The Alpha King’s Secret Heir

Chapter 10: Dinner

The dining room Damon chose was not the formal one, the long table that could seat twenty and which Aurora had glimpsed through open doors and decided was designed primarily for intimidation. It was a smaller room, paneled in dark wood, with a table that seated six comfortably and which had been set for two at one end, near the window that faced the garden.

Mrs. Caldwell had made something with slow-roasted lamb and herbs that filled the room with a smell that Aurora would later think of as the specific smell of things beginning.

Leo had been installed happily in the kitchen, where Mrs. Caldwell had promised a dedicated baking project involving something with chocolate, which Leo had described as the best possible situation. Aurora had checked on him twice before sitting down.

"He's fine," Damon said, for the second time. "Mrs. Caldwell raised four children. He's in expert hands."

"I know. I just haven't left him with someone I don't fully know before."

"You trust her."

"I trust your assessment of her. I'm still gathering my own."

"That's fair." He poured wine, a deep red, without asking. Then caught himself and looked at her. "Do you drink wine?"

"Yes. Thank you." She took the glass. "Though I appreciate that you caught the assumption."

"I've been told I make a lot of assumptions."

"By whom?"

"Nadia, primarily. She considers it a significant character flaw."

"Nadia seems like someone whose opinions you should take seriously."

"She's been my second for eleven years. I take her opinions very seriously. She would tell you herself that the problem is when I've already reached a conclusion, I stop considering the counterargument."

Aurora sipped her wine. "Is that happening now?"

He looked at her across the table. "No. You make me reconsider things in real time. It's unfamiliar."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Honestly? Both. It's a more interesting way to think." He cut a piece of lamb. "Tell me something about your life. Outside of Leo and the last four days."

She thought about it. "I run a small business. Floral design, event work, some wholesale to restaurants. I started it when Leo was eight months old because I needed work I could schedule around him and I was already good at it." She paused. "I have exactly three friends I trust completely and approximately fifteen I trust in specific contexts. I read a lot. I'm a reasonably competent cook and an excellent baker. I once drove from Cresthaven to the coast for a long weekend by myself when Leo was with my mother and I listened to the same album the entire way and I still think it was one of the better decisions I've ever made."

"Which album?"

She told him. He was quiet for a moment.

"I know that album," he said.

"Most people don't."

"I listened to it extensively about seven years ago. When I was working through a difficult period."

"What period?"

"My father died. The transition of power in a pack is not a smooth process. There was significant political instability for about eighteen months and I spent most of it managing crises that felt both urgent and meaningless simultaneously." He paused. "Music is useful for that. For when everything is serious and nothing is comforting."

"Yes," Aurora said. "Exactly that."

They ate for a while without speaking. The rain against the window was different tonight, lighter, more considered.

"What do you want?" she asked. "Not from me, or from the mate bond, or from the Leo situation. What do you want from your life in general?"

He looked slightly surprised by the question. "In general."

"Yes."

He was quiet for a moment in the way that meant he was actually thinking about it rather than retrieving a prepared answer. "Peace," he said finally. "Not in the naive sense. I understand the territory I run and the responsibilities that come with it and I'm not looking to eliminate the complexity. But I've been managing crises since I was twenty-three, and I would like, at some point, to sit somewhere quiet for more than forty-five minutes without something requiring my immediate attention."

"That's surprisingly modest."

"What were you expecting?"

"I don't know. Legacy. Territory expansion. Something suitably Alpha King."

"I have territory. I have legacy. I have enough of both to be tired of worrying about them." He looked at her steadily. "I want a life that isn't only its obligations."

Aurora thought about her morning routine, the particular quiet of six a.m. before Leo woke, the coffee and the window and the twenty minutes that were only hers before the day required her.

"I think I understand that," she said.

"I think you do."

After dinner they walked in the garden, which was enclosed and lit with low lanterns along the stone paths, the rain having stopped entirely for the first time in four days. Leo appeared briefly at the kitchen window and waved at them with a chocolate-streaked hand, and Damon raised a hand in return with the same seriousness with which he apparently did everything.

"He's going to turn you around your own finger," Aurora said.

"Yes," Damon agreed. "I think I'll let him."

She looked at him sideways in the lantern light.

"The less controlled version of you," she said. "Is it like this?"

"In what sense?"

"You're very measured. Very deliberate. I'm wondering if that's constant or if there's a version of you that isn't running everything through a filter first."

He considered this. "The wolf in me is less measured. When I'm transformed, the emotion is cleaner. Anger is anger. Protectiveness is protectiveness. There's less calculation." He looked at her. "Is that what you're asking?"

"Partly. I'm also asking if you're always this careful with me specifically."

"No," he said. "I'm this careful because you matter. The carefulness is a form of respect."

She stopped walking.

He stopped beside her.

The lantern light threw shadows across his face and she thought: here is a person who is entirely himself, without apology and without performance, and whatever complications surrounded that person, the person himself was not a complication.

She reached up and put her hand against his jaw. Just for a moment. Feeling the warmth of it, the slight roughness.

He went very still.

"Thank you for dinner," she said. And then, before either of them could give the moment more weight than it wanted, she turned and went back inside to find her son.