Don't Touch Him! He's Not An Alpha, He's My Patient novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Mark Can Wait

I looked at him standing barefoot on the path in his aunt's coat.

"No," I said.

Arlene made a noise.

"I'll be in the truck," she said. "I'm not listening. I'm listening a little."

She stomped off around the side of the cottage.

Wylie didn't move.

"No?"

"Not like this."

"Like what? She's going to stand under the moon in two days and say three words, and I'm going to belong to her. You heard the book."

"I heard it."

"Then put your teeth in my neck and fix it."

"Fix it," I said. "Listen to yourself."

I went past him into the cottage and lit the lamp because I needed something to do with my hands.

He followed me in and shut the door.

"Explain it to me," he said. "Slowly. I've been in a chair."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Make it funny so I'll give in."

He leaned on the door with his arms folded.

The coat had fallen open.

I made myself look at his face.

"For four years I decided everything for you," I said. "When you ate. When you slept. Which shirt. What day you got your hair cut. You couldn't say no to me."

"I didn't want to."

"You couldn't. That's the point. That's the same point I made to Tilly with your blood on my hand."

He stopped smiling.

"A mark isn't a bandage," I said. "It's forever. If I put it on you two days after your wolf came back, because it's the only medicine left on the shelf, then I'm your healer again. I'm just your healer with teeth."

"And if you don't, I'm hers."

"I know."

"So what do you want, Freja?"

My throat closed up.

"I want you to choose me because you want me. Not because I'm the door out of a burning house."

He came off the door and crossed the room in three steps.

He stopped close enough that I had to tip my head back.

"You think I'm choosing you because you're the exit."

"I think you were alone in the dark for five years and I was the only light on."

"You were," he said. "So listen to what I'm about to say, because I mean it as a man with a wolf in his chest and two good legs."

He took my face in both hands.

"I'd choose you if she'd never said a word in that maze. I'd choose you if I'd met you on the stairs that week with all my wits and a full belly. I'd have taken one look at you and followed you home."

"You don't know that."

"I'm a tracker. I know where things go."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle.

"That's not even an argument."

"It's a good one. You're crying."

"I'm not."

He kissed the wet off my cheekbone.

"Then mark me on the Hunter's Moon," he said against my skin. "In front of all of them. Not up here in the dark like a secret. Down there, where Tilly has to watch, and your father, and every Alpha who drove in for the party."

I went still.

"In front of the Gathering."

"You wanted everyone to hear about the lap. Let them see this too."

"That's not a medical decision."

"Good. I'm not your patient."

I put my hands flat on his chest under the coat.

His heart was going fast.

Mine was worse.

"Before she speaks," I said. "Not after. The second the moon clears the cedars."

"Before she speaks."

"And if you change your mind between now and then..."

"I won't."

"If you do, you say it out loud, and I let you go. That's the deal."

He looked at me for a long time.

"You're a very stubborn woman."

"I've heard."

"I'm going to marry you, you know. Wolf way and the other way."

"Shut up."

"You keep telling me that. It never works."

He slid the coat off his shoulders and let it fall on the floor.

Then he walked me backward to the bed by the hearth, where the fire had burned down to red.

He walked me backward until my calves hit the bed frame.

I put a hand on his chest and pushed.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress and looked up at me, half smiling, his cock already hard against his stomach.

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