“You caught me at the worst time, man, because I’m all the way done playing the redshirt in some king’s story. I’m sorry if you don’t consider having my own damn life to live, doing what I’ve always wanted to do, a good enough reason not to get with you. But no, I’m not going to let you show up out of the blue and start telling me how to live my life.”
Despite his earlier irritation with her and her dedication to her silly sounding work, FJ does now find his heart softening. Having grown up under the shadow of a title he knew would come to him, possibly only through the gruesome blood wall of his parents’ death, he understands well the feeling of being forced to take oar on someone else’s ship.
“Varra…”
With a sigh, he takes her by the arm guides her to a nearby bench.
“Wait, I thought we were going into town,” she says, giving her arm great tug so she might claim it from him.
FJ releases her. But only so he can scrape the layer of snow off the bench with his arm before laying his jacket upon it. “I would have you sit.”
“I don’t want to sit,” she answers his shoulder.
Now does he take her by the arm, pulling her down to sit on the bench beside him before she can give protest again. He cannot abide this. Her refusal to engage with him beyond strange words he never quite fully understands.
“I would have you look at me, Varra.”
That request merely serves to bring her eyes down to the snow at their feet, like an invisible string has given them great pull.
But this time, FJ does not let her gaze take refuge in the ground. This time FJ takes her by the chin. “Look at me, Varra,” he says again, letting just a little bit of his wolf into his voice. “You may cast your eyes away from others, but you will give your fated mate his due.”
For a moment her eyes bounce around wildly, like an animal trapped. But then they meet his…and stay there.
His heart stops. Her eyes…they’re even more beautiful in the daylight. Brown and wide and full of cleverness.
“Perhaps you are right to give no one your eyes,” he admits to her then. “They do take away my breath.”
“Don’t say that,” she says just as quietly.
But her eyes stay with him.
Which gives FJ’s heart great light. “Yea, this is good, Varra. You will this day come to be as comfortable with me as you are with my brother.”
“That’s different,” she says. “He’s a wolf. He’s easy to be…ah, comfortable with.”
“Yea, is he Ever the Wolf as I am Ever the Man. And say I, you shall be as comfortable with my man as you be with his wolf.”
Now her eyes crinkle. “That’s not how it works with nerds like me. You just can’t command somebody to stop being super awkward.”
But still does she hold his gaze, and into this gaze does FJ confess. “I give you apology for our hasty arrival here. Of the demands we have made upon your mateship without paying you proper court.” He shakes his head with regretful sadness. “Under different circumstances would I have sent my father with many sheep and much gold and gemstones to your Detroit fenrir. But we have not time for such things. For this am I sorry, Varra.”
At the mention of the Detroit fenrir, fear once again flashes through her eyes. “No, it’s not that…”
But then she breaks off, her eyes going soft as she says, “Look, I’m sorry, too. About your parents and your village. If I had any real world skills that could help you solve your problems, believe me, I’d be helping you out right along with Alisha. But I don’t. And the fact is, you don’t need me to get any of that dragon stuff done.”#p#分页标题#e#
“It is not a question of need, Varra.”
Her face takes on a pained expression. “Please stop calling me that. I’m not your Varra, okay? I don’t even know what that means, but I know it isn’t me. Because this isn’t some romance novel where it’s totally cool for two people—no, make that three—who barely know each other to instantly fall in love. I don’t even read romances, just cyber thrillers and sci-fi—that’s how far away I am from being the sort of girl who falls in instalove with a dude. So you really need to let go of this fated mate stuff and believe me when I say it is not ever going to happen. Period.”
Another denial. FJ’s wolf howls inside him and he can feel his beast trying to punch through, demanding to silence this defiant she-wolf in the way of the wolf.
“I would have you hold your tongue now,” FJ tells their she-wolf, on the complete edge of losing himself to his beast. “Do not talk any further.”