell it. Simple.
“You even measured out the seasoning in this sauce like every speck counted,” she said.
“It does count.” He leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “It all counts for something. Didn’t you enjoy the spaghetti?”
“It was downright grubtastic, but you probably could’ve thrown the ingredients into a pan and it would’ve come out tasting the same.”
He wasn’t even going to ask Emelia what grubtastic meant. He assumed it was good since she’d all but licked her plate clean.
“If I’d made the sauce any other way, the spaghetti would’ve come out tasting completely different. I made the spaghetti from a recipe that had been passed down from my grandmother. It has to be exact, down to the pinch. That’s what makes it great. That’s what makes it special.”
Leaning back, Emelia chewed over his words and eyed the leftover sauce on the plate.
“Everything in my life has to have order,” he said. “Everything has to make sense. If it doesn’t, how do I know it’ll turn out right?”
“You don’t, Drake,” she said, swiveling around, placing both her hands on his lap. “That’s the fun of it.”
“If you won’t listen to what I’m saying, and you won’t trust my words”—he reached out, brushing back the hair that fell at her temple—“then what do you feel in here?” He touched her chest and held his hand there, feeling her heart thump wildly against his hand. “Do you honestly feel like the only reason I’m with you now is because I want to dominate my father’s pack?”
“What you don’t understand is that I don’t know if I can trust what you’re saying, but I don’t think I can’t trust my heart either.” She looked at him then. Right through him. “It led me astray the last time I did.”
There was only one thing left for him to do. He had to prove his intentions.
“Then for now, stay with me. Let me protect you until Silas is found. He’ll continue to hunt you down until you make your final decision, but at least if you’re under the protection of my pack, he won’t be able to get to you as easily.”
“Wait—what final decision?”
“Just because I’ve found you doesn’t mean you’re automatically bound as my Luminary, Emelia. You have a choice in the matter, too. I want you to want to be with me for the next seven hundred years. I want you to be by my side because you want to honor and love me, not because our meeting was fated by the stars.”
“Drake, I—”
“Let me finish.” Drake grasped both of Emelia’s hands in his. Electric currents shot up his arms and rattled through his chest. “If you want to complete the Luminary bond with me, tell me now and we can get started building a future together, but that future won’t involve children. If that’s not what you want—if I’m not what you want—I give you my word that I’ll continue to protect you. I’ll ease you through the transition process, welcome you into my pack, and once Silas is gone and the threat to your safety is over, I’ll make sure you’re settled back in the routine of your normal life in the city. But I swear to you, here and now, no matter what you choose, I’ll never bond with another.”
Her perfectly arched brows rose as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “But you said your life would be shortened if you didn’t bond with someone.”
Drake couldn’t hold back, not now. Not when the pressure in his chest was this tight. “If I knew I was never going to see you again, I’d
choose to die tonight, with the taste of you still on my tongue, the feel of your body still on my hands, and your scent lingering in my nose, than live another day without those things.”
Emelia threw back her chair and leaped into Drake’s lap. He caught her, coiling his arms around her back, and brought her closer as she nuzzled into his neck. He’d waited so long for this moment—since he was first taught about Luminaries and soul mates and the completion of two lonely hearts. He’d been waiting for Emelia his entire damn life. There was no way he could’ve fathomed how empty his life was until this moment, when his heart felt so full it was liable to burst.
“Is this a yes?” he asked, allowing a sliver of hope to streak through him. Maybe the children issue wasn’t an issue after all…
She planted fevered kisses on his neck, the underside of his jaw, his lips. Then Emelia laid her head against his chest and shook her head.
Confusion prickled the hairs on the back of Drake’s neck. “No, then?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wiggling around so that she straddled his lap. “No one has ever talked to me the way you do. No one has ever made me feel this way, but—”
“But?”
“You can’t expect me to make a decision this quickly. I mean, I love what’s happening between us. I’ve never felt anything like this before.” Her fingers danced across his chest in tiny swirls, chilling him with each gentle stroke. “I can barely keep my hands off you and I’d be stupid if I said I didn’t dream of some knight in shining armor sweeping me off my feet the way you have. But after what I’ve gone through—first with my ex, then with all…this—I don’t feel like it’d be a good move to jump into another relationship until I have my feet on solid ground. Not to mention the fact that I’m not sure if I want to scratch children off my list of possibilities yet. Bottom line, it’s too soon, and you’re asking too much. I don’t really know you, and you don’t really know me.”
“No?”
“No.” She kissed him softly, promising the world, but giving away nothing. “I feel like I need some time.”
As Drake felt the cold grip of reality wrench his heart, he clenched his jaw until he thought the bone would break. Emelia’s decision made sense. It was reasonable to take some time, given the circumstances. It was undeniably the logical thing to do. Despite how her words appealed to Drake’s analytical side, the sting burned anyway, scorching through his chest.
Not knowing what else to do, Drake took Emelia’s hand and softly kissed the delicate arch of her knuckles. “Take all the time you need.”
Chapter Fourteen
At first, when Emelia turned down Drake’s offer to be his Luminary, she thought she’d made a mistake. He was gorgeous, their chemistry was off the charts, he was stable and commanding, the take-charge kind of man she’d always dreamed of marrying. He made her heart race and her skin flush with a single glance. He would be able to take care of her like no other man could, especially now that she was changing into a werewolf.
The concept that she would shift into a werewolf at the full moon struck Emelia as ridiculous even now, though she couldn’t deny the freakish changes happening to her body; one second she was sweating and pissed off, the next second she was cold as ice and laughing hysterically. It was mania at its best.
