Chapter 2: The Reason He Gives

Cerys followed Rhys out of the gathering room while the pack was still calling his name.

Someone caught his attention at the door. He offered a quick answer and kept walking. That, more than anything, made her want to stop him. Rhys had spent the past hour making room for everyone except her. Now he was leaving his own celebration to say something he couldn't say where they might be heard.

They turned into a quieter passage. The cheers followed them, muffled but unmistakable. Rhys stopped where no one stood close enough to listen.

“Tell me,” Cerys said.

He looked at her as though he had hoped the walk would give him better words. “I don't think we should be together anymore.”

She understood every word. For a moment they had no meaning.

“Is that what you brought me out here to say?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize before you've told me why,” Cerys said.

His jaw worked. She knew that look: he was trying to make himself say something unpleasant without making it worse. She had loved him through enough difficult conversations to recognize the effort. She had never thought she would be the person on the other side of it.

“Every Wolf Night,” he said, “I wonder whether you're going to come back.”

The noise from the gathering room seemed to recede.

She had expected trouble. Not this. Or perhaps she had known he was afraid and believed, foolishly, that being afraid was something they could do together.

“You've always worried.”

“It's different when they bring you home and you can't even stand.” His voice roughened. “Sometimes you don't wake up when I speak to you. I spend the next day watching for the smallest sign that you're going to be all right. And then we do it again.”

Cerys looked at his hands. He had curled them at his sides, keeping them there as firmly as she kept hers. She remembered waking to find him beside her after one of those nights, still wearing the clothes he had worn when she left. She remembered how carefully he had smiled when she opened her eyes.

She did not remember what had happened outside. Neither of them could give the night a shape beyond what came home afterward.

“I know what it does to you,” she said.

“I don't think you do.”

That hurt, because she knew exactly where he had been on the mornings she had survived.

“Then tell me what I missed.”

He shook his head. “I can't keep building my life around the chance that next month I lose you.”

Cerys drew a breath. He was speaking about her as though she had already died, and asking her to understand why he needed to leave first.

“You could lose me whether we're together or not.”

“If we're together, I'm waiting for it.”

“And if we're not, you won't care?” Cerys asked.

“Of course I'll care.” The words came out fast. His expression changed, and for an instant he looked as wounded as she felt. “Cerys, I love you.”

It would have been easier if he hadn't said it. Easier if the man in front of her had been a stranger wearing Rhys's face and his new title.

“Then don't make this a decision I can't answer.”

“I've already made it.”

She had come after him because he promised her a private conversation. He had wanted an empty passage in which to announce the end of their relationship.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me,” she said.

“I am talking to you.”

“No. You're telling me what happens next.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. She watched him accept the distinction and do nothing with it.

For a few seconds she considered asking him to wait until after Wolf Night. The request rose so naturally that she almost made it. They could have two more days. She could find a way to be less frightened when she left, and perhaps he could find a way to be less frightened when she didn't come back immediately.

But she had never promised him she would survive. She couldn't promise it now just because the alternative was losing him while she was still alive.

“You were afraid last month,” she said. “And the month before that. This morning you were planning to stand beside me after the announcement.”

He glanced away. “Things are different now.”

There it was again. The new Alpha. The people waiting to congratulate him. Their hands reaching for his, their eyes turning to her with the same fond concern they always showed the pack's weakest wolf.

Cerys waited until he looked at her.

“Different how?”

“I have responsibilities I didn't have yesterday.”

“Does one of them require you to stop loving me?” someone asked.

“Don't turn it into that.”

“Then stop hiding behind it.”

A burst of laughter came from the other room. She could picture someone raising a cup to Rhys, certain he was beginning the best day of his life. She had been certain of it too. She had imagined finding him later, when everyone finally let him go, and telling him how proud she was without anyone interrupting.

He had let go of her hand before the crowd reached them. That had not been an accident.

“You said you couldn't bear another Wolf Night,” she said. “I believe you. But you didn't pull away from me after a Wolf Night. You did it in there.”

Rhys stared at the floor between them.

“Look at me.”

He did.

“If this is only about being afraid I'll die, why did you wait until you were Alpha?”

“Because I have to think about the pack now.”

“You were always going to have to think about the pack. We both knew that,” Cerys said.

“It isn't as simple as you want it to be.”

“I'm not asking for simple.” Her voice shook, and she hated that he could hear it. “I'm asking you to say the part you don't want me to know.”

He moved as if to answer, then stopped. There was no one between them, no celebration to pull him away, and still she had to fight for his attention.

Cerys knew what people said about her. They loved her. They worried over her. When she walked back into the silo after Wolf Night, someone always looked relieved enough to laugh. No one asked her to help defend them. No one expected her to be the wolf standing between danger and home.

Rhys had heard all of it. Until today she had thought he stood beside her anyway.

“Is it because they think I'm weak?” she asked.

“Cerys—”

“Because they'll see the weakest wolf in the silo standing beside their Alpha?”

“That's not all this is,” someone said.

She almost accepted that answer. She loved him enough to want to. But not all was not the same as no.

“There isn't a rule against us,” she said. “No one made you do this.”

“I know.”

“Then I need you to tell me whether their opinion mattered more than you could bear to admit,” someone said.

He looked back toward the celebration. When he faced her again, he did not reach for her.

“Yes,” Rhys said. “It mattered.”