“I do love Jace,” I said, and Marc’s face crumpled. He started to turn, but I grabbed his arm and wouldn’t let him pull away. “I can’t help that. I love him, but I can live without him. I can’t live without you, Marc. Please don’t ask me to.”
“You…? You’re serious?”
I nodded. “As a broken heart. I want you to stay. The Pride needs you, but I’d be lying if I said that has anything to do with this. Stay for me. Stay with me. There will never be anyone else. Not in my bed. Not in my life. And not in my heart.”Marc smiled, hesitantly at first. Then he smiled for real, and the gold in his eyes glittered with light from within. I’d never been able to resist those eyes.
I glanced down and pulled the chain from beneath my shirt, so that the ring he’d given me months ago hung in full sight. “Marry me, Marc.”
His eyes widened. His gaze snapped from my face to the ring, then back again.
“Is that a yes?” I grinned.
His smile lit up the whole world.
And Marc kissed me.
I held on to him, hardly daring to believe he was real. That he’d truly come back.
My struggles with the council weren’t over—hell, my fight with them might not even be over—and something told me that my Alpha growing pains had just begun. But this first hard-won victory proved that anything was possible. Jace could be an Alpha. Manx could marry for love. Owen could be a husband and father. My mother could welcome Angela into our lives and openly spoil a human grandchild. Abby, and Melody, and Kaci, and all the other young tabbies, could have options, and both the privilege and responsibility to fight for them.
And I could handle anything life saw fit to throw at me with my men at my back and Marc at my side.
Together, we represented a new page in werecat history: a stray and a tabby, leading the country’s largest Pride. The next generation might label us rebels, or—if we were lucky—revolutionaries. But however we’d be described down the road, looking forward, I was content to know that from that moment on, we’d be running things our way. The right way, politics be damned.
And by doing that, maybe I could make my father—forever my own Alpha—proud.