“Are you backing out?”
“No, no.” He shook his head hard. “Not me. But if something happens to me...”
She hated the sound of that. “Like what?”
“Or, you know, you might back out when you figure out who I really am.”
Emma smiled up at him. “Silly wolf, don’t you know?”
Dustin cocked his head. “Know what?”
Sliding her hands up his shoulders, she murmured, “I see you. The real you. Maybe the crew doesn’t yet, but I do. You didn’t hide well enough from me.”
Dustin searched her face with an unfathomable expression. His eyes glowed with such beautiful intensity, it threatened to take her breath away. He signed clumsily, If I could have my way, I would give this all to you.
You will, she signed back slowly in the simple alphabet so he could understand her.
His chest rose with his deep inhalation, and he pulled her into a hug, stood their swaying them gently from side to side in the middle of their pretend house as they watched the sun setting over the mountains. Dusk was putting on quite the show tonight. The sky was painted in soft yellows and pinks, and thin clouds dotted the horizon. The two towering mountains behind the trailer park created a perfect valley between them to watch the sun sink to the horizon.
Dustin sat on the concrete, right in the middle of what would hopefully someday be their living room, and pulled her down between his legs. It wasn’t often Dustin got quiet, and she would have worried except he was still touching her. He was still showing her affection, and the glowing in his eyes had faded with each passing minute.
Emma relaxed her shoulder blades against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her and settled his cheek against hers. “I got you something,” he said against her ear.
“A present?”
One nod. “I had all these plans for when I said ‘I love you’ for the first time, but earlier, it just felt like the right time.”
“It was,” she said. “It was perfect. I’ll never forget it.”
Dustin was quiet for a minute before he said, “Do you know what werewolves say about home?”
Emma shook her head.
“Home is where you rest your bones. It’s not a specific place, or person, or even somewhere permanent. Wolves roam. Packs roam. Settling territories is hard because no one wants us near their towns. And rightly so. We tend to ruin things. When I was growing up, we moved every year from rental home to rental home. I hated that the pack was always on the move, and my parents had to take us wherever the alpha decided. It’s not like with crews, you understand? There’s no working together unless we are hunting. There is the alpha’s law, and you just hope to get into a pack with a good alpha who will keep you alive longer. Pack is for survival, not for a happy life. There aren’t a lot of mated pairs for werewolves. What woman is going to put up with our shit? Most of the girls in the pack I grew up in were turned against their will and had nowhere else to go. They were always scared. Skittish. It’s how I thought women were supposed to be. My mom was one of them. Weak around my dad, strong for me and my brother. She understood the need for her sons to be dominant in the pack so we could be safe, and when I came along…” Dustin swallowed hard. “She wasn’t disappointed in me. She was disappointed that my life would be stunted. She could see my future. So could my dad, so could my brother, so could I. So she made sure I had the best shot possible to survive into adulthood. She pushed me in school where she didn’t with my dominant brother. It was hard because we were moving around so much, but she devoted herself to making sure I got the best education. Good schools, college—she was relentless. At the time, I didn’t understand why until Axton chose me for the pack he was building. Me, a submissive, and Axton was one of the most dominant wolves in the world at the time.”
“Why did he pick you?”
“Because I built a business that could support his pack.”
Emma turned her back on the sunset and settled between his legs facing him. “You funded your pack?”
Dustin nodded. “That’s what has kept me alive this long. I built teams of marketers, elite teams, and sold their services to huge corporations. That’s how I started out. It was beneficial to the teams because I could negotiate more money for them, and beneficial for me because I made huge commissions on each team I successfully sold to these companies. So if one of the pack lost a job, or had a hard time paying bills, or fuck, just didn’t want to work, I took care of them.”
Whoa, this was unexpected. Dustin was thoroughly educated and a clever businessman. All of his perverted jokes and lack of seriousness had thrown her way off track. “That’s how you afford your car.”
He huffed a laugh and rested his elbows on her bent knees, linked his hands behind her back. “That’s the one splurge I ever did for just me. Axton was pissed that I wasted pack money, but I didn’t care on this one. I earned all that money and fed it into the pack as an investment on my survival, but I wanted a fast car. I wanted somewhere I could just cruise when shit got too heavy. I wanted a place to sleep when we were moving around and fighting like fucking…well…werewolves.”
“Axton moved you around a lot?”
“Yeah, his reputation preceded him wherever we went to claim territory. He is a bulldozer and a killer. He’s killed a dozen of our own kind just to get to where he is, but that’s what alphas do.”