Page 109 of Tempting Fate

Em leans against Patch’s shoulder, gaze moving between the two of us. He squeezes my hand.

“I want to understand,” he says. “I was ready to leave. Make me understand.”

I look up at Patch and nod. It’s unspoken, but there.

Make me stay.

Chapter Forty-Two

Emerson

I want to move us all to my room, if only so Jamie can lie down. I worry he might fall asleep, though, and I really want more answers.

Mates? My head is spinning. I’m not certain I believe the fated part, despite the unquestionable fact that magic is real, but we can come back to that later. In the morning. Maybe.

Jamie doesn’t move from his spot on the floor. He settles in there instead, still holding on to my hand, his head on Patch’s knee. Patch drops his hand to Jamie’s hair.

“So the tension between you was just that you didn’t want to be together?” I ask.

“Yes,” Jamie says.

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I shake my head.

“I knew what Patch saw when he met you,” Jamie says, and there’s no hiding the lingering hurt in his voice. “I didn’t want to get between you. The other night… I really thought it was a mistake.”

“But we’re all meant to be together?”

“Yes,” Patch says. No question.

“Okay. That aside… what about the rest of it? Staying here? Your friends…”

“I need to be part of a pack,” Patch says. “You heard Alpha Axel. He had every intention of sending me away. I’m sure they’d have found some rural pack for me.”

“So why didn’t you…” I shake my head. “You said you knew we were mates. You said it, didn’t you, that night. That’s why you showed yourself to me when you’d transformed?”

“Shifted,” Patch corrects, “and yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me what it meant then?”

A complicated succession of emotions crosses his face. Jamie tips his chin up to watch him. He seems uninterested in helping out now, which is fair. He’s been through enough—not just today, but the entire time I’ve known him. Patch and I, whether knowingly or not, have pulled him back and forth in a way that must have been desperately painful.

“If the bond becomes too strong, it’s difficult to break. For wolves, that means…” Patch shakes his head. “It can mean we never fall in love again.”

“That happens?” Jamie asks. “Mates break their bonds?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes there are more important things.”

“Like your pack,” I say, and Patch nods.

“I wouldn’t… If I’d fought to stay with you, gone with you, and found no pack, I’d have been a terrible mate. I know that. It’s hard to explain, but knowing I’m a pack wolf is as instinctual to me as knowing you’re my mate, Em. Both are true.”

I nod. I believe him. There’s some hardly banked fear in his voice when he talks about lone wolves. He needs the pack.

Does he need us just as much?

Jamie tightens his fingers around mine. “Keep going,” he says. “All of it.”

All of it? Every question floating around in my head? For the first time in my life, it’s difficult to work out which one to focus on, which is most important. Jamie smiles like he knows that and looks at Patch.