Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 45

"Ambrose! ... Ambrose!!"

I shout and bang my fist on the unyielding door but get no answer.

"Ambrose, don't you dare do this to me! Don't you dare shut me out now!"

I rattle the knob a few times and then pull out my key. If he thinks he's getting rid of me so easily, he's wrong.

It takes me a moment to realize that it's not just the angry shake in my hands, and that the key really doesn't fit.

"You had the fucking locks changed?" I yell, smacking my palm against the wood panels. "Ambrose! Goddamn it, talk to me!"

Silence is the only reply I get, and after a bit more yelling and pounding, I lean my forehead against the door in defeat.

I can almost sense him on the other side, a hand pressed to his expressive lips, eyes squeezed shut against a self-inflicted pain, keeping himself from making a sound as he listens to me rail against his stupid, one-sided attempt at protecting his heart.

Because while he did a good job—said all the things he must have known would crush me, cut me deep, and plant seeds of doubt in my mind—a Wolf's heart doesn't lie, and it knows its Mate. If he chooses to reject me, that's another matter, but he can't claim we're not Mates and expect me to believe it.

At least, that's the thread of hope I'm clinging to.

On the other hand, I can also imagine him at some upper window, staring down at me with cold, impassive eyes, having realized that whatever he was feeling for me was some momentary, ephemeral thing—intense but short-lived—and he's finally understood that I'm nothing worth loving after all.

Just a stray he'd picked up and given a bit of affection, and who'd fallen into the trap of thinking that it meant something more.

Turning aside, I sink down to sit on the cold stone of the doorstep and lean my head in my hands. Dougal, who's been watching this whole time and probably wondering why I'm being so weird and not letting him inside, takes this as an invitation to lick my face.

"Dougal!" I push him away and he dashes off to find his tennis ball, thinking I must want to play.

As he does, I get an idea. Ambrose will have to let him in at some point. He won't leave Dougal out here all night—he needs his dinner. He'll let him in, and when he does, I'll be waiting.

It seems like a solid idea, but I end up waiting a long time.

The afternoon fades into evening, and evening darkens into night. The air grows cold, and a damp chill rises from the earth. Dougal is used to being inside by this time, flopped on the rug in front of a cozy fire, or curled up on his comfy dog bed in our room. He's happy enough to be outside at the moment, because I'm outside, but occasionally he gets up and goes to the door, sniffing at the seam along the bottom and wagging his tail before looking back at me with an expectant lift to his ears.

I figure Ambrose has to let him in soon. It's already past his dinner time, and there's rain expected in the night. Whatever Ambrose might be trying to prove, I doubt he'll let Dougal suffer just to convince me I'm no longer wanted.

I'm wrong, though, and as the night wears on, my hope wears thin.

At some point I doze, Dougal leaning against my side and my back against the locked door, and awaken in the blue predawn light, freezing, stiff, and slightly wet. The overhang of the roof has protected me from the worst of the rain, but my stuff looks soggy, and Dougal's coat is soaked.

In the cold, emotionless gray of morning, it's a lot harder to convince myself that Ambrose didn't mean what he said, and that the sea of pain I'd sensed behind the wall of his expression and the blankness of his voice had been real.