He could almost hear Cassidy absorbing what he had said, working through the implications.
“Then that’s really why you sent Mikhail away,” she whispered. “And Milena… didn’t love you.”
There were a hundred things he could have said then, but he kept his teeth locked over them. Milena was gone. She couldn’t touch him anymore.
Cassidy was the one who still must suffer. “Do you see now, Cassidy? In six years I could not father a child. You and I… will never have one.”
He waited, a sickness in his gut, for Cassidy to react, for the shock and denial. It wasn’t like her to weep, or take her pain out on others—but he had deceived her again. She’d had a right to know this about him before he married her. After all his talk of bloodlines and offspring to carry on the werewolf kind, she would have anticipated children of their union.
And she wanted them. Wanted his child. “Oh, Braden,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She collapsed onto him, wrapping her arms around him as far as she could reach. “That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Have children with Milena, for the Cause. And you couldn’t.” She kissed his temple. “All the pain you must have felt. The sadness, knowing—and then Milena—” She hugged him fiercely. “I wouldn’t leave you, Braden. Not for that, or for anything.”
The knot in his throat made it impossible to answer, even if he could think of a response. How had he come to deserve this child-woman, with her heart as big as the sky above the fells? He had not, and did not. The feelings rose up behind his ribs, crowding his lungs so that he could scarcely breathe. He grabbed at the first rational thought . that came into his mind.
“Now you realize why it’s so important that Quentin and Rowena do as they must,” he said. “For our family. For our blood. For our kind.”
She was very quiet. For a while she remained where she was, holding him, silent.
“There’s still Mikhail,” she said at last. “In spite of everything, he’s half loup-garou, like me. He’s just a little boy, no matter what his mother did.”
And surely an innocent at heart. Like Cassidy. Was it possible he could be saved?
“I can be his mother, Braden. We can make him ours.”
Ours. Cassidy would make a wonderful mother. Of all people in the world, she could help her mate face the consequences of what he had done three years ago.
“I’ll consider it,” he said.
She kissed him, and he could feel the warmth of her gaze. “Braden, I love you. I love you so much.”
He was grateful then that he couldn’t see what lay in her eyes. Her words alone were more than he could endure. He wished them unspoken, knowing that Cassidy bared her heart as she bared her body, and hoped for him to do the same.
He desired her. He trusted her above all others, human or werewolf. She brought a new contentment into his life that he never thought to find again.
But what she asked opened up a great, dark void inside him, frightening in its ungovernable power. Yes, she made him feel—too much. Too deeply. He lost all objectivity, all coherence when she was near. His human intellect counted for nothing against the wolf’s feral spirit that claimed her as mate. Even the Cause became unimportant.
It was too much as it had been with Milena, all over again.
And yet it was nothing like that time of madness, that destructive passion. He had forgotten that desire could be something other than malignant. Cassidy reminded him with her gentleness.
There must be a balance between emotion and duty. There must be some chance of redemption for himself outside of the bitter vows he’d sworn upon Milena’s death.
He’d been proven flawed in every way that mattered: sterile, incapable of reliable judgment, apt to lose his reason completely when he allowed himself to care about anything but the Cause. He did nothing by half measures, and therein lay the danger.
Cassidy saw worth in him. She saw someone to love. Could he dare to love in return without sacrificing either her or the Cause?