Too Late, Alpha, I'm Your Pen Pal novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Unsaying

He lit the fire himself, with a torch from the line, at nine o'clock by the lake.

The birch caught slowly and then all at once, and the flames climbed into the dark with a sound.

The pack came down from the hall in a slow river, three hundred wolves with their breath smoking, and formed a ring.

I stood at the edge of it, in the cold, with my arms wrapped round myself.

Nobody spoke.

Lennart walked into the circle alone, to where the heat hit his face, and turned to face the pack.

"Three years ago I stood here," he said, "and I swore the Refusal."

His voice carried over the fire.

"I swore I would take no mate that the Moon named for me. I was thirty and angry and I thought I knew something."

He looked at his father, and Eino looked back.

"I was wrong about the thing I was angry at. I was right about one thing only. A man should choose."

A murmur went round the ring.

"So I am choosing."

He lifted both hands to the flames.

"I unsay the Refusal. By my own mouth, before this fire and this pack and the Moon, I take it back."

The fire cracked.

"And I name Maja Torvik."

My name went across the field like a bell.

"Mine," he said. "By my own choice, and no one's else."

Then he turned and looked straight at me across the fire.

It hit him.

I saw it hit, from forty feet away.

His head jerked back.

His nostrils flared, and his green eyes went wide.

The color went out of his face, and he put a hand against his own chest.

"Oh," he said, to nobody.

He crossed the circle.

Wolves parted for him.

He stopped in front of me, close enough to touch, and breathed me in.

"Ink," he said. "And cold. And rain on a window. And..."

His voice cracked.

"And the other thing. The thing under it. I've been walking past it for three years."

"Yes."

"You're my mate."

"Yes."

"Then why are you still standing here and not halfway down the ridge?"

"Because you have not asked me to go."

"Fuck." He laughed, and it came out as a sob.

"Then ask me properly. No hall, no pack, no Moon watching."

"You were late, Alpha," I said.

His face crumpled and opened.

"Three years late."

"I know."

"I almost didn't wait."

"I know," he said. "I'm here. I'm here, I'm here."

He took my face in both hands and did not kiss me.

He only looked.

Behind us, the pack began to howl.

It started with one voice and ran round the ring, a rising sound that went up into the cold and the stars.

← Chapter 17 · All chapters · Chapter 19 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend