With Everything I Am (54 page)

Fucking hell,
he thought, coming to his paws, his mind troubled.

The parts of his dream were not syncing. So contradictory to each other, to his feelings for Sonia now, the deeper ones he had in his dream, the heartbreakingly deeper ones he felt from her. His instinct as wolf to be faithful to his mate abrading against the episode with the she-wolf, an episode so lucid, so fucking
real
it was like it happened.

Like he’d actually been disloyal to Sonia.

The thought was so vile he felt his gut roil and he started to run.

But he ran toward home.

Toward Sonia.

He leapt to man outside the backdoor which was always open in case he or his family needed to roam which was often.

He opened the door and mindlessly pulled on the clothes he left there when he transformed earlier.

He slid on his wedding band and was shrugging on a shirt while moving into the house when he noticed his mother there.

She was wearing a robe, her hair disheveled, her face as troubled as his thoughts.

Atypically, Callum had no time for his mother’s troubled thoughts.

“Not now, Regan.”

“Cal –”

Impatient to get to Sonia, he stopped and leaned into her. “Not…
now
.”

Without another word or processing the look of distress on his mother’s face, Callum took the stairs three at a time to get to his
wife
.

She was lying on her side, the fire ebbing but still dancing in the room. So like his dream it sliced trough him.

But, unlike the dream, she was facing away from the door.

And she wasn’t asleep.

He went immediately to the bed.

He sat next to her and put a hand to her hip over the hides.

“Baby doll,” he whispered, cursing himself mentally for giving in selfishly to his instinct to roam. “Your injection –”

“I took it,” she replied in a voice strangely flat. “Don’t worry, Callum. I made sure Regan was in the room when I did.”

He’d just run for hours, for miles, slept rough and run for miles again and still his gut was tight.
His thoughts a torment.
Feelings of guilt and fear and grief all snaking insidiously through his brain.

He needed her.

“Sonia –”

She cut him off and her voice was still flat, so flat it sounded almost dead.

“Listen, Callum, I’m really tired, okay?”

“Baby doll –”

He stopped speaking when her body visibly tensed at his words and then he watched in grim fascination as she forced it to relax.

She rolled to look at him and Callum caught himself before he flinched.

Her eyes were as flat and dead as her voice.

What the fuck?

“I’ve been trying to get to sleep for a while and I can’t do it. I nearly drifted off before you came in so, would you mind…?”

Worry was added to those snaking thoughts tormenting him.

He cupped her jaw with his hand. Her jaw tensed under his touch but her eyes never left his.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she answered immediately. “Like I said, I’m just really tired.”

She was lying.

He pulled her from under the hides into his arms and sat in the bed, back to the headboard, Sonia in his lap.

This felt better, tremendously better.
Sonia in his lap, her body against his, her scent all around.

“Right,” he said when his mind had finally settled.
“Now, the truth this time.
Tell me
what’s the matter
.”

She was looking at him but her eyes stayed flat, emotionless. Not blank, like they were when he told her she had to take her injection but lifeless.

“Sonia –” he started, that fear edging back in but she interrupted him.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked as if she doubted that he really would.

“Of course I fucking want to know,” he replied, beginning to lose patience.

“All right, Callum, I’ll tell you,” she stated. “I miss them all the time but sometimes, I miss them more and tonight, I miss
them
loads
. That’s
what’s the matter
. That’s why I can’t sleep.”

She was talking about her parents and he wasn’t surprised her manner was listless. It was a defense mechanism, like her eyes going blank before getting the injection.

Missing her parents had to be worse, even than that fucking injection.

He slid a hand in her hair and pressed her cheek to his chest saying, “Honey.”

“You should know, this happens a lot,” she told his chest matter-of-factly.

“That’s okay.”

“If I have trouble sleeping, I’ll find another room so I won’t disturb you.”

His fingers gripped her head and he said, “That’s
not
okay.”

“I like this room but really I don’t mind.”

He pulled her head away from his chest and maneuvered it so they were face-to-face before he growled, “I
do
mind.”

He didn’t know what he minded more, the thought that she would move somewhere else to sleep or the thought that she didn’t mind not sleeping with him.

Something was fucking wrong and it was more than just thoughts of her dead parents. She liked to talk and she couldn’t sleep and he’d never fucking get to sleep after what Lucien told him and that goddamned dream.

So they were going to talk.

“I need you to explain something to me,” he announced and her eyes slightly narrowed in confusion.

“Callum, it’s the middle of the night.”

“You’re awake. I’m awake. We’re talking,” he told her and she sighed.

Not a fluttering, sweet sigh.
An annoyed, I’m-putting-up-with-Callum sigh.

“All right, Callum, what do you want
me
to explain?” she asked, a sarcastic emphasis on “me” which made his already tight gut tighten sharply.

He ignored it.

“When we had our discussion after Regan returned my wedding band…” he began and felt her body get stiff against his but he ignored that too and carried on. “You said, when you gave me my ring, you didn’t know if it meant something to you. Then you said it did. I’d like you to explain that.”

“Would you
like
me to explain that, in, say, I have a
choice
as to whether I do or not? Or are you
telling
me to explain that, in, say, I have
no
choice as to whether I do or not?”

Her questions were a quagmire in which he knew, if he gave the wrong answer, he’d find it very difficult to extricate himself.

Therefore, he answered carefully, “I’m asking you to explain it, Sonia.”

She stared at him.

He waited.

She pulled in breath and said in a voice that was no longer flat but defiant, “All right, I will. You can be very kingly,” she told him absurdly for he was bloody well a king. “I’ve realized now, with time, that this is
you
but back then it worried me because when you get kingly, you forget I exist. This bothered me and I suspected you didn’t care anything for me but only your duty to me as your queen.”

