Selah’s POV
A servant came to fetch me earlier than usual that evening, knocking softly on my door.
“Lady Selah?” She called out.
“Lord Garrick wishes for you to join him at dinner.”
Lord Garrick is quite literally a room away, I wanted to reply.
I almost raised my hands to sign a quick question, asking why he was summoning me so early, but I caught myself before I started.
So I simply nodded, telling myself it was nothing more than what it was, just another meal with him.
Before leaving my room, I grabbed my leather-bound notepad from the bedside table.
Flipping through it quickly, I noticed that the pages were almost full at this point.
Nearly every page was covered in my messy ink scribbles, short questions and half-finished thoughts from the past one to two weeks.
There were only a few blank sheets left near the back.
It was strange seeing how much of my life had been spilled onto those pages since I arrived here.
When I stepped into the dining room, he was already sitting at the head of the long wooden table.
As soon as I walked in, he looked up and smiled at me.
I couldn’t bring myself to return the smile.
I sat down in the heavy chair across from him, my mind still preoccupied with the confrontation in the market, that bitter and enraged look on Cynthia’s face, her words filled with poison.
“How have your lessons with Mira been going?” Garrick asked, watching me closely as a servant set down plates of roasted meat and vegetables between us.
I picked up a piece of bread, signing a quick Good with one hand before taking a bite of the bread.
“That’s very good. It’s good that you’re learning.” Garrick nodded.
“And how was your day with Mira and my niece?”
Your precious betrothed cornered me at an open market to hurl threats in my face, I wanted to snap at him.
Instead, I toyed with the fork beside my plate and stayed quiet.
“The western wall breach has been fixed and the guard patrols are back to their normal rotations. They have also done a clean sweep of the whole territory, to be sure that there are no invaders. You have nothing to be afraid of now.”
He kept his tone light and composed, but as I looked across the table at his eyes, I could see the relief on his face.
I glanced down at my food, wondering again why he had asked for this dinner together.
But he didn’t say anything, and we continued to eat in silence.
It was him who broke it eventually. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Lord Garrick set his silver cup down onto the table, looking at the dark liquid inside before lifting his eyes to meet mine.
“I asked you to join me because I wanted to tell you something,” he announced.
“I should have told you earlier today, if not for Vera. She can be… well, you know what she can be.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“The last few weeks have taken more out of me than I’ve let anyone see,” Garrick said, his deep voice full of weariness.
“The council are pressing me for answers and actions every other morning, everyone in my pack are scared of the wall breach… all of it is just stacking up on top of this control problem with my wolf that I still haven’t solved.”
I stopped eating, keeping my eyes fixed on his face as he spoke.
hen he looked directly into my eyes, and the next words that left his mouth caught me off guard.
“Having you here in this house… it’s the only thing that’s kept me under control, to some extent. But keeping you here has come with a cost.,” Garrick said quietly.
“If I set you out on the streets, I’ll lose control of my wolf again, and who knows what will happen then? But if I continue to keep you here, well… You’ve seen what happened.”
He sighed and leaned backwards on his chair.
That motion pushed the neckline of his white shirt lower, exposing an expanse of chest skin ripping with taut muscles.
It was all I could do to hold myself back from ogling.
“I am not a man who is used to being confused, or fighting against what I want for myself. To an extent, I even consider myself a very good Alpha. This is the one time in my life that I have ever been conflicted on something, and it is because of you.”
I stared at him across the table, my pulse thundering in my ears.
Because of me?
I picked up my charcoal stick, flipped to one of the very last blank pages in my notepad, and wrote down my response in large, dark strokes before holding the paper up for him to see: YOU HAVEN’T THANKED ME PROPERLY YET.
Lord Garrick gave me an amused look, then sighed.
“I don’t know how to thank you for calming my wolf down.”
I set the pad down, raised my hands deliberately, and signed back slowly: THEN SHOW ME HOW GRATEFUL YOU ARE.
It was as if that was what Lord Garrick had been waiting for me to say, because he didn’t hesitate after that.
He pushed his chair back hard against the floor, crossed the distance between our seats first, and reached to pull me up from my own seat.
Whatever this was between us, it wasn’t gentle.
His mouth came down on mine in a deep, burning kiss.
Because he was more than a foot taller than I was, he had to lean all the way down, burying his face into the side of my neck as his long arms wrapped tight around my waist.
His breath blew hot against my skin, I could hear the hunger his voice.
The thought that he was hungry for me sent delicious spirals up and down my body.
“Everyone is advising me to let you go, Selah,” Garrick whispered into my neck.
“All those other alphas, they keep telling me to send you away to the Shadowwalkers before it is too late, because you don’t belong here. Because you are an anomaly that we all can’t control. We still don’t know the full extent of your powers yet.”
He tightened his arms around me, holding me so hard that I could barely draw air into my lungs.
“They tell me that sending you away is the right thing to do for the pack,” he murmured quietly.
“I know that it is probably for the best. And yet… here I am, not doing it. I can’t do it, because I cannot bear to see you in any kind of pain. You’re the only thing I have ever truly wanted.”
I finally understood just how much of a terrifying turmoil Lord Garrick had been living in every single day.
I had lived under his roof for weeks feeling bitter and sullen that my life had been reduced to this, being trapped in a strange mansion and unable to speak, terrified for my own survival.
But while I had been drowning in my own fear, Lord Garrick had been standing on the edge of a cliff.
He was risking everything for me, risking the support of the powerful men on his own council, risking open war with rival territories across the country, just to keep me safe, just to be with me.
The anger inside me immediately melted away.
I pulled back slightly from his shoulder and reached up for him again—this time pressing a kiss right onto his warm cheek.
Garrick made a needy groan in his throat, turned his head, and captured my lips with his own once more.
This time, the kiss was far more touchy and unravelling.
His hands slid down from my waist, moving over the curves of my hips and pressing me against his hard body, against his…
I let out a soft gasp as I felt his hardness on my thighs.
In some corner of my mind that wasn’t yet consumed by what he was doing to my body, I was vaguely aware that there were servants in the dining hall with us.
But they could have been furniture for all the attention I gave them.
Lord Garrick’s thumbs traced small circles against the bare skin of my lower back beneath my pushed-up dress, sending heat shooting through my veins.
I slid my other hand down the broad expanse of his chest, tracing the hard muscles beneath his shirt down to the belt at his waist.
Garrick let out another deep, gravelly groan against my mouth at my touch, and my wolf practically mewled.
Without breaking the kiss, Lord Garrick started to back me toward the door connecting the dining hall directly to his own room.
He reached behind him, grabbed the iron handle, and led me through the doorway into the shadows of his room.