He blinked. “Right. Those are your only choices.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then caught herself and shook her head. “And that is so not important right now. We have other things we need to discuss at the moment.”
“Not if those discussions are anything like the one you were about to start where you tell me I can’t touch my own mate anymore.”
“Do you honestly think that what we just did has changed anything?”
“I honestly do,” he snapped, eyes flashing gold. “I think it’s changed your status from my potential mate to my actual mate. You’re mine now, Honor, and don’t try to say anything different, because you gave yourself to me. If you’re feeling forgetful, try touching the back of your neck. It might jog your memory.”
Honor tried not to flinch at the vicious sarcasm of that remark. As if she needed to touch the mating mark to remember it was there. She damned well couldn’t forget it, and she damned well couldn’t stop calling herself ten kinds of fool for giving in to the instinct that had prompted her to let him put it there. She could chalk it up to the heat of the moment, or to her own heat, which was getting harder to control with every passing moment, but blaming either of those things wouldn’t change the fact that she’d allowed him to mark her. Just like it wouldn’t change the fact that the question still hanging over their heads remained a choice between true or false. A hot fuck and a mating mark hadn’t miraculously opened door number three.
Goddess, how she wished that it had, though. The wolf inside her had already begun to pace and whine in grief. It wanted to return the mating, to mark Logan as hers as surely and as visibly as she’d been marked by him. It wanted them to do whatever they had to, to run off to the woods, live in a cave, and get down to the serious business of making love and pups and a future together. Her human brain, though, knew that was impossible. She still had a pack to lead, or to die trying. Having a mate made not one iota of difference to that fact.
She steeled her expression and erected a wall around her cracking heart, all while the sounds of her wolf’s howl of despair echoed in her mind.
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” she told him, keeping her voice even and emotionless. She had practiced that a lot lately. “I haven’t forgotten your mark, just like I haven’t forgotten that I haven’t marked you in turn, or that I have no plans to do so. I also haven’t forgotten that I have a pack to run, and that you have a decision to make. Mate or no mate.”
His lip curled as he glared at her. “You insult me if you think that being my mate doesn’t mean that I would do anything and everything in my power to ensure your safety and your happiness. Damn you for thinking that poorly of me.”
“Oh, so you’ve made your decision, then?” Her tone taunted him, the impulse to share a little of her own pain impossible to deny. “You’ve suddenly developed a burning desire to go from being the second most powerful wolf in one of the most powerful packs in the country to being my hunky piece of arm candy? Terrific. You can start by taking off your shirt. If I’m going to keep you as my little boy toy, I’ll want everyone to see exactly what you’re good for.”
He crossed the desk in a single leap, spinning her chair to face him and bracing his hands on the arms, surrounding her with a looming shroud of furious, feral male. Honor choked back a gasp, but she couldn’t control the way her heartbeat took off like a scared rabbit in the face of a hunting wolf. For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to be prey.
“Don’t push me, little alpha.” The words came out like a spray of heated gravel, dark and rough and potentially damaging. “If I go over the edge, I’ll take you with me.”
“And where will we go, Hunter, hm? Straight to hell?” Her fight-or-flight response had broken days ago. She had only one reaction left to threats now, the one that made her lip curl and her chin lift and her gaze lock defiantly with his. “I got here last week. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
For a long moment he continued to stare at her, and she watched as his eyes shifted until all traces of brown disappeared behind the glow of liquid gold. Part of her was hypnotized by the visible signs of his internal battle, recognizing his struggle for control in his changing eyes and the sound of the fabric of the chair ripping where his claws lengthened and sliced into the cloth-covered arms.
With a howl he tore his gaze from hers and jerked away, throwing his head back and howling at the ceiling, the sound echoing with fury and frustration in the small room. Hairs rose on her arms and the back of her neck, the skin there tingling and throbbing where his teeth had cut into flesh. Her throat clenched as she bit back the cry welling in her own chest. Her wolf would always respond to his this way. She knew it, and that made it even more important that she make sure she crushed any illusions he had of a future they could share. She needed him gone so she could mourn for their lost chances and learn to live with the pain of losing her mate, not to death, but to circumstance, whose deceptive blade cut even deeper.
Honor watched, bleeding inside, while her mate—the mate she could never claim—struggled for control. She saw his skin ripple as the magic of the change moved through him, saw his muscles tense and clench as he fought to hold on to his human form. She saw him grimace and watched his canine teeth lengthen and sharpen into vicious fangs. She saw fur begin to sprout from his cheeks and throat, and saw the minute he lost the battle against his wolf.
His head jerked to the side, golden wolf’s eyes pinning her to her seat, and the warning ripped from his throat even as his face began to stretch toward the shape of a muzzle.
“This isn’t over,” he growled, the words barely intelligible as he lost the ability to speak as a man. As he surrendered his manhood to the magic in his blood. “You … mine. Mate. Ever.”
Then the Logan shape was gone and a huge, dark wolf snarled at her once, spun toward the door, and disappeared into the woods, the tip of his tail flying behind him.
Honor had no idea how long she sat there, staring out the door, waiting for the blood from her heart to puddle on the floor beneath her chair. Of course, it never did, because all of her wounds were internal, metaphorical, the kind that couldn’t kill her, that could only make her wish she were dead.
She wasn’t, though. Honor Tate still lived, still ran the White Paw Clan, and still had to deal with the fact that no matter what her heart or her mind or her gut wanted for her future, the only future she had was the same one she’d been staring in the face for the last week: she would rule, she would lead, and she would lock her protesting psyche away behind a wall of solid steel so thick, not even a werewolf could make a dent in it.
She would go on.
Soon. Just as soon as she could find the will for it.
And so she sat in her chair and stared out into the woods where Logan had disappeared. She didn’t notice the time passing, or the afternoon shadows lengthening. She didn’t notice her stomach rumbling with hunger when she missed her second meal of the day, and she didn’t notice the cold that invaded the cabin through the open door, not even when her breath swirled around her head in a visible cloud of steam. She didn’t notice any of it until two figures stepped into the doorway and cut off her sight line.
Honor blinked. It took a moment for the change to register, for her sluggish mind to claw its way out of the numbing hole of depression and start working again. She didn’t want to think; there was too great a chance that thoughts would lead to more feelings, and more feelings only meant more pain.
She frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“At the moment? Freezing our tails off, same as you.” Her uncle Hamish stepped into the cabin, followed by another of the pack elders. Barney Andrews drew the door closed behind them. “Pete’s sake, Honor, if you want to just give money to the electric company, wouldn’t it be easier to write a damned check? Be a hell of a lot more comfortable. It’s so damned cold in here, I don’t even want to take my jacket off.”