Chapter 10 - Defiance to Compromise
Rhydian pulled Maddy from the stool at the breakfast bar.
"What're you doing?"
"Tonight's the full moon," he said, smirking. His inner wolf had that playful urge and so did hers, despite the anxiety as they waited for Emma's and Daniel's response to Maddy's ultimatum. "Aren't you feeling the least bit restless? Want to go downstairs to the den and mess around?"
Maddy's eyes narrowed. "By 'mess around' you better not mean…."
Rhydian gave her a hurt look. "As if. I am a wolf and a gentleman." He grinned at her and turned around. "Come on. Climb on." She jumped on his back and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he piggy-backed her downstairs to the den. Soon they morphed into their wolves, snapping playfully at each other and roughhousing in the den, nipping at each other's heels as they circled, play-fought and growled.
Maddy lunged at Rhydian, getting the upper hand. Grasping his right foreleg in her jaws, she toppled him over. He righted himself quickly, using his bulk to shove her into the wall. With a grunt she wiggled out from between him and the stonework, leapt up on the nearby table and then landed on Rhydian's back with a growl that was wolf-speak for Take that!
They had almost lost themselves in the joy of good-natured sparring when the sound of footsteps echoed at the top of the stairs. Maddy and Rhydian sat on their haunches and returned to their human forms.
"Rhydian." Daniel and Emma were both standing side by side, both as solemn as Maddy had ever seen them. "We need to talk to you for a moment." Two sets of eyes shifted toward Maddy. "In private."
"Sure."
"No!"
"Maddy, it's all right." Rhydian looked at Maddy, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and then joined Emma and Daniel. "I'll be right back."
Maddy felt all twisted up inside, her stomach churning as she waited, wondering what plot her parents were trying to concoct with Rhydian's permission. She didn't trust them after the things they'd already kept from her, and part of her wondered how that trust could ever be fully regained. She fidgeted, chewing on her lip as the minutes ticked by. Each second lingered like it was trying to stretch into minutes, an hour. At last the sound of footsteps returned. Rhydian walked in and sat on the couch. He patted the cushion beside him.
"Mads, have a seat."
"I'll stand, thank you." Maddy looked at her parents suspiciously.
Emma sighed, walking up to Maddy and taking both of her hands.
"Pet, sometimes you do try our patience, but we only do what we do because we care about you." She then gave her daughter a hug as Maddy felt relief flowing like the blood in her veins. When Emma withdrew Daniel cleared his throat.
"Your mum and I have made a decision." Maddy whirled toward him, her heart galloping.
"We've decided…." Daniel let the sentence hang like a rock dangling half-way over a cliff. Maddy couldn't breathe.
"We've decided that we will help Rhydian stay in Swan Hill for the semester—with certain conditions and caveats." Maddy squealed and launched herself at her dad. Daniel sighed as her daughter squeezed him like a giant teddy bear and then wiped away the tears of happiness forming on her face.
"Thank you, Dad, Mum. Thank you, thank you so much. I love you guys." She gave her mum a hug just as torso-crushing.
"Don't celebrate yet, young lady. You haven't heard our conditions yet, and Rhydian's already agreed to them so if you choose to reject them you'll have no help from him."
Maddy turned back toward Rhydian, speechless with eyes full of accusation. "Is this true?"
Rhydian nodded matter-of-factly. "It's true, Maddy. If you go against them on this I'm on their side."
Maddy's heart lurched as she turned back to her parents. Seeing her distress Rhydian jumped up from the couch and slipped a hand around her waist, pulling her slender body snug against him and kissing her on the forehead. "No need to panic, Mads. Hear them out."
Daniel cleared his throat as if he were about to read a legal document.
"First, Rhydian will not be living with us. We'll arrange for room and board for him in town."
"Dad!"
"It's not negotiable," Emma cut in. "You two are both 16 and in love. You're still too fresh out from being cubs yourselves to have cubs of your own. There is no way we are going to have the two of you sleeping under the same roof. It's inviting trouble. Your dad and I were 16 once too!"
The wolfblood girl reluctantly kept her mouth shut even as her wolf wanted to howl.
"Secondly, you will promise never to join this Northwest Territories pack—ever. They're dangerous Maddy…in some ways even more dangerous than wild wolfbloods."
"But how do you—"
"You'll just have to trust us on this."
"Listen to them, Mads. Just trust them," Rhydian added.
"I thought you were on my side."
"There are no sides anymore. Your parents are right. Just let it be."
Grumpy but mollified, Maddy leaned her head on Rhydian's shoulder and groaned. "Fine. What else?"
"After the end of the semester you'll let Rhydian go back home to Stoneybridge without putting up a fuss. We'll arrange so that you can still keep in touch him. We won't try to keep Rhydian out of your life. If the Vaughns give him permission to visit in the future he will always be welcome here. By the time you're both old enough to go to university, you'll be able to make your own decisions."
