MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 169: COMPLICATIONS

AMARIS

The door still smelled like him.

That was the first thing. Not morning. Not the ceiling. Just the faint trace of Ryker still on the wood from where he had pressed me against it for twenty minutes and taken me apart before he kissed my forehead and left.

I was still in the same spot. Back against the door, feet cold on the floor, dress somewhere I did not entirely remember dropping it. My body still warm. The back of my head still against the wood. I had been standing here for a while and had made no progress toward stopping and was going to acknowledge that to no one.

He had said it was too risky to stay. Someone would see him leaving in the morning. The pack was watching everything and this was not the moment to hand them something to work with.

Reasonable. Completely reasonable. I had agreed and meant it and then he had pinned me against the door on his way out and given me a mind-blowing orgasm against it anyway, which was its own kind of argument about what reasonable meant to Ryker. The man was a walking contradiction and I was standing against his exit door in no clothes at six in the morning, which made me the same.

I pushed off the door. Sat on the edge of the bed. I looked at the door.

The forehead kiss. Why did he do the forehead kiss?

I picked it up and looked at it for a moment and then put it somewhere I was not going to look at it. It kept sliding back out. My body was still warm and the door was right there and the room smelled like him and I gave up and let it sit in the middle of my chest where it apparently wanted to live.

I also let myself acknowledge, very briefly and with no fanfare, that I was absolutely down bad. Then I put that away too.

So. Not a rejection.

Alpha Corvin was coming back tomorrow.

The pleasant post-orgasm warmth left immediately. The heir. The arrangement. The actual conversation we were going to have about how exactly we were going to produce said heir now that the medical option had been floated and essentially abandoned outside his bedroom.

I had said breed me to his face. I had meant it at the time. Now, sitting on this bed in no dress at eight in the morning, the specific confidence of that moment had packed its bags and gone somewhere quiet. I was going to have to sit across from him and discuss it like a functioning adult.

High standard. Very high standard for someone currently sitting here in yesterday’s choices.

And then there was the other thing.

The night Freya knocked. His bed. The lace around my waist and his hands on my body and his mouth and the specific way he had looked at me before he crossed the room and opened that door. Every morning I woke up and it was right there waiting. Every morning I told myself I was not thinking about it. Every morning I failed immediately.

I was thinking about it constantly.

I got up.

Cold shower. Stand under it until the various men in my life vacated my head and something more manageable took their place. Like Mrs. Caroline. Like whether I could plausibly avoid her face of polite disappointment for one more day.

I could not. Luna duties waited for no one.

I pulled out a pink dress. Not planned. Just there and soft and I was in a mood that required soft things today. I stood in front of the mirror.

"Entering my feminine era," I told my reflection. "Very healthy. Very well-adjusted. Completely not a woman who just had sex against her bedroom door, is thinking constantly about her husband, and is now wearing pink as an emotional support color."

My reflection looked back at me with exactly the energy I deserved.

"We’re thriving," I told it.

I left before it could disagree.

The pack house was quiet, most of the traffic still an hour away, and I walked the corridor toward the kitchen wing with my hands in the pockets of the pink dress and my chin up.

I was thinking about Mrs. Caroline and her specific brand of polite disapproval, the kind that arrived through pressed lips and careful silences, when I passed the study door.

Open.

Not wide. Just a few inches. Light inside. The faint sound of papers.

Alpha Corvin was not back until tomorrow.

I slowed.

Responsible Luna. Doing her rounds. I approached the gap and leaned slightly forward and then the smell reached me and my feet stopped.

Apples.

I stood in the corridor and stared at the sliver of light. He had been avoiding me for a week. The pack house was large enough that avoidance was effortless with separate wings and separate schedules, and yet I had felt his absence every single day. Not consciously. Just a low persistent awareness that sat at the back of everything and did not announce itself.

The problem with Rowan was the problem.

Ryker was complicated but his complications were his own. Not engaged. No political marriage he was supposed to protect. Less to lose by wanting me. Rowan had Lila. Rowan had the acting Alpha weight this week.

Rowan thought through every consequence before he moved, and yet Rowan had still pulled me somewhere the last time and I had not stopped him. Had not wanted to. I had spent a week not running into him in hallways and telling myself that was fine.

Missing Ryker was loud. It knocked around in my chest and demanded attention and I knew what to do with loud.

Missing Rowan just sat there. Every morning when I reached for something to think about. Every time I passed the east wing. Every meal at a table with his empty chair.

Every time the faint trace of apples hit me somewhere in the pack house and my feet stopped before my brain caught up. Quiet did not negotiate. Quiet just waited and I was standing in a corridor in a pink dress which was apparently my answer to all of it.

I leaned against the wall and looked through the gap.

He was at the desk with his head down over papers, shirt rolled to the elbows, jaw carrying the tight tired look of a man who had been managing other people’s problems all week without stopping. Pen moving across the page. Sheet turned. Signed. Another turned. Shoulders controlled and deliberate and he had not looked up once and I had been standing here long enough that it was starting to become a statement about my priorities.

I turned to walk away.

A hand closed around my wrist and I turned and his chest was right there and he pressed me back against the wall and stood over me with both hands braced on either side of my head before I had finished processing that he had come through the door without making a single sound.

"Rowan," I breathed.

"You thought I wouldn’t smell you." Flat. Amused underneath it.

I reviewed the last four minutes. A wolf. I had stood outside a room containing a wolf and conducted a lengthy internal debate without once remembering that he could detect me from across the wing. Finest moment as Luna of Gravemoon pack. Truly.

I glanced down the corridor both ways. Empty. For now.

"Why are you here, Amaris." Low. Direct.

"I wanted to say hi." My chin stayed up. "You’ve been avoiding me."

"Should I tell you I was busy," he murmured, "or the truth."

"I know you’re not that busy."

One hand came off the wall and moved to the small of my back and the other traveled up slowly, deliberately, and I felt every inch of the movement through the fabric of the dress.

"For someone who’s been avoiding me," I managed, "you are very hands on right now."

"Distance does things," he murmured, his mouth close to my ear.

I held very still. "Such as."

"Increases cravings," he breathed, right against the side of my face, his hand at my back pulling me forward an inch.

I smiled. Pulled it back. Too late and we both knew it.

"You’re unbelievable," I said.

"You came looking for me."

"I was going to the kitchen."

"Through the study corridor."

I opened my mouth and closed it.

His hand found my wrist and he turned toward the study door and I said "Rowan—" and he did not slow down and my feet changed their minds because I went with him and the door closed behind us and the latch clicked and then both his hands were flat on the wood on either side of my head and his face was close and the corridor was on the other side of that door where all the sensible decisions lived.

His eyes stayed on mine.

"Shall we continue," he said.