Chapter 209: Let Me Be That Man For You

Two men gave her their names. One announced it. One said nothing. Nova had only known about the one who announced it. She was about to find out about the one who didn’t, who had done it first, and whose silence had been the most selfless thing anyone had ever done for her without her knowing.

"When he went into the coma, I moved you into my chambers to keep you safe." The crack came back into his voice and he didn’t try to hide it this time. "Then we were attacked. I gave you the Thunderfang name. Derek was in a coma and couldn’t sign anything. So I put you down as my wife. When you were arrested, the Thunderfang name was flagged as a mistake. It wasn’t. But they did not know that. So Emberclaw gave you his name as his wife."

The sentence landed on her and rearranged every memory she had of the last week.

Don had called her Mrs. Thunderfang when he gave her that holo band. She had assumed Alpha Thunderfang didn’t hear it and that it was a mistake. But that wasn’t a mistake. She was incorrect on that all along.

If she had the Thunderfang name before she was arrested, that meant he had done it before Maverick had, which meant that night, after Maverick had announced that he gave Nova the Emberclaw name, Alpha Thunderfang had heard her say thank you to Maverick with her whole chest, and Alpha Thunderfang had said nothing. He didn’t try to take credit or say he did that first. He let Maverick have that.

She had been wrong. She had been wrong about every night and every carry and every grunt that meant stay and the wrongness was rewriting her week in real time. The week she thought she’d lived and the week she’d actually lived were two completely different stories.

She twisted around to face him. This time he let her. His eyes were red and Nova’s chest was doing things in response. His throat bobbed once.

"I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I knew you couldn’t feel it. I was trying to respect Derek. I was trying to do right by him." His voice cracked once. "And I failed at that."

A tear slid loose and tracked down her cheek, and she didn’t understand what it was doing there, only that it was. He caught it with the pad of his thumb, gentle, before it reached her jaw. The warmth of his hand traveled through her face and into her chest and loosened something she had been holding so long she had forgotten she was holding it.

Then she remembered Derek and guilt arrived so fast it beat every other feeling to the surface. The man who was in a coma after trying to rescue her during a fire. He was lying in a hospital and she was lying against his brother and his brother was saying fated mate and she couldn’t reconcile any of it.

She was still standing in the guilt when he knocked the floor out from under it.

"At your initiation, I lost control and I marked you," Alpha Thunderfang finished.

Her body went rigid in his arms, the shock arriving faster than she could absorb it. Out of all the directions this conversation was headed, that was the last place her mind went.

Then she noticed him watching her carefully, and the look on his face cracked her heart open. He was worried she was going to reject it. She could read it on his face. But that wasn’t it.

A wolf got one mark in his entire life, one, and an Alpha had spent his on a woman who would never feel it. A former slave who was his brother’s mate. And he had done it in front of his pack. She had no memory of it and passed out. So this man had been laying here with her for gods know how long, waiting for her to wake up so he could tell her the truth.

The grief that came up behind that was simple and enormous. Grief about Derek and for this man in front of her. Both of them.

"I’m sad you wasted yours on me," she managed, fully aware of how pathetic it sounded. It was the truth.

He didn’t hesitate. "Nova, I didn’t waste it on you."

Her eyes burned again. She tried blinking it away but another tear slipped free. He caught it the way he’d caught the last one. Then his voice had dropped into something low and certain, scraped bare of everything he usually kept wound tight.

"Even if you never feel it. Even if it only ever runs one direction, from me to you and nothing back. I don’t want you carrying that like it’s a loss, because it isn’t. Look at me."

His hand cradled her face and he waited for her eyes.

"That is not a loss to me. Never think that. That never crossed my mind. I need you to know that. You are not a waste of anything I have. Not my mark. Not my name. Not a single second I have spent next to you. The mark was mine to give and I gave it to the only person it was ever going to belong to. That is the one thing I got right. And if I had been given the chance to do it again with your permission, I would make the same choice. That is not a loss. That is the most certain thing I have ever done."

Then the firmness left his voice and something rawer replaced it.

"I am sorry that the most permanent thing I will ever do to another person was done without your permission. You didn’t know. And I can’t undo it. The only thing I can do is tell you that if I could give you the choice back, I would. Even if the choice was no."

He was being genuine with that. Nova could see that and underneath the apology was shame. And he was terrified. Terrified she would say no. Terrified she would say yes. Terrified that whatever she said next was going to determine whether the last week of his life had been the beginning of something or the end of it and the determination was hers and he had placed it there deliberately because he wanted her to have it even if the having destroyed him.

Her chest pulled in two directions. Towards the hospital where Derek was lying still. Towards the man holding her whose heart was hammering. Both directions were real. Both pulls were real. And she was one woman with one body and the body was being asked to answer a question she didn’t have the vocabulary for yet.

"You don’t owe me anything, Nova. You don’t owe me a response. You don’t owe me a feeling. You don’t owe me a single thing for any of what I just told you."

His breathing hitched for a fraction of a second.

"But I need to say this out loud to you because you deserve to hear it from the man who means it. Give me a chance to show you what it looks like when I choose you out loud, the way I should have and the way I’ve wanted to since the first second I caught your scent in that arena. Let me be that man for you. One chance, Nova. I have never wasted anything I’ve been given and I am not starting with you. Give me that, and I will spend every day you let me earning it."