Heart of Stone - Book 2: Hearts Collide
Chapter 23 - Aubree (Part 1)

Aubree knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but she still hadn’t been expecting to see his hand like that. Moreover, his anxiety about it made her all the more nervous too.

They spent the entire morning working on the garden and around noon they all went to bed. There was still a fair bit of clean-up left to do, but the majority of the flowers had been transplanted. By then, Aubree’s back was getting tired and sore from bending forward so much. She welcomed the break, even though she would have liked to have finished everything. It could wait a few hours, if not until tomorrow.

Even Stone expressed his exhaustion, even though it was written all over his face.

“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” he said as he rubbed his forehead. “I stayed up, linking with everyone to make sure they were all okay. I don’t like being apart from them and leaving the hunt up to them. Other alphas may leave the hunt up to their pack members, but I don’t feel right sitting at home and twiddling my thumbs.”

Aubree hummed while she ate some leftover pizza for lunch.

Stone sat across from her at the table, rambling away as his eyelids grew heavier.

She swallowed the piece of pizza she’d been chewing. “What do you mean? If other alphas don’t go out hunting, then what do they do?”

“Maintain pack cohesion and relations with neighboring packs,” he said. “But our pack is small, we can’t afford to have me sitting at home like a king. I need to be out there with them.”

“How big are packs normally?”

“About the size of Vincent’s. Thirty to forty or so members. Packs in Europe tend to be a bit larger. The ones in Russia are the largest because of the available land. Before the migration, that started some five hundred years ago, packs typically consisted of seventy-five lycans, with the largest sustaining about two hundred members.”

“Wow. You guys were like little villages then, huh?”

He shook his head. “Two hundred is obscene. An alpha of a pack that size would be constantly trying to maintain peace within its own ranks, never mind maintain peaceful relations with neighboring packs.” He sighed. “Food was more scarce with all of those mouths to feed and there was less work to go around. Higher numbers don’t necessarily mean strength. They tended to be weaker, lazier, more prone to causing trouble because of boredom, hunger, and thirst for power.”

He closed his heavy eyes, struggling to keep them open. “We like to keep active. It’s in our blood. When there’s not enough work to keep everyone occupied and motivated, we’ll replace ways to entertain ourselves, and that might be to get into mischief or cause drama. And for some, they want to rise higher in the ranks. Challenges for rank are more common. More power and prestige beget more respect.”

“So, smaller packs are better?” she asked, finishing off the last of her pizza.

“Yes, but not as small as ours,” he said. “We’re weak because we don’t have enough members to do the work. That leaves a weakened border where threats can slip through. We’re also over-worked as a result. For a territory this size, we need at least five more lycans.”

“So, basically we need to double in size?”

He nodded. “We’ve managed this long because we’re strong, but with the looming vampire war, we need ten more members.”

She chewed on her bottom lip as her stomach twisted into a knot. She had an idea but knew he wouldn’t like it. “We could fix that.”

Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Aubree...”

The warning tone in his voice was like a challenge to her. She knew he was tired and didn’t want to talk about it but now seemed as good a time as any to bring it back up.

Straightening up in her seat, she looked across the table with determination. “You said it yourself. We need to double in size. We’re the only soulmates here, so it’s up to us—”

“Have you forgotten that you’re human?” he grumbled.

She raised an eyebrow. “No, I totally forgot that.”

Pulling his hand away from his face, he looked back at her sternly. The coldness in his steel stare reminded her of a parent reprimanding a child for saying something out of line.

She did not want to be treated like a child, and she had every right to bring it up and stand her ground on the subject. She couldn’t help it if he said something stupid and didn’t like the response he got.

“There’s no need for sarcasm.”

Without so much as a muscle twitch, she held his glare. “It comes with the package, honey.”

The creases in his forehead deepened as his eyes narrowed further and he gritted his teeth. “Aubree, it’s out of the question.”

“Why?” she asked. “Until we go to see the Spirit Walker, I don’t see why you can dismiss it.”

