“You bound us.” Link shook his head back and forth, eyes wide. “You’re human. You can’t.” A long snarl left him. “Love her. I love you.” Link shook his head and held it in his hands as if he hurt. As if gripping it hard would keep him together. “I didn’t bite you! I was trying to protect you.” His voice went gravelly. “Can’t protect her from what’s coming. She’s ours now.” Link went white as a sheet. “Ours,” he repeated, his vacant eyes on the crumpled comforter. “We’ll hurt her.” Link looked at her with heartbreak etched into every facet of his face. “I’ll hurt you. You should leave. No. Get out of here. No. Stay away from me. Be okay.”
Fury pumped through her veins. She should leave? After that incredible moment they’d shared, she should stay away from him? She was almost watching him give up on himself and on her, and she hated it. “Stop it! I see you, Link. I see all of you. Fuck the curse, and fuck you waiting around to go mad and die. If I bound myself to you, or whatever it was that just happened, it was for a reason. I didn’t just find you to lose you.” She blasted off the bed and began dressing, rage shaking her hands and making her fumble with the clothes.
“You’re leaving.” He said it as though he expected nothing less, which made her even angrier.
“No, I’m not. Not like you think. I’m going home because you and Wolf need to have this argument without me here listening to you ruin a moment that meant everything to me!” Her shoulders sagged, and she blinked back the damned tears because she was not a crier. Never was, never would be. “It meant everything,” she repeated low.
She strode toward the coat rack at the front door.
“Don’t leave like this,” Link said from behind her.
She turned on him. “I’m in this now, and so are you, Lincoln.” Full first name—yeah, she was pissed. “Own your fucking last name. Own the wolf and the man. Own me! Spend every moment you can with me because I see the changes in you. I hear the way Wolf growled just now. It was less, it was softer, and twice it even sounded happy.”
“I have work,” he said with a frown. “Can’t spend every day—”
“I don’t give a shit about your excuses, Link. Avoiding me won’t erase either of our feelings.” She narrowed her eyes at him as an idea began to form. “But you’re right. You have a shit-ton of work to do. On Buck’s cabin. I’ll pay you to make up for the income you lose on the other jobs.”
“I don’t want your money—”
“I’m not asking, Link. I’m telling you I need you. I need you here with me and in control, not just for a day or a week. For good. Whatever happened between us…was big. Tell me you felt it, too.”
“Nicole,” he whispered, looking tortured.
“Tell me!”
“I can’t fix my curse!”
She shoved her arms into her jacket and opened the door. “No, but we can.” She arched her eyebrows and leveled him with a look. “We have to.”
She slammed the door behind her, but Link threw it open and followed her out, stopping on the edge of the porch as though the cold didn’t affect his bare skin at all. He didn’t even cross his arms over his chest to ward off the wind as he watched her get into her truck and rev the engine. She hit the gas, angry and scared for a future she couldn’t control any better than the weather. She’d meant what she’d said, though. They had to find a solution to the McCall curse because she couldn’t handle finally feeling like she belonged somewhere, with someone good, just to give up and let him accept his dark destiny.
And over the drone of her heater, she heard it. The first long, haunting note of Link’s lone howl. It was filled with sadness and heartbreak, and she gripped the steering wheel to resist the urge to turn around and hug the scruff of his neck, cry, and tell him everything was going to be okay when it wouldn’t.
She couldn’t fix the McCall curse.
Not alone.
Link had to make the decision to save himself.
Chapter Eight
Link paced in front of Vera and Tobias’s cabin. If he did this, it would be getting his hopes up again. It would mean setting himself up for the massive disappointment he’d endured when the cure fixed the Silver brothers’ hibernation issue, but couldn’t fix him.
He’d gone to a dark place and had only lifted above it when he’d met Nicole. Asking Vera for help could push him all the way into madness if she denied him.
The door opened and Vera leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, a mix of sadness and relief swirling in her fox-gold eyes. “Tobias is out on delivery.”
“I’m not here to see your mate.”
Vera cuddled closer into the blanket she had draped around her shoulders. “Where have you been?”
Link twitched his head and hated himself for his weakness. “Spiraling.”
Her mouse brown hair lifted off her shoulders and whipped in the frigid breeze. “I’ve missed you. You’re my best friend, and you just bolted on me. On Elyse and Lena, too.”
Link made a ticking sound behind his teeth and closed his eyes. “Tobias and his brothers stay awake through winter now. You don’t need me anymore.”
“Bullshit. You think you were only protection for me? For Elyse and Lena?” Vera shook her head. “It was never about what you could do for us, Link. It was about being a part of this place, a part of us. You’ve wasted some of the time we have left together.”
“I have someone,” he blurted out.