THANE POV
Her words should have sounded insulting.
Instead they landed somewhere dangerously close to hope.
Because she was right.
I didn't.
Not really.
I'd spent years watching her.
Wanting her.
Protecting her from me.
Drawing conclusions.
Making decisions.
But I had never actually asked.
Ferus growled the word low inside me, just tired of me. Couldn’t blame him.
I was tired of me too.
“You really thought I’d be scared of being mated to poisonous wolves?” she asked, and there was a hysterical edge beneath the words now, not amusement exactly but something close enough to disbelief to make Keres wince.
“Kind of,” Keres muttered.
Perse stared at him.
“Keres,” Aiden said under his breath.
“What? She asked.”
She let out a laugh then.
One sharp, breathless sound that wasn’t
