I take a seat across the big coffee table from him, on the other sofa. I would rather chew my own foot off to escape a snare than get close to him. "Well, I'll have to take your word for it. I didn't have any contact with other werewolves while I was there."
His expression totally changes to one of utter mortification. He puts a hand to his chest. "Oh no, Bailey. I hope you don't assume that I was accusing you of anything. I just wondered if you'd chosen to…try it out on your own."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin." The thralls oversee the magic that lets us control whether we shift our forms on the night of the full moon. I have no idea how to accomplish the change without the ceremony. "It sounds like that would be stupid and dangerous."
Still, his sad, apologetic eyes seem so sincere. "I would have thought it very brave."
I don't know how to respond to that, so I nod, and we sit in unbearable silence.
"I think we should clear the air, Bailey." His tone is gentle, oddly intimate. "People are talking about what happened at the ball."
And he wants to call off the mating pact. My shoulders sag with relief.
He mistakes the involuntary gesture for disappointment and rises to come sit by my side. It takes everything in me to not shift away when his thigh bumps mine, to not yank my hand away when he holds it.
"I don't care that people are talking about it." He reaches up and brushes a lock of my hair from my cheek.
Weirdly, I don't want to recoil anymore. Maybe a few days of everyone assigning ulterior motives to everything I've ever done have left me desperate for any shred of approval.
That's dangerous, because on paper, Ashton might be a dream guy. Rich, well-dressed, handsome, with a nice smile and polite manner. There's just that one tiny detail that bugs me: he basically bought me from my father without so much as a slight interest from me.
My wishes aren't integral to his life plan. They never have been, and I can't see that changing.
I pull my hand back slowly. "You're the only one who doesn't. According to my sisters, I've basically ruined your reputation."
"My reputation survived you jilting me." He smiles nervously. "That was a joke."
Joke or not, it stings. "It wasn't about you."
"No, of course not." He shakes his head. "I must admit, when you first left, I did worry that you were trying to avoid becoming my mate. But that only lasted until the next full moon. I woke after a night of running and hunting and truly feeling like the werewolf I am, and my first thought was of you.
"No matter how cloistered they keep us, we know the human world is out there. And turning our backs on it forever, for something so different that we've never known… that's asking a lot of a seventeen-year-old."
Asking a seventeen-year-old to enter into an engagement with someone who will be their mate for life is a lot, too, but I don't point that out. Maybe he already knows that, and just doesn't care for the inconvenient reality of it.
"I just needed to be sure that this life is what I want." I'm still not sure, but things are moving so fast now. The full moon is in just a few days, and it's the last one before I have to make my final choice.
But coming back has made my choice for me, at least, in the eyes of the people around me.
"I didn't have anything to do with the Greater London pack," I blurt suddenly. Maybe I just need to say it to someone who'll believe me. Or who'll pretend to believe me. I'll take either.
"Of course, you didn't." It doesn't seem to have ever been a question in his mind, with the quickness of his answer. "Both you and them would have violated the Right of Accord if anyone had initiated contact."
I blink in surprise. "You know more about the Right than I thought."
"It was discussed at length after you invoked it," he explains. "Among the already transformed, of course. There was a panic that if it were taught in school, it could entice others to follow suit."
"Did it?" I hope it did. I hope at least one other young pack member exercised a modicum of control over their own life.
But Ashton shakes his head. "You're a cautionary tale, and an effective one. But I do wonder…"
He lowers his eyes as his voice trails off. I press him for the rest. "What do you wonder?"
He meets my gaze and a muscle twitches in his jaw. "I wonder if you're the only one of us who's ever been so unhappy that you had to leave."
"It wasn't unhappiness." Not entirely. And that's the truth. "I needed to see what's out there. Humans run the world. We live among them. I just needed to know why we're so separate."