Before I could ask a question about his brother he pulled me out of the kitchen, making our way into the garden.
He went towards a black steel gate making wide strides without stopping once.
The garden connected into the Grand Alpha’s personally owned woods, once we were surrounded by tall towering trees it felt like I had been taken back to the old days.
Before the war came and swallowed everything I cherished and I held dear to my heart.
I could hear the laughter of my brothers and sisters as we frolicked and ran picking up flowers and making delicate flower crowns, we will chatter about everything and nothing all at the same time and our parents would look upon us with a mix of tenderness and exhaustion because we really were a handful but we were their handful.
Every night I went to bed with a full belly, blanket over my body and a kiss on my cheeks.
Back then I was naive, I thought those days would be forever and he slowed down, the stop was too sudden and I ended crashing against his broad chest, mine pressing against his.
We stayed like that for what I’d thought he’d take for a moment too long just staring into each other’s eyes and to my surprise -and his- I broke contact first, backing away.
“So this is the Grand Alpha’s private woods huh?” I said carrying the question somewhere else because I didn’t want to talk about how right it felt to be pressed against him like that…how it felt strangely safe like I could put down my armor for a moment.
Ridiculous, that was a sure recipe for disaster.
I could never do that-ever.
In that situation I was setting myself up for absolute ruin.
He was the means to an end.
I was supposed to make him fall in love with me, not the other way around.
“Are you really refusing the offer that I’m giving you?” He said now behind me I could feel his hands ghosting over my hair but not touching it.
Bloody tease.
I turned around to face him, hands crossed.
“I can help you-I really can.”
He pressed his fingers against his temple.
“It’s more complicated than you think there are people-threats that can only be properly taken care of if I have no weaknesses,” he looked at me and I felt my pride take a jab.
“I’m not weak!”I said defensively, planting a hand on my hip.
His hands came over my hair again floating just inches away and yet still not touching it before gradually he reached for a few strands carefully moving his fingers between as if they were poisonous vines he was both worried and entranced by.
“You’re not strong in the way I need, in the way your people need. This is no longer the time of war and I would prefer not to take us back to those times. ”
I curled up my fingers into a tight fist, despising how sensible he was right now because it made me look like an irrational and emotional one.
But I had more than enough reason to worry.
No matter what happened he was still not a southerner still not affected by our issues other than something of his unexplained guilt.
What if someday he stopped feeling guilty?
What if the risk outweighed whatever reward he was going to get from it?
There might be a Northern She Wolf out there who cared about the south, but I doubt with every fiber of my being there could be one who cared more than me who was ready to risk their life if needed.
“Is your brother one of the people that doesn’t support you?
Is that why you didn’t want him to see us talking together?” I actually remember what had happened a few minutes ago, “…
“Yes.”
This response came less like a job and more like a direct cut to my self esteem.
I backed the way a bit more and sat on a falling branch picking up a dried twig and snapping it between my fingers.
“You never hesitate to lay it out do you?” I tell him, he comes closer for somebody that keeps on repeating that we need to be apart from each other when I don’t come closer to him he definitely closes the distance between us himself.
“I don’t have the privilege to do anything but lay out the truth. I am just one of the five Grand Alpha’s… At best some of them feel neutral about this slavery of the southerners. There are no particularly strong feelings to end it and the same to find him ‘concrete’ reasons to maintain the status quo. Can’t you see with this that you being with me would only push me back?”
He was saying the truth but I’d be lying if I said it in a slice right through me.
I was just a girl that had an entire world burns in front of her and now how did she carry all the ashes in her heart.
There was nothing I could give him.
But why does it feel like it’s more than my pride that it’s hurting?
He sat on the branch, now beside me he said no longer in a tone for accommodation and negotiation.
“I’m going to ask you just one more time… Will you accept my rejection?”
The sensible thing was to say yes, but I shook my head not meeting his eyes.
There was a thoughtful silence after that and then his hands found my cheek.
The warmth from his calloused hand almost startled me and my body couldn’t help but to look towards him, my eyes meeting his.
Then he said the words that shattered me.
“I have already started making arrangements by the end of this week you will be taken to the South whether you want to or not.”