Page 125 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
His eyes went wide, confusion replacing the misery that had been radiating from him moments before.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I continued, my fingers still stroking through his hair. “Of course, if you want to, we can figure out a way to break it. But I don’t care about the side effects. I don’t care about not being able to block your thoughts. And as for your turbulent emotions…” I cupped his face with my free hand. “I’ve been dealing with those since the day I met you, weird wolf bond or no weird wolf bond.”
His breath hitched.
“The only thing that would upset me,” I said, feeling the truth of it settle deep in my bones, “is if you disappeared. If you decided that because your wolf chose me or whatever, somehow that made it less real or less wanted.”
“But you didn’t choose—”
“Didn’t I?” I interrupted. “Every choice I’ve made in the past week has been about getting closer to you. Coming to Scotland. Talking with you. Finally understanding you. Being with you while you shifted. Meeting your family. Sharing a bed. Telling you I like you. Having sex with you.” My thumb traced across his cheekbone. “Maybe my conscious mind didn’t know what it was choosing, but some part of me did.”
Tears spilled over then, tracking down his face to drip onto my shirt.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m crying right now.” He threw his face into me, mumbling, “I’m so mortified.”
…Jesus fucking Christ, Rory, stop that. He didn’t sign up to be bonded for life to a hot mess…
“You really thought I was going to be pissed at you?” I asked, genuinely baffled.
Rory’s face emerged from my chest. “Well, yeah. I mean, this is literally your personal nightmare, isn’t it? Being permanently stuck with me?”
His palm pressed against my ribs. I could feel the way he’d convinced himself that being bonded to him was a burden, a prison sentence for whoever got caught in his orbit.
Was I freaked out about being permanently tethered to Rory Thorne? Absolutely. The idea of never again having any semblance of barrier between our minds, of being tied to someone so impulsive and chaotic, of having my carefully controlled life turned upside down by supernatural forces beyond my control—yes, it fucking terrified me. But Rory didn’t need to know that right now.
Instead, I found myself grinning despite the pounding in my skull. “Plus,” I added. “Now I’ll always know when you’re about to do something spectacularly stupid, which should make my job considerably easier.”
“Oi, I’m not that predictable.” A watery laugh escaped him, and the crushing weight of his self-loathing eased just slightly.
“You literally just ran across the moors after your missing ex-boyfriend creepily beckoned you outside in the middle of the night without giving your safety a second thought.”
“Fair point.”
The moment of levity faded as reality crashed back over us. Dev’s empty eyes, the inhuman strength, the way he’d vanished into the darkness.
“Right, then,” I said, my voice turning grim. “What the fuck are we going to do about Dev?”
18
Rory
“Did you bite him?”
“Of course I bit him, he hurt you!” Plus, Dev was trying to kill me, but that line sounded good.
My muscles ached from shifting so rapidly into a wolf and then back again, fibres protesting the violent transformation. The pain threaded through my limbs like barbed wire, but it was nothing compared to the chaos in my head. The world felt tilted, spinning on an axis that had shifted somewhere between Dev’s hollow smile and Maxwell’s unbelievable acceptance of our bond.
In the space of five minutes, my missing ex-boyfriend had almost murdered me, and then I’d confessed to my archnemesis that I’d tethered us together for life.
And he hadn’t been repulsed.
And he’d even called mebabyagain.
Dev. Newfound supervillain powers. Almost killed us. Focus, Rory, focus!
“If you seriously injured him, he couldn’t have gone far.”
“Nah, he bricked it out of here like it was just a scratch. He wasn’tDev, Maxwell.”
