Page 130 of My Solemn Vow
It is real though.My heart beats a little harder at that sentiment. It is real. I’m a wolf. Valor made me a wolf like him.
The last photo in the reel is of Valor and me. He’s in the foreground, taking a selfie with me over his shoulder in the woods behind him. He’s smiling, and the sun is shining bright.We could be happy like this.
“You’re such a dad,” I mutter before thinking it through a bit more. “What have I been eating for two days?” I narrow my eyes.Please don’t tell me you’ve been letting me eat weird shit. “This wolf’s snout is almost always bloody.”
“Uhm.” Valor runs his hand across the back of his neck before giving me a cheeky smile. “That’s mostly my blood. Good news, you’re a great hunter. Bad news, you still suck at killing things.”
“Only you would think that’s bad news.” I turn off his phone screen in favor of my bowl of food, and I force my jaw to unclench in order to eat.
“I’ve been feeding you frozen cuts of meat and helped you take down some smaller game. You tried to take us after a whitetail and almost got kicked in the head, so, not great yet.” He tries to muffle a laugh.
I roll my eyes and, with a shake of my head, finish my food quickly. When I go to take it to the kitchen, Valor follows me. I dislike him at my back, so I turn to face him. “I don’t need your help.”
“At the risk of sounding conceited, yes, you do.” He places his bowl on the counter and then steps back, giving me space. “We need to have a conversation.”
The relief of him stepping away is met with anxiety over the same action. More back and forth in my brain of being mad at him, being afraid of him, and being lost without him. It’s a never-ending conflict, and I wish I could pick a spot and stay anchored to it.
“I deserve for you to be mad at me and to hate me.” He steps back farther, walking backward to the stool he ate his dinner on. When the backs of his knees hit it, he sits down. “Nothing you ever did gave me reason to believe that you’re not exactly the woman you claimed to be from day one.”
I leave the kitchen and absentmindedly walk toward the door, where I lean against the wall alongside it, listening to him talk.
See, he loves us.My wolf urges.
I slide down the wall until my butt hits the floor.
“I’ve learned so much about trust since I met you.” He hangs his head, looking at his hands. Valor scrubs them together softly like he’s remembering something. “The most important lesson I learned too late.”
“Which was?” I quirk an eyebrow and cross my arms in front of my chest. But admitting he was wrong and willing to have a conversation already is so much more than I anticipatedfrom him.
“Trust in a relationship isn’t determined by how long two people have known each other but rather the depth of the souls intertwined. I trusted Neil because he’s been there my entire life. I took the near-thirty years I’ve known him and didn’t examine beyond that. Because if I had, then I’d have seen that the strongest relationship I ever had was telling me the whole truth.” Valor closes his eyes and then forces them open to meet mine, but a weight drags his shoulders down. He looks worn and tired. “What you saw in seconds took me too long to recognize.”
“And?” I push for more, not worried if I’m making him uncomfortable.
“And I’m so fuckin’ sorry. We talked, I don’t know how many times, about trust and how I could trust you with Kerrianne. Yet when it came time for me to back that trust, I didn’t. I said the words but didn’t believe them when it mattered.”
I canfeelthe sadness in his eyes.
It warms the hollowness inside my heart.
Our mate is sorry. He is remorseful. We’ve punished him, and he knows he’s wrong.My wolf urges me to recognize the truth, but I’m still wrestling with the way everything unfolded.
The anger is still there, but the sadness at his betrayal subsides with his conviction. It’s the first time anyone has ever apologized for their actions against me with real contrition.
I believe Valor is sorry. That he is remorseful. And that whatever my wolf has been doing to him, whatever anxiety he’s had over my well-being, and whatever wrath he’s received from Kerrianne has pained him enough to know how badly he screwed up.
It doesn’t fix the relationship. It doesn’t ease all my anger and my pain.
But when Valor leaves his perch on the stool, crosses the room, and sits beside me, I don’t move away from him. Our eyeslock while I wait for some sort of divine providence to tell me what to do.
None comes, and Valor places his hand on mine, giving it a little squeeze. I don’t pull away or fight the touch.
Our mate.My wolf pushes, wanting every part of us to be touching him. The change, the pull, and acceptance of what he is saying has me leaning against him.
“I trust you with Kerrianne,” he reiterates.
I draw in a sharp breath. My chest constricts, and my face heats. “I don’t trustyouwithme. I don’ttrustyou at all.”
“And I am going to earn it every day. It’s why you can’t live in the apartment in the city. I’m going to spend every day trying to earn back your trust. Wolves have complicated belief systems, and one of those beliefs is that two wolves can make a great pairing, claim each other as mates, and work on that bond. The belief is that if you both work hard and well . . . not fuck up everything like I did this week, you can form an intense and long-lasting mating bond. It can become the bond that fate intended you to find.” He squeezes my leg, his large palm spanning across my thigh.
