Chapter 16: The Ask

Conal's POV

On Thursday I stood on the gallery at dawn and tried to be glad.

Isla was asleep in my bed below.

The page lay on the kitchen table beside her coffee cup.

Three days earlier I would have given a year of my life for this.

Now I looked at the pack's rooftops along the harbor and felt sick.

If the wax said my name, she would not just have a mate.

She would have a seat above the registry, every founding family watching, and Gisela as her enemy for life.

She had never asked for that.

She had asked for her money back and a decent room.

I had been telling myself for three years that I would not take her choice from her.

Now the choice was the size of a throne, and I did not know how to hand it to her without leaning on the scale.

"You're thinking too loud," Isla said behind me.

She stood in the doorway to the lamp room in my sweater, with her hair a mess and a mug in each hand.

"I'm not thinking."

"You're brooding. It's the same noise."

She gave me a mug and came to stand at the rail.

"Say it," she said.

"You could be Alpha of this coast on Sunday."

"I know."

"You never wanted it."

"I wanted a room I'd paid for." She sipped her coffee. "I want it more if you're in it. The coast is optional."

"It won't be optional to Gisela."

"No."

I put the mug down on the rail.

"I don't want you to take it because I'm the name in the wax," I said. "I want you to take it because you want it, or not at all."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"That's the first time anyone has ever offered me a choice that wasn't a trap," she said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Put His Ex First, So I Found My True Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.