chapter 5

He hugs me so tightly, I almost can’t breathe; his arms are rock hard at my back. Leaning down close, he says softly, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

Alarm bells go off in my mind. I step back from him and tilt my head, pretending to check my immovable hairdo to avoid looking him in the eye.

“You’ve been gone for five years,” he says, suddenly pragmatic. “You might not feel the same way toward me that you did before you left.”

How do you know what I felt for you? I almost snap.

My memory drifts back to the day he knocked on my bedroom door, startling me with his presence in my house, startling me more with the announcement that my father signed a mating pact. Ashton and I barely knew each other; though we were both educated at the private academy all children of the Toronto pack attend, we weren’t friends. We barely spoke to each other before he approached my father.

To this day, I’m still not sure what Ashton truly sought from our engagement. Maybe it was a rash decision made under the influence of a young, unrequited crush. He wanted a job from my father, so maybe Ashton thought a marriage would secure that position for him. Whatever the reason, I barely know this man standing in front of me, behaving like we’re long-separated lovers.

My feelings for him haven’t changed. Because they never existed in the first place.

“I thought you would have called off the mating pact by now,” I say, praying “hope” doesn’t replace a crucial word as I speak.

“Never.” He shakes his head firmly and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together.

Somehow, in the five years that I’ve been gone, completely cut off from communication with the pack, I’ve been involved in a grand romance with my fiancé, a man I barely know.

“I appreciate that.” What else is there to say? “My mother would be humiliated.”

“I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass your family. When they’ve already been through so much.” He cuts himself off and his pained expression stops just short of a wince.

“It’s all right,” I reassure him. It’s not all right; I don’t like to be reminded that I’m a black sheep in a den of wolves. “I don’t want to do anything to embarrass them, either.”

And I realize too late, as he puts his arm around my waist, that he could take that as a declaration that I won’t be breaking our engagement. That I will accept the transformation and stay with the pack for the rest of my life. I might as well have sworn fealty to him, with that remark.

He leads me toward the dance floor, saying, “Come. We never had a chance to make our debut properly.”

I’ve been home fewer than twenty-four hours and I’m already right back to the world I left behind. All I did by leaving was delay the inevitable. I was a fool for thinking I would ever truly leave the pack.

My stomach roils as Ashton leads me onto the dance floor, where couples float and twirl to a waltz from a string quartet. I feel eyes on us from all the other pairs; he’s handsome, he’s suave, and he dances with such grace it extends to me. I tell myself that’s why everyone is staring, why I see so many smug faces and tight-lipped whispers happening all around us.

But I’m not optimistic enough to believe it. They see Baily Dixon, who exploited an ancient rule to leave her pack. Who ran out on a mating pact, who rejected the transformation and in doing so made her family a subject of gossip and derision. They’re all wondering what I’ll do next to fuck up.

I want to vomit, and the twirling of the waltz doesn’t help. I close my eyes and hold tightly to Ashton’s shoulder, praying for the music to finish. Mercifully, it does, and we step apart to politely applaud the quartet.

I know an exit when I see one. I turn to Ashton to tell him I need to go out for some air, but before I can speak, I see the king striding toward me, his mouth bent in a mildly crooked smile.

He stops in front of us and inclines his head toward me. “Miss Dixon.”

He knows my name. Not only that, but he doesn’t even acknowledge Ashton standing beside me.

“Pack Leader,” I whisper, curtseying.

I keep my eyes downcast and see his hand, with the heavy royal signet ring, reaching for my own. He’s the king. I let him take it and rise, praying my palm isn’t as sweaty as I fear. The strings start up a tango.

He doesn’t release my hand. “Will you honor me with a dance?”