Page 67 of The Tracker's Revenge
I had seen him and remembering him at Wolfskeep made me wonder if Walter really had been mentally unstable. He had seemed fine while ganging up on Ulfen to indirectly blame him for what Stephen had done. Or was Jake just making excuses for his grandfather?
“But I didn’t know him that well, not like William does... did. We were never close, not really. It wasn’t until Mom and Dad died that he showed any interest in me. He never approved of Dad’s choice of mate. He always thought he should’ve married into some sort of alliance. I didn’t learn any of that until recently, until after he manipulated me into a pact with the Blackridges. He became more... vocal once I was trapped. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame him for my mistake. I went along with it because of the promise I made to my father. Walter didn’t force me.”
It looked to me as if Jake was trying to excuse his grandfather’s behavior, maybe to spare his memory now that he was dead, but I didn’t think Walter deserved to be spared. Hehadbeen manipulative, and that was that.
“Why would he try to do something like that? If I’d just—”
“Shh,don’t torture yourself about it,” I said. “Only the witchlights know his real reasons at this point, and it does you no good to try to guess or blame yourself. For what it’s worth, he didn’t seem unstable to me. He was ambitious, Jake, and the Unholy Vessel is a source of incredible power. I’d hoped Yura hadn’t chosen him, but I had also hoped he would respect his kind too much to turn them into mindless monsters.”
Jake chuckled sadly. “It never even crossed my mind to doubt him. I trusted him intrinsically because he was family. I should have known.” He said the last words in an angry growl that made the tumbler on the coffee table vibrate.
“Please, don’t blame yourself,” I repeated. “You can never fully know someone’s heart. I never suspected my mother of being a world-class liar, and look at how she kept my badass wolf hidden for over twenty years.”
He blew air through his nose, half amused. He squeezed my hand gently and leaned his head against mine.
After a long moment, fighting to hold the urgent question that had jumped into my mind almost as soon after Eric gave us the news, I couldn’t help myself any longer and quietly gave voice to my thoughts.
“What does this mean for your pact with the Blackridges?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Do you think Craig will still want his daughter to marry you?” I couldn’t help the hint of hope that crept into my voice. Maybe after Walter’s monumental screw up, Craig would not want his pack’s name associated with the Knights.
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of an unbreakable pact and why Walter insisted on it.”
“Yes, but, if he were to change his mind and we all pulled in the same direction, we might find a solution.”
Jake responded with silence.
“Of course,” I hurriedly added, “that’s secondary right now.”
He sat up straighter and angled his body in my direction, reaching for my other hand and squeezing it to impress his next words onto me.
“You’re never secondary. Never. With Walter gone, you’re all the family I have left. You are everything to me, Toni, and I won’t let any of this change things. My promise stands. I am the Knight pack’s alpha now, and though it’s not a responsibility I ever wanted, I need to step up, but just know that this doesn’t mean, in any way, that my feelings for you will change. Toni, if you will have me I...” He stopped.
I held my breath, desperately wanting to hear his next words. Except, they didn’t come. He held them back and gave me only a smile. For a moment, I thought to press him, to demand what he’d been about to say, but I couldn’t. Perhaps, he’d been about to ask me to marry him, then realized he had no right to do so—not when he was engaged to another, whether or not he wanted to be.
So I just said, “I know, Jake. It doesn’t change my feelings either. I don’t think anything could make me stop loving you. I swear I tried, but I failed miserably.”
He caressed my cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. “You don’t know how glad I am about that. I know it makes me a selfish bastard, but God, Toni, all the time I was apart from you was hardly worth living. I couldn’t imagine a life without you.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You don’t have to.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, and we sat like that for a long moment, inhaling each other’s scent and wishing the world could stop, so we could stay this way forever.
The world was going to shit, but at least we had each other.
