Page 69 of Bound

“You tell me.”

“I wouldn’t. I would never. How can you even think that about me, especially after you had your memories altered before without your consent? And after what I did to you?” I could see in the light from the streetlamps that he was trembling. “When River came to me and said he’d done research on Omega wolves through the Council archives, I knew I had to protect you. August told him I was getting worse. Some of what he read indicated that Omega wolves needed to get mated by a certain age or their power could become unstable.”

“I’m not following.”

Caldwell rubbed his eyes, looking like he wanted to be sick. “It was never you. I asked River to wipe me.”

Black spots swam across my vision. “You.”

“Yes.”

“The hell—"

“It was messed up and I get that. But at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” I half-shouted. “Do you seriously want to end up with your memory fucked up like mine?”

West glared at me, breathing hard. “How many times do you want me to say I screwed up? I didn’t go through with it. It was a stupid, thoughtless idea.”

“Don’t,” I growled. “Our wolves getting bonded that night up on the cliffs—that wasn’t your fault. But what you’re doing now, the way you keep using your magic as an out every time shit starts to get real is total B.S. and you know it.”

Caldwell looked away. “You don’t understand what this is like for me. I want this—us—so much that sometimes I can barely breathe. But there are nights I lie awake in the dark, wracked with pain trying to contain my curse, and all I can think of in those moments is that you shouldn’t have to deal with this. It’s my burden to bear. If we were together, you’d always be under the influence of my power.”

“And if we were mated? According to River, there’s something about the mated bond that makes Omega magic easier to control.”

“I will not ask you to be my mate in order to fix my curse. That is wrong on so many levels that I don’t even want to think about it.”

“So what, that’s it then? Game over. I don’t even get a say?”

West pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t say that.”

“Things we should decide together, you shut me out of. River came to you and told you what he learned about your Omega powers and our bond. Did it even occur to you to talk to me?”

“I would have eventually.”

“Before or after you asked your brother to mind wipe you?”

“I didn’t want you to feel pressured into doing something you’d come to regret and resent. I’d already taken so much from you.”

“Okay, one, being with you is not a hostage situation, except maybe for your cooking.”

“Burn.”

I stepped into his space, tracing my thumb along the length of his jaw. “But for what it’s worth, I’d eat your scary peanut butter Cheerio toast every day if it meant I got you. You’re worth it.” I kissed the tip of his nose.

West sighed. I pressed my forehead to his, drinking in the smell of fresh dryer sheets and cinnamon gum. “You have to start trusting me, Caldwell. That I’m not going to leave. That you can tell me stuff, hard stuff, embarrassing stuff, and I’ll still love you in the morning. Please don’t forget that I’m already aware of your weird obsession with hot dragon shifters and matching all the ketchup packets with the correct brand of French fry and alphabetizing them in your Tupperware.”

“Wait, let’s back up,” he said, voice breathy. “There was hot dragon shifters and then you, um, love me?”

The night we met, I’d been desperate to escape, the fierce fire of West Caldwell’s magic that had indelibly inked some part of his soul under my skin perhaps as much accident as fate. In the months that followed, I’d been lost, a ghost sleepwalking through days where I couldn’t recognize the person I’d become. And through it all, West had been there. Dragging me into town to attend the Yule Festival when I snarled I didn’t want to see dogs dressed in antlers. Force feeding me blueberry pancakes at Guillermo’s when I insisted I wasn’t hungry. Bringing August over for endless rounds of zombie hunter on the weekends while his demon-possessed guinea pigs chittered and demolished mountains of lettuce in the background.

West Caldwell was fire and candlelight, a lazy summer night you wanted to soak up forever. He was the good book whose pages you could devour over and over again, discovering something new every time. He was the sort of person who always saw the best in others while overlooking it in himself. I wanted to be the one there in the soft early hours of the morning when his eyelashes fluttered against the freckled expanse of his cheeks. To feel him sigh against my neck, the two of us curled beneath the covers, safe against the world, knowing that whatever hell the coming days might bring, we would face it together.

I held his eyes, the two of us locked together under the quiet embrace of the streetlamps and a starry Texas night. “Always.”

11

West