Alpha’s Strength(62)
“I’m right?”
“Yes. You are. I’m wrong, and you’re right. Happy?”
This was the strangest apology she’d ever heard. Forget a roadmap, she needed a GPS to find her mate in this strange, raving lunatic who had taken over his body.
“No, not particularly.”
“Why not? I’ve told you that I did the wrong thing by not telling you what I meant to say to the pack. I contemplated it, but I knew what you’d say—that I shouldn’t make them that promise—because I know what I would have told you if our situations were reversed. I’d tell you no way in hell should you be promising your life to anyone but me. That being said, this is my role. I can’t be Alpha if I’m unwilling to throw myself in one hundred percent. They deserve nothing less from their leader.”
A bead of sweat had broken out on his forehead, and she wiped it away. “And that’s why you consciously decided not to speak to me most of the day and not tell me you were doing this.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Correct.”
“That’s pretty much akin to lying to me.” She wasn’t going to automatically let him off the hook, even if he seemed kind of sad standing in front of her confessing his sins.
“I suppose if you want to look at it that way.” He stalked over to the side of the stairwell and stared outside.
“How else should I look at it?”
“That I’m the Alpha of Manhattan and I’m not used to explaining myself. I don’t know how to do things differently, and I handled it badly. I apologize.”
She walked over and put her arms around his waist, leaning into his back. “I grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, just me and my folks. You had all this family around you all the time. How do you not know how to communicate better?”
He snorted. “Betsy, everyone has done what I wanted since I was twenty years old.”
“Then you’re overdue to have a mate who doesn’t always feel inclined to obey your every order.” She really wanted him to understand what she said to him. “Particularly when it comes down to your safety. You belong to me, and I know you belong to all of them too. But you belong to me differently, and I’m going to cherish you whether you want me to or not.”
“I want you to.” He kissed her forehead.
“And you will eventually figure out you actually want to share with me.” Maybe if she put that out there to the universe it would happen. Maybe the moon would listen.
“I’m not used to it.”
She nodded. “I know. And you realize this puts to an end your whole speech about not lying, about always telling the truth.”
“Betsy, it’s not exactly the same thing.”
She shook her head. “How am I going to know when you’re holding back? When you’re not telling me things you should?”
He let out a long breath. “Okay, I promise to not keep things to myself that you should hear. I promise it. I swear my oath by it.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “That’s good enough for me.” She smiled at him, but when he didn’t return one, she had to ask him again. “What’s wrong, Cyrus?”
“No one is going to kill me, Betsy. No one is going to beat me in a fight or take Manhattan from me. I’ve never been bested, and I never will.”
“Oh no?” She raised an eyebrow. Male egos were clearly all the same regardless of whether they belonged to humans or werewolves. “When you’re one hundred and ten years old, you don’t believe that it’s possible someone could come and beat you in a fight? It must be possible, Cyrus. Look what happened to Lucian.”
He sucked in his breath, and she knew bringing up Lucian had been a low blow. But it was a fair point, nonetheless. He worshiped the man, whether he should or not. How could he forget that someone had murdered the Alpha Prime? If that were possible, it would certainly be possible for a strong, would-be Alpha wolf to show up and take Manhattan from him. “I’ll step down at one hundred.” He nodded, as though he appreciated his own idea. “That’ll work. At one hundred, I won’t do this anymore.”
“Is that possible? Have you ever heard of an Alpha stepping down before?”
He shrugged. “New precedent. It’s not like we all belong to some organization that can tell us what to do. There’s no Alpha Prime to oversee us. If I want to step down, I’ll step down.”
His words should have warmed her, but they didn’t. Nothing in her life had ever been simple. Even her parents had lied to her every day of her existence. It wouldn’t be as simple as Cyrus stepping down at one hundred years of age. Someone would want his head before then. One of her jobs, it seemed, would be to see that no one got it.