Callum’s jaw tightened before he clipped, “Tell me you’re fucking joking.”

“I’m not,” she replied instantly. “I’d never been around a king so of course I didn’t get it. But even after you claimed me, which in my people’s world is a pretty significant thing and, as I’ve been told time and again by
your
people is an even
more
significant thing, you forced me into a shower.
Then into a car.
And then you didn’t speak to me for hours. I melted from your world.” She stared at him calmly and finished, “I think it was five, ten minutes after you’d made me yours when you forgot I existed except as your duty to put me in the truck and take me down the mountain.” She continued to stare at him a moment before aiming dead on target and hitting a bulls-eye. “That, Callum, didn’t feel very good.”

He could imagine it didn’t and he
did
do that to her.

Exactly as she said.

Except for the fact that she ceased to exist.

“Sonia –”

“No,” she interrupted him, still calm. “I get it now. You don’t have to worry. I get it. You had a lot on your mind, more than I knew or understood. Now I understand. I was being selfish.”

No longer angry, he explained gently, “You weren’t being selfish. You didn’t understand what was going on.”

“Well, yes, true but now I do so it’s not a big deal, okay?”

He slid his fingers through her hair while he said softly, “Baby doll.”

Her body tensed and she asked, without a flat voice, without calm, sounding impatient and annoyed.
Not
adorably impatient and annoyed but something different. Edgier, angrier but almost desperate, “Now that I’ve explained that, can I try to get some sleep?”

Something was still wrong. Something she wasn’t giving him. Something she was holding back.

Knowing that, suddenly he asked, “Do you love me?”

She instantly sucked in breath and tried to pull away.

His arms got tight.

She started struggling.

He registered his surprise at her actions and his gut registered worry when she just as suddenly stopped.

She’d been pushing against his chest with both hands but she bent her elbows, bowed her back and dropped her forehead to rest on them.

“Yes,” she whispered to his chest, uttering that one word in a way that sounded like it was torn from her. But the chest she muttered into felt like iron bands, bands that had been clamped tightly around it for centuries, were finally released so Callum could, for the first time in his life, actually breathe. “Yes,” she repeated in a whisper to his chest as he looked down at her hair shining in the firelight. “I fell in love with you during my first dream when I was seventeen. And I fell in love with you all over again Christmas Eve when you wiped the tears from my face during the general’s scene in
White Christmas
.”

Without willing them to do so, his arms crushed her to him, forcing her body flat against his, her arms caught between them, her face coming up to rest against his neck.

All of his torment was lost in his current sense of triumph.

And he could tell her now he was wolf.

“Sonia, baby doll –”

She pressed her face against his neck and her body against his, “Please, Callum,
please
. Can I
please
just go to sleep?
Please.
”

He lifted a hand and trailed his fingers along her hairline, curling them in at her jaw to pull her hair away from her neck.

“Has it been bad tonight, missing your parents?” he asked quietly.

She pressed deeper into him and her fingers, like in his dream, tensed in his chest hair, her nails dragging through it. This caught at his memory, pulling up his guilt at fucking the she-wolf, glorying in her faultless ass, calling her by Sonia’s pet name for
him
as he ground into
her
, betraying his own mate even if it was only in his unconscious mind.

“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s been bad.”

It had been bad.

And he’d been gone, leaving her to face her sorrow alone while he selfishly, no, as she put it,
kingly
, focused on his own thoughts instead of protecting his mate.

“I’m sorry, little one. Of course you can go to sleep.”

She pressed even closer and said with feeling, “Thank you.”

He exited the bed, taking her with him and placing her under the hides. Then he took off his clothes and joined her there. He pulled her into his arms and she acted as if she’d resist at first before she relaxed then melted into him.

Then, surprisingly, considering she said she’d had so much trouble getting to sleep, she drifted off quickly.

And, with Sonia close, Callum could set his thoughts in order.

No, with Sonia close, his queen, his mate, who
loved
him, had loved him for decades but who
he’d
made fall in love with him on Christmas Eve (which would, forever, be
his
favorite fucking holiday), Callum could finally set his thoughts in order.

He had a victory celebration tomorrow.

Then he’d tell his
wife
he was wolf.

Then he’d give her a Mating
and
a fucking wedding because she was human and she deserved it but also because she loved
him
and he’d tie himself in knots to give her everything she desired for as long as she was breathing on this earth.

Then he’d talk with Lucien and Gregor in an effort to create a strategy on how to beat The Prophesy that said her life would be shortened.

In the meantime, he’d make every fucking moment count.

And the dream…

At first he thought it was Sonia’s dream, as Lucien said he had Leah’s and he could see how she fell in love with him if that was how she dreamed of them together. For, if he’d had that dream without knowing her, he’d have fallen in love with her too.

It was better than what they had an hour ago even if you told him that he wouldn’t have believed it.

It was what, he determined, they would have starting from now.

It was
everything.

But it couldn’t be her dream, obviously.

So, it was just a dream.

Not foreshadowing of the future.

Sonia turned in his arms.

He followed her, tucking the back of her body into the front of his and wrapping his arms around her.

Unconsciously in her sleep, like she did after her injection, her hands slid along his forearms but this time the fingers of both laced with his.

His fingers tightened in hers and he smiled into her hair.

So deep in thought, he didn’t notice her left hand was bare.

He also hadn’t noticed her wedding rings sitting on her nightstand.

It took some time but finally Callum, with his queen wrapped safe in his arms, followed her to sleep.

* * * * *

“Wake up, honey, we have company and we’ve got a celebration to attend,” Callum whispered in her ear.

Sonia’s eyes fluttered. They focused hazily on him and he saw the hunger flow into them before she blinked, her body jerked and she got up on an arm, pulling the hides to her chest.