“I’m not betraying her,” he agreed. “I’m learning my lesson. When I challenged my way onto the council, I saw this, Sera. I saw myself fighting again, maybe even dying. It was over so fast I can’t even be sure. But I always argued with my mother, told her anything could be changed.
And I haven’t changed this.”
“You don’t have to do it.” Maybe he needed to hear the words. “No one who loves you wants you to.”
“I know. But if I don’t, it’ll come around again, honey. And who’ll have to die next time? My brother? You?” He shook his head with a muffled growl. “Not in this lifetime.”
The weight of it settled on her shoulders, and she bit back her first instinct, the cowardly plea that he take it back, make it about anything but her. If he had to struggle under the burden of it, she could carry her part. Give him someone to protect, someone to fight for instead of things to fight against. “You’ll always do whatever you can to keep me safe, I know that.”
Julio exhaled. “You said she raised a strong son. I hope it’s true. But she also taught me to fight myself, what I am. She meant the best, and that habit dies hard, but I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t run.”
Sera tugged at his hands. “Come down here for a second.”
He dropped to his knees on the grass at her feet. “I’m not whining, I promise. I just need to tell you.”
“I know.” She cupped his cheeks and pressed her forehead to his. “I need to listen. But I need to be touching you too. It’s not about sex. It’s what I am. And I don’t want to fight it anymore, either.”
Julio took a deep breath. “We need someone in Atlanta. It’s too big a city not to have a council presence.”
Her heart froze. “They want it to be you?”
He looked up at her, his eyes dark, shadowed. “They want it to be me.”
“I love you.” She said it first, because his tension and fear hurt her heart. Rubbing her thumbs along his cheeks, she tried to push her love into him, to let it rise to the surface like the alphas could with their anger. “Most of the wolves at that funeral pretended they couldn’t see me. That didn’t scare me off. Atlanta couldn’t scare me off, if you wanted me with you.”
“I don’t want you with me, Sera. I need you.” He caught her hand and kissed her palm. “Not just because I love you, but because I really need you. Your help, your advice, all of it.”
The coyote melted. She started to, as well, and it was hard to hold back and draw the line. “I need to be your partner. Not just your lover or your support. As shapeshifters, you protect and I nurture. That’s what we are. But as people…I want to work with you to help people like Syd and Patty. It needs to be my job too.”
He didn’t answer right away. He tugged her hand to his chest so that it rested over his heart, and finally spoke. “If they won’t have you, they won’t have me, either.”
“Julio?”
“I know it’s a lot—”
“If you don’t tell me to shut up, I’m going to propose to you. In a graveyard.”
He barked out a laugh. “I’m doing this wrong. So wrong.”
“No.” She caught his face again and kissed him, a soft brush of lips that she ended before it could become more. “I had the deathless romance and the grand, empty gestures, and I don’t want it again. This is what I need now. A life that doesn’t feel choreographed.”
“If it seems crazy to us, what will it look like to everyone else? To your dad?” Julio shook his head. “I’ll come between you two, and you’ll have to defend this relationship to him. I want to say yes now, I want to yell it as loud as I can. But I need to ask you in a few days, when it still sounds like the best idea ever, and you still want me just as much.”
She hadn’t realized how tight her chest felt until the pressure eased. Not a rejection. But not a hasty acceptance, swept up in emotion and chaos. Sera pressed her forehead to his again and nodded. “You’re right. My dad—he’s going to freak.”
“In a minor way, I hope, but yeah.”
“I need to talk to him. It’s the one thing I never did before, because I knew I was being crazy.
And I knew, in my gut, that I was doing something stupid.” She smiled and nuzzled Julio’s cheek. “You’re not something stupid. We might both be a little crazy…but I like our kind of crazy.”
He stroked a hand over her hair. “So do I.”
Chapter Fifteen
Julio had a mansion.
Sitting next to her father under an open patio umbrella, Sera eyed the custom-tiled swimming pool and tried to reconcile it with the two-bedroom apartment Julio called home in New Orleans. Not that the apartment wasn’t nice. It was a hell of a lot classier than the trailer she’d shared with Josh in Arkansas. But this…
This was a mansion. A six-bathroom, eleven-thousand-square-foot, bowling lane in the basement mansion. “I remember you saying that Julio’s uncle had transferred most of his assets to Julio and Carmen before he blew up your clinic, but I guess I never thought about what that meant. They’re rich, aren’t they? Stupid rich.”
Franklin sipped his drink. “They are not hurting for money, though Carmen’s been funneling a ton of hers into the clinics.”
Sera hadn’t asked Julio what he’d been doing with his, because she hadn’t quite understood how much there was. How many generations’ worth of wealth had amassed that fortune? How many packs had ended up like Sydney’s, crammed into tents and living on top of each other with barely enough to eat, all so Cesar and Diego Mendoza could have city penthouses and country mansions and vacation homes across the globe?
Actually, remembering the look in Julio’s eyes when he found out how Sydney’s pack lived gave her the only answer she needed. “I think Julio’s going to start using his to rebuild the packs like the one in Panama City Beach. He helped them a lot in the few days we spent there.”
He made a noncommittal noise and eyed her. “And you want to be part of that.”
“I can do what you do, Dad—make people feel better. Just…not their bodies. Their hearts.”
“Playing hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Sera.”
“I know.” She traced her finger around the rim of her glass and stared at the ice cubes melting into her sweet tea. “I’m not saying I want to be Anna or even Kat. I’m not a fighter, and I’m not ashamed of that. But I’ve got my own kind of power.”
She could feel him watching her closely. “We all have a place, great things we can do.”
“They want Julio to do his great things here in Atlanta.” Bracing herself, she glanced up. “I don’t think he’s going to agree, unless I come with him. And I think I should.”
Franklin swallowed hard and sat forward in his chair. “Sweetheart, he’s a member of the Southeast council. He’s not just a wolf, he’s an important one. And you’re a coyote.”
“I know.” William Levesque and Alan Reed had fought obvious distaste to acknowledge her at the funeral. Their wives had stared through her as if she didn’t exist. But as much as it had stung, she couldn’t forget Patty’s bruised eyes and tentative smile. “I’m still going to try. And Julio won’t let it be too much. He’d cut and run to protect me a whole lot sooner than I’d give up.”
He steepled his fingers and rested his forehead on them. “I’m not sure what you want me to say, Sera.”