“Because I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

“Oh, so you’d rather crush them, huh? That’s great. Thanks a lot, soulmate.”

He groaned as she shot up from the table, stomped to the sink and began scrubbing her plate under the warm water. Anger rolled off her. With each scrub of the sponge, her heart clenched tighter.

She hated that he made this decision without consulting her. Yes, she understood her life was at risk. Yes, she understood it was the best thing for her at the moment. Despite those perfectly logical reasons, it was the fact that the decision was made before she even knew the truth, and after she had thrown away a life she had worked hard to achieve.

“Aubree,” he growled as he advanced toward her at the sink. “You know I have no choice.”

She turned from the sink and glowered at him as he paused a few feet from her, clenching his fists at his side. “Oh, I know. And I get it. But that’s not the part that pisses me off. It’s the fact that you just dismissed it without even giving me an option, a chance, a say in the matter. There’s no compromising with you. It’s either your way or the highway. Well, guess what? In case you forgot, I gave up everything I had to be with you, so you better be willing to make at least a few sacrifices too.”

He hardened his jaw as he looked down at her. His voice was firm, controlled. “Do you want to die, Aubree? Because that’s not a sacrifice worth making to me.”

“No, but that’s not the point!” she spat. “The point is that you won’t let me have any say in something that’s so important to me. You just expect me to accept and follow whatever you say. I had a life before you and I threw that all away. And for what? To be your soulmate?”

Tears stung her eyes as she bit back the tremble of her lips. The truth of her words upset her more than she expected. The emotions she’d been holding back now spilled forth and she couldn’t stop them.

His expression softened as pain flickered in his eyes. It tore her heart as she registered the effect her words had on him. His voice scraped against her spine. “Is loving you not enough?”

Staring back at him in the split-second it took his words to hit her, his deep blues holding her hazels captive, her breath hitched in her throat as emotion blocked it. Her resolve cracked. It was as if he’d split open the shell around her heart and was now cradling it carefully in his hands, unsure how to care for something so beautiful and fragile. It struck her hard and deep, as no one had ever looked at her the way he was now.

Throwing away her pride, she flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around him. Pulling him tightly to her, she tangled her wet fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth down to hers. A collision of pain, anger, hurt, and desire crashed into her. It was in the clash of his lips, his tongue, his touch—tearing down the defensive barrier thrust up between them and smashing away every last block of restraint she had.

His hands were cupping her cheeks, then tangling in her hair as his emotions surged through her. She gasped into him before moaning. Sliding her hands down, she wrapped her arms around his back and pressed her fingertips against him as her body pulled him tighter.

His right hand slipped down her back and under her shirt, while the other one supported the back of her head. He pulled back from her mouth, making her gasp, and began planting wet, hot kisses down her neck.

She arched her back as his hand inched up along her spine, but paused below the clasp of her bra. His every emotion coiled around her own, and she couldn’t make sense of where his ended and hers began.

Almost as suddenly as the whirlwind of passion began, something cut through her and she whimpered at the ache it left in her heart.

Stone withdrew, his voice husky and laced with remorse as he whispered into her ear, “Is it?”

She shuddered as she closed her eyes, brimming with tears.

Why did it hurt so much?

She wanted to say it was. Wanted his love to be enough. Wanted to believe that her desire for children would fade in time, but she didn’t know that, and she didn’t want to say something she might later regret.

With his haggard, hot breath blowing on her face as he wiped a stray tear from her cheek with his thumb, she could feel the agony in his heart reflecting her own, and it broke her.

“I don’t know,” she uttered as she struggled to breathe. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry that she didn’t know what to say or how to feel about all of this. Sorry that she couldn’t give up hope on something so important to her. Sorry that she was arguing with him when he only wanted what was best for her. Sorry that she was still too afraid to see him and accept him for who and what he really was.

But she couldn’t spit out the muddled thoughts filling her head, or grasp her emotions and reel them in before they became too much for her to bear.

Was loving him, and he, in turn, loving her, enough?