Page 32 of Lunar's Ruined Alpha
Rowan shakes his head. “Alina, it’s been years. I haven’t touched anyone but you. I haven’t wanted to touch anyone else. How can you believe otherwise?”
“What do you mean, how? You rejected me.”
But all he does is continue to shake his head. “You don’t understand, do you? You’re my Mate, Alina. Rejection or not, you are the only one I will ever truly want. It sickens me to think of being with someone else.”
Such sweet, honeyed words. Exactly what I want to hear. They would be so easy to believe.
It would be so easy to trust him.
I take a deep breath. “I think you should go. What just happened—it was a mistake.”
Again, he tries to close the distance between us. My lips are swollen from his kiss, my center still aching for more of his touch. I shove all those feelings away and steel my spine.
“I understand that the Blackburns are a threat,” I tell him as calmly as I can, even as I feel myself crumbling apart. “And I appreciate that you would come here to warn us.”
“You have to—”
“I’m speaking,” I interrupt firmly. Rowan swallows hard, struggling to bow to his would-be Luna’s ferocity.
And yet, he nods his head in a gesture for me to continue.
“You cannot pick and choose who to love,” I continue. “You can’t reject me, yet claim Noah as your son. It’s either both of us or neither of us, and since you’ve made no indication that you wish to take back your rejection of the bond, then I’m afraid there is no version of reality where we will be going with you back to Greenbriar territory.”
“That’s not what I want. I never wanted to reject my own Mate.”
“And yet you did. And you still do. Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me you’re willing to ignore Kseniya’s prophecy?”
When Rowan looks away, I have my answer.
“I think you should go,” I whisper.
He flinches, but he doesn’t put up a fight as I jerk my chin toward the door.
That’s the problem, after all. Rowan has never fought for me.
Chapter 12
Rowan
Even as my feet carry me back toward Alina’s door, every cell in my body is protesting the separation that yawns between us.
The taste of her lingers on my tongue. It wasn’t nearly enough. Even now, after the dark turn that conversation took, I’m hard for her. I’m aching for her, my muscles shrieking in protest over the fact that I’m not touching her, holding her, claiming her as my own.
She thought I’d spent the past ten years sleeping with others.
She has no idea how much I care about her.
At the door, I pause. She stares up at me, the fury gone from her eyes. Perhaps that should be a good thing, except that it’s been replaced by cold resignation and an impenetrable stubbornness that I remember seeing in her parents when they were alive.
“I’ll go,” I concede, reaching for the knob. “But you need to understand that you—and now Noah—are the center of my universe. No matter what. Nothing can change that. So, even if we can’t be together as proper Mates, you have to know that all I care about is making sure that my son is safe, which then means that his mother must also be safe.”
Even as I say the words aloud, I curse internally. I didn’t phrasethat right. Alina isn’t only valuable to me because she is Noah’s mother. The wolf within snaps at me for even suggesting otherwise. Alina is more than a means of procreation. As my Mate, she is the center of my universe.
At least, this is what my wolf side argues. The part of me that is human still struggles to overcome the fear I feel over the prophecy, and maybe that’s why I misspeak. It’s easier for her to think I’m cruel than to admit that I am afraid.
Alina frowns. “I can protect him.”
“I know you can. But you also know that the Blackburns aren’t a threat that you can reasonably handle on your own, if the time comes. At least let me do what I can to protect him from a distance.”
