Page 103 of The Enemy to the Living
“I know. I mean, I’m a little… It’s going to be different when I go back this time. They all thought I was going to die, before. Now we actually have to work on things.”
“Yeah.”
“But I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want to go back up north to our old pack, and I really don’t want to find a new one.”
“You’re not a lone wolf.”
“No, I’m not.” Quinn chews his lower lip, then looks determinedly into my face. “I’m worried about you.”
“Me? What about me?” I don’t want him to leave his pack, either. It comforts me to know that he has them—that, this brief blip aside, he’s always had good friends to help him.
“You can’t join the pack, can you?”
“I—” Maurice hasn’t joined the clan, I know that. And clan bonds are nothing like pack bonds, anyway. There’s someinherent magic in having a powerful creature take responsibility for you, but packs are just fundamentally very different. They’re built into the foundations of what a wolf is—or not, as the case may be.
But the fact is, there’s no wavering when it comes to a wolf and their pack. They either need one or they don’t—and those who don’t, after leaving the one they’re born into, never join a pack again.
My situation is different, but then so am I. I know deep in my bones that the Huntsman will never allow me to join a pack so long as I carry his blessing, and without his blessing, I’m dead. He can’t fight a mating bond—and I doubt he ever would, considering how intrinsic bonds are within fae magic—but a pack bond? He can and he will.
“No.”
“Because you’ve been creating your own.”
“I—What?” I make a half-hearted attempt to sit up, but Quinn doesn’t move. His expression is placid, even as his eyes roam over my face.
“You have,” he says gently, insistently.
“I can’t have.”
“Grant?”
“He’s basically still a pup. He—”
“And Paxton, too.”
I snap my mouth shut. I’ve been thinking that too, haven’t I? “I think you’re right.”
Quinn smiles. “I am. Asher, I’m not going to leave my pack.”
“I’m not going to ask you to.”
“Where does that leave us, then?”
I push my fingers through his hair. “You’re still my mate.” I won’t have him doubt that. Not now. Not ever.
“A given,” he says, leaning into the touch. “What about when we do the rites?”
“We—I’ll need to talk to your alpha. I don’t know yet. I mean, we’ll do them. But I don’t know when.”
“I’m not in a rush,” Quinn says, then frowns. “Well, Iam. I just… This stuff with the fae isn’t over, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“I don’t want to lose you before we’ve even begun.”
I do sit up when I see the tears in his eyes. He rises with me, jaw trembling.
“Quinn, darling, I promise you, I’ll always—”