But Emelia simply couldn’t answer Drake the way he’d wanted her to. He may not have been the devious man she’d believed him to be a month ago, but there was still so much she didn’t know. She’d jumped into a relationship before, and it’d gotten her nothing but a broken heart, an unused wedding dress, and a bunch of gifts she didn’t want and still had to return.
To top it off, Drake wasn’t only asking her to be with him forever, he was asking her to drop her dreams of having children. Emelia hadn’t even thought that far yet. She’d been so focused on building a thriving business with her bar, she hadn’t had time to think through what would happen after that. Sure, children might’ve been in the picture someday, but not anytime soon. Did that mean she wanted to forgo that option completely?
No matter how badly Emelia wanted to say yes to Drake’s offer, no matter how much her heart pulled to his, she couldn’t accept.
Drake had dropped Emelia off at the Knight Owl bright and early Wednesday morning so she could catch up on paperwork and check on the weekend sales. Although she’d insisted that she would be all right by herself, Drake left three packmates with her—she would never get used to that word—while he left to handle business of his own.
Emelia pulled chairs down from the tabletops and shimmied them into place, adding tiny pumpkin-spice tea lights to the center of the tables to add a festive feel. There was a rainstorm coming, and Thanksgiving was around the corner. Customers would want to frequent a place where they could order an Autumn Tumbler, kick their feet up on one of the tables, and watch their favorite football team play on one of the flat screens mounted by the stage. Other customers would want to curl up with one of the books on the shelves in the back and put the worries of the day behind them.
That is, if customers would come in at all.
Emelia had always been good at knowing what customers wanted and what they needed in their local watering hole before they asked for it. She knew when they wanted stand-up comics and got them. She knew when they wanted open mic night and had arranged to have it on the first weekend of every month. Business went from trickling to booming in no time. Emelia had finally found something she was good at—running and maintaining her tiny sliver of heaven.
But over the last couple months, business had slowed to a halt, and it seemed that nothing Emelia tried brought customers back. It had to be the economy. Or maybe she’d slipped on paying attention to the customers’ needs.
“Where are you going?” one of the guards asked as she walked around the wall separating the main room from the bar.
“To my office.” She didn’t stop walking, and became hyperaware that the guard shadowed her every step. “Is that a problem?”
“We were told to have you in sight at all times.” He was the burliest of the three, with a skull-trim cut and dark, blazing eyes. “Direct order from Mr. Wilder, ma’am.”
“Watch me at all times, huh?” Emelia swept past the bar and walked to her office tucked in the back near the kitchen. “And if I have to use the restroom? What then? You gonna follow me in and hand me paper?”
The guard flustered, clearing his throat. “I think, ah, I think it’d be best if you… Logan, it’s your turn to guard the Luminary!”
Oh, wonderful. They all knew she was Drake’s match. Did Drake tell everyone in the pack, or was their connection something they all sensed, like Silas?
Rolling her eyes, Emelia entered her office and plopped into the leather seat in front of her computer. “Friday was slow, Saturday was horrible,” Emelia read aloud from a Post-it stuck to her computer screen. “Missed you. Hope you had fun in SF. Renee.”
Emelia sighed, running her fingers through her hair. When she’d first approached Drake about the bar, when she still thought she owned it, he’d said the neighborhood was in a downward spiral. He’d said she would go bankrupt without serious financial backing. Damn him if he was right. Emelia couldn’t deny that business was slower than normal, but customers came in waves. They would come back, wouldn’t they? What if business never picked back up? And what the hell was she going to do about Needles and the money she had apparently flushed down the toilet?
She wished she had something saved up to hire a lawyer and sue the hell out of Needles and get her fifty grand back so she could reinvest in the bar. But damn it, there was nothing she could do. Drake owned her building. She’d have to go back to leasing it.
Like an elephant in the room that she refused to acknowledge, Emelia did everything she could not to think about Drake’s offer. She couldn’t push it aside any longer…if she married Drake, what was his would become hers.
She would own the bar again.
“No,” she said aloud, ploppi
ng her head in her hands. “I bought it myself, built it up myself, and I’ll do it again. I don’t need anyone.”
Emelia’s heart sank, but it wasn’t because she didn’t know what she was going to do with her bar and Drake’s building. Deep down, a tiny inkling warned that while she might not need anyone, she was starting to want someone by her side. And not just any someone, but one very special someone in particular.
Drake.
“What am I thinking?” She mindlessly stroked her left ring finger. “Things shouldn’t be this difficult. What the hell am I doing?”
“If you’ve managed to keep this place up and running while everything around the neighborhood is falling apart,” a scratchy voice said from the doorway, “I say you know exactly what you’re doing.”
The packmate leaning against the doorframe was smaller than the other two wandering around the bar, but he was still a whopping six-feet-something huge, with a mop of unruly black hair and enormous, piercing gray eyes. He was dressed in black leather pants, a baggy black shirt, and had the jaw-dropping good looks to grace the cover of Muscle magazine. But he didn’t look plastic, like he’d gotten his build from the gym alone. No, he looked like a linebacker, rough and ready to do some real damage.
“Logan, I presume?” Emelia asked, scanning through the weekend’s numbers. “Have you come to put me in my place?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “I came to serve you. What can I do?”
Hmm. This werewolf was different. Instead of picking up a warm, protective vibe from Logan, Emelia sensed an aloof type of coldness about him. Like pushing everyone away was his usual MO.
“Nothing,” she said, lost in a document detailing profits and losses. “I’m used to handling everything on my own, but thanks for the offer.”
“My pleasure. If you need me, I’ll be manning the front door.” As Logan retreated into the bar, Emelia called him back.
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