Chapter 147

• What he says makes my heart ache and instantly sobers my sizzling hormones as I think about the reality of her existence. I was like her once. Alone, keeping people out, and looking back, was the saddest part of my life.
• “I feel bad about how it went and ended and that I hurt her and walked away from it all. Being your dad’s biggest disappointment in life has to have left its mark, and I never gave a second thought to walking off with my new pack and leaving her behind. My focus was on you. I didn’t think what her staying would be like. I guess I didn’t think that she was back to being alone without me and the subs.” Colton’s tone matches my newly found internal heaviness, and he stops his slow tease and hugs me tightly instead. His arms coming around my lower rib cage, and his face is snuggled against my neck and shoulder.
• “Did you ever think about marking her? Two years is a long time to be paired up without marking.” I ask curiously, not because I want to torture myself or anything but because I always wondered what held him back, and thinking about it now, I want to know. He cared about her, yet he never moved to mate with her properly. It’s normal in a pairing for the male to make a move and ask to mate up. Femmes don’t tend to do it or have a say until asked. Such is the old-world nature of our pairings. A world where men still rule and females submit.