Chapter 78

Ava

The warm rays of the early morning sun filtered in through the sheer curtains, casting the room in a soft golden glow. I blinked my eyes open slowly, squinting against the bright light until my vision adjusted.

That was when it hit me—this wasn’t my room.

A flush crept up my neck as the events of the night before came flooding back. The tavern. The fight in the woods. The moondeer. Chris carrying me to his bed, our bodies moving together in a frenzied tangle of heated limbs and breathless kisses. His tongue wandering up and down each of my limbs, the warmth of his…

I bit my lip, unable to contain the giddy smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth even though I knew that what we had done was… well, naughty, to say the least. Naughty, but oh so necessary. And maybe I craved a little more of his heat to start off the morning.

Then, stretching languidly, I rolled over—only to find the other side of the bed empty and cold.

Frowning slightly, I sat upright, clutching the sheet to my bare breast as I scanned the room.

Chris’s clothes were strewn haphazardly across the floor, telltale evidence of the urgency with which they had been removed last night. But he was nowhere to be seen.

A flicker of irrational worry began gnawing at the back of my mind. What if his wounds had reopened somehow? Or if he had fallen ill again? After that brutal fight with that Beta, maybe even the healing of the sacred moondeer couldn’t undo all the trauma his body had endured.

My heart lodged itself in my throat as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, quickly gathering up my discarded clothes from the night before. I had to find him, make sure he was alright—

The bedroom door swung open, and there stood Chris in all his shirtless glory.

He flashed me a lopsided grin, his tousled hair and low-slung sweatpants giving him an almost boyishly endearing look that made my pulse kick up a few notches.

“Morning, gorgeous,” he purred, padding over to lean down and capture my lips in a heated kiss.

When we finally broke apart, I was breathless and flushed, keenly aware of how thin the sheet draped over my otherwise nude frame really was.

“I should’ve known you would be up to no good,” I chided lightly, unable to resist reaching out to trace the defined lines of his abdomen. “Feeling alright?”

Chris snorted softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement. “I feel better than alright,” he assured me, straightening to his full height with a lazy stretch that put his chiseled torso on tantalizing display right in front of me. My eyes caught the scar on his abdomen, and it took all of my energy to not reach out and touch it in awe. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say I feel better than ever.”

He shot me a roguish wink, eliciting a playful swat from me, before turning on his heel and striding back toward the kitchen. “But I’m also starving,” he said.

I watched him go for a moment before I quickly gathered up my clothes, discarding the bed sheet. My clothes, however… didn’t smell great. Not after a night out in the woods. Frowning, I dropped them back to the floor.

Ew.

Chris didn’t even glance up from the stove, where he was currently tending to a sizzling pan of thick, golden-brown slices of french toast. “You can wear one of my shirts,” he called out.

My cheeks warmed, and I quickly retrieved one of the white t-shirts that he kept in his dresser drawer. I slipped it on over my head, laughing at my reflection in the mirror as I saw how oversized it was on me.

By the time I was making my way out to the kitchen, Chris was already plating up two steaming servings of french toast, drizzling each one with syrup and decorating the plates with a handful of fresh berries. He held one out to me with a crooked grin, along with a steaming cup of fresh coffee.

“Eat,” he said. “You need it.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Snatching up a plump strawberry, I slipped it between my lips, unable to suppress a soft moan of appreciation at the burst of tart sweetness that flooded my tongue.

“Mm,” I said, taking the offered plate and mug and sitting down at the little round table by the window. “You never mentioned you could cook.”

Chris smirked as he sat across from me, slowly licking a stray drop of syrup from the pad of his thumb. “Well, I can,” he said. “And if we’re being honest... I could get used to making you french toast every morning. For the rest of our lives, you know.”

The weight behind those words wasn’t lost on me. I froze, my fork clattering back down to the plate as a heavy silence fell between us in the wake of his unmistakable implication.

A future. Together.

It was what we both wanted; I knew that now.

I swallowed hard, feeling a prickling wetness sting at the corners of my eyes. Because as much as part of me ached to say yes—to spend an eternity sharing mornings just like this with the man sitting across from me—I knew it went against everything that our pack believed in.

As if reading my thoughts, Chris let out a sigh. “Go on. Say it.”

I bit my lip, my gaze turning to the window as I tried to gather my thoughts into words. Even now, I was grateful for the sheer curtains that would hide our silhouettes from any onlookers, and was wondering how I would sneak out of here in my dirty clothes without raising any suspicions.

“It’s just…” I exhaled slowly. “If you stay as the pack’s Alpha, then… We can’t be together. But you already know that.”

Chris set down his fork and scrubbed a hand through his hair, a weary expression taking over his face. “This is exactly why I don’t want to stay,” he murmured. “But it’s also getting harder and harder by the moment to discount what happened last night.”

My heart twisted painfully in my chest as I shifted my gaze down to the scar on his abdomen. It was nothing more than a small, raised mound of pale flesh—as though all of the healing of many months had been done in a matter of minutes.

It was a sign from the Moon Goddess. He was meant to stay here, to be our Alpha.

But if he stayed, regardless of the depth of our feelings, we would never be able to truly be together.

Because Alphas needed Lunas. And Lunas had to be ‘pure’, not… married in the past. It was utterly unheard of.

Chris, however, shook his head. “We’ll find a way,” he blurted out. “Even if I do stay here as Alpha—not that I confirmed it yet—I’m going to make you my Luna. And if the Elders won’t accept it, then…”

His voice trailed off, but the implications were clear: damn the Moon Goddess. This crazy bastard would shun our own deity if it meant being with me, a previously-married woman who was ten years his senior.

It felt utterly ridiculous, but also warmed my heart.

I let out a shuddering breath and stared down at my plate, unable to find the right words. The two of us were silent for a while, eventually returning to our french toast and berries, the sweetness of the syrup helping to ease some of our tensions—for the time being, at least.

As we cleaned up our plates, however, the sound of the temple bell ringing through the open window caught my attention. I let my gaze drift over to the shaft of warm sunlight seeping in through the curtains, and felt a profound urge to get outside.

“Hey,” I said, turning to Chris. “Get dressed.”