“No one ever accused love of making sense, Abby. You and Brian made sense, yet that went nowhere because it meant nothing. This.” He held my arms and looked straight into my eyes. “You and me. No matter how far apart we are or now much time passes, we will never mean nothing.” He shrugged, and a hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “We may also never make sense, but that just means we’ll never be bored.”

I leaned against the banister and had to concentrate to think past what he was saying. Past words that triggered every urge I’d ever had to touch him. Words that made me want to crawl into his lap and purr, and write “Back off, bitches!” on his forehead.

It was the words he’d said to the council that were a problem. “You’re not my Alpha anymore, remember? You kicked me out of your Pride.”

“This has nothing to do with the Pride, and you know it.” He brushed a tumble of curls off my face, and his hand lingered at the back of my jaw. “I’ve made mistake after mistake. I missed so many things I should have seen, and you stepped up where I failed. You risked everything to protect Robyn when that was my job. She was infected in my territory, and I should have been the one helping her through it.”

“You would have, if you’d known.”

“I would have known if I’d checked on you,” he insisted. I tried to argue, but he shook his head. “I stayed away from you because you weren’t mine, but I wanted you. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was just neglecting my duty. I’m not going to mess this up, Abby. I’m not going to let them chop off your fingertips to declaw you.” He took my right hand and kissed each of my fingers, and my heart suddenly felt too swollen to fit in my body. “Or pull out your teeth.” He slid his thumb between my lips and skimmed the tip of my incisor.

I sucked his thumb into my mouth, and Jace’s eyes fell closed. I ran my tongue over the pad, my heart slamming against my chest.

“And I sure as hell couldn’t let them lock you in a cage.” Jace rubbed his thumb across my lower lip, where his gaze seemed stuck. “I can’t let that happen to you. Not ever again.”

I pulled him close and wrapped my arms around his neck, giving in to the sudden urge to touch him. The sudden need to maintain contact with as much of him as possible, because an ominous certainty growing inside me said that I’d soon lose that chance. Even if they weren’t going to execute him, they probably wouldn’t consider spending more time with his girlfriend an appropriate punishment.

“What do they want from you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he whispered as he leaned down to kiss me, but I put one hand on his chest to stop him.

“Yes, it does. What do they want?”

Jace exhaled slowly. “The vocal minority wants me off the council. They’re trying to kill our wildcat resolution, and they think Isaac will be easier to manipulate than I am. Especially after they’ve just spared his only sister and sworn him in as Alpha in record time. Faythe said Mitchell wants to kick me out of the lodge and leave me rank-less in the Appalachian Territory.”

“They can’t do that.” But I knew better even as I said it. Finding him guilty of my crimes would finally give Mitchell and his allies a legitimate excuse to replace Jace as Alpha. Leaving him rank-less would be an extra dose of humiliation.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He leaned down for a kiss. “It’s done.”

“But—”

“No.” He shut me up with another kiss. “I don’t need to run the Appalachian Pride. I need to be with you.” Jace tilted my head for greater access, and his mouth opened against mine. His kiss felt desperate. Urgent.

When we finally came up for air, Jace buried his head in my hair and spoke against my ear, his voice an intimate whisper. “Let’s just think about this.” He lifted me, and my legs wrapped around his waist. “About now.” He carried me three steps forward, and I felt the wall at my back, the cool paint a blissful counterpoint to the heat of his body pressed against me.

“Only now,” I whispered, but I would have agreed to anything he’d asked for in that moment, with his arms around me and his mouth on my neck. With our future spread out in tatters before us.

His kisses trailed toward my collarbone and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the heat of his tongue against my skin. The council could take everything away from us any second, but they couldn’t take this moment, or the memory of it, once it had passed.

This was mine. Jace was mine. And if we were going to make a memory, we were going to make a damn good one.

“Jace.” I murmured, tightening my legs around him.

“Mmm…?” he said against the dip at the base of my neck, and his voice sent shivers through me to settle in intimate places.

“Put me down. Just for a second.”

Jace growled lightly, but complied, and a second after my feet hit the floor, my dress followed.

“Jace.”

He turned to me, buttoning his jeans, and part of me wanted to take them right back off him. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything.” He had his shirt gathered over both arms, but paused before pulling it over his head to kiss me.

“Join the Southeast Pride.”

His eyes widened, and his shirt fell to the floor. “What?”

“If you have to be rank-less somewhere, move to South Carolina with me. We could rent a little house and go running on the weekends. I’ll transfer and finish school. You can work construction, or do whatever you want. We’ll be rank-less together.”

“Are you serious? It’s only been a couple of weeks, Abby.”

I shrugged. “Do you love me?”

“You know I do.”

“Any doubts about that?”

His brows rose. “None.”

“Any plans to sleep around?”

“Of course not.” Jace pulled his shirt over his head and shoved his arms through the holes.

“Good, because it may take all five of them, but my brothers would kick your ass.” I picked up his shirt and handed it to him. “Assuming I leave anything for them to kick.”

“I don’t want anyone but you.” He tugged me closer, but I tripped over my shoe and threw us off balance. Jace righted us with one hand against the wall, then pressed me against it with his whole body. He bent down until his forehead touched mine. “If I come to South Carolina with you, could we do this a lot?”