"Is that it?" Maddy asked hopefully.
"Not quite. One last condition. You will not run free anywhere as wolves. You will use our den here every full moon and stay safe and away from prying human eyes. If we are to be a pack, we will certainly act as one and Rhydian will consider me his alpha just as I am yours." Emma crossed her arms in front of her and gave her daughter a searching look. "Do you accept those terms young lady?"
The air could have been cut with a knife as silence and tension wove together for just an instant. Maddy sucked in a breath, considering. A bolt of understanding slammed into her like a fist, her eyes going vivid as she realized something. It was hard-fought, just getting where we are right here, right now, me and Rhydian together. This is good, but I want more.
Maddy looked over at Emma, felt a twinge of pity as she said the words she knew would leave everyone floored.
"I agree to those terms as long as you and dad serve as witnesses to my Promise Ceremony with Rhydian before he goes back to Stoneybridge."
Emma and Daniel stilled. Rhydian's jaw dropped. The tension in the air ratcheted up a notch. Maddy saw her dad contain his inner wolf, and from the expression it was clear that he was not pleased.
Rhydian had to make a few tries before words would come. "Maddy, you don't have to do this. I'm not trying to place any demands on you." His hand created tingles along the small of her back where he held her. His hands slid up to the sides of her neck, the pads of his thumbs gently pressed against either side of her jaw as he turned her face so that their gazes locked perfectly. "Is this really what you want? The mate-pledge isn't taken lightly, Mads. It's almost unbreakable. It's…."
Maddy shut him up by pressing her lips to his in a firm, chaste, meaningful kiss. His hands stiffened along the sides of her neck as he pressed her against the wall, turning the kiss into something less innocent, the boy's inner wolf growling affectionately at the wolfblood girl in a way that spoke deeper than words. Yes I accept all you are, and more than that, I would do anything to make you mine.
The wolfblood girl sighed as they broke the kiss, their foreheads pressed together, both of them panting with identical, rampaging heartbeats.
"Maddy." Emma's voice had lost that typical mum-like air of authority, now small and afraid. "Are you sure? This can't be undone. If you tie your wolf to Rhydian's…"
"I know, Mum! I know. But if I do this then it pledges me to him, right, and only at the proper time? That's how this works, right?" It was an old wolfblood ritual similar to the ancient human practice of betrothal, only it was much more sacred, steeped in wolfblood magic. Once she and Rhydian had been promised to each other their wolves would refuse to acknowledge any other as mate and save the final act of mating only until after they had come of age, as full adult wolfbloods.
It was a time-honored wolfblood tradition seldom used anymore, but Maddy had had a lot of time on her hands since moving to Swan Hill. She knew her kind's older traditions and this was one that she thought was beautiful and special…and it was more than that too.
This will show my parents that I'm serious—that Rhydian doesn't matter to me only in the here and now. I won't lose him again, especially not for the sake of fear. I won't be the reckless cub I used to be either, if that's what has to happen for us to have a future.
"Mum and Dad, I am sure that this is what I want." She turned back to Rhydian. "Is it…is it what you want?" Her heart nearly broke as her love for the wolfblood boy she'd originally snubbed, the same boy she'd once viciously insisted didn't belong, as what he really meant to her finally crystallized. Maddy thought back to the night when they'd been stranded on the isle of Lindisfarne, the night she'd first changed into her wolf.
She vividly remembered his tender words when she'd been a nervous wreck. Maddy, it'll be all right. I'll look after you.
"Maddy Smith," Rhydian replied, his smirk flourishing into a grin, "no girl on earth could possibly be as much trouble as you, and yet I know of no other girl that I'd rather run with, spend the rest of my life with, have cute little cubs with one day." He sighed, a musical note of contentment as he smoothed the pad of his thumb across her cheek, staring at her with this look of devotion that made her heart ache. "I've already told you Mads—from that first walk in the woods with you in Stoneybridge, you'd already captured me. You'd already started to make me yours, even then."
Rhydian wiped the fresh tear of joy on Maddy's face and kissed her one more time, the tenderness of his touch making Maddy's heart thud harder and harder as she kissed him back with all the passion she could muster. When they slowly pulled apart Maddy's heavy-lidded gaze couldn't quite look at anything except for Rhydian, her Rhydian, until her dad's uncomfortable cough brought the couple out of their mountaintop moment.
"Maddy." Emma's voice sounded resigned, but a tiny note seemed to express some secretly shared joy at her daughter's happiness. "Yes, if it's what you want then your dad and I would be honored to be witnesses to your Promise Ceremony to Rhydian. We want you to be happy, pet, and we will always try to be supportive of you."
The wolfblood teenager turned to her mum and dad, her heart aching not with pain but with being overfilled, saturated as if happiness were a drug you could overdose on. She snared each of them in another bone-squeezing hug with shining eyes as she stepped back and yearned to somehow impart the gratitude which rendered words inadequate.
"You and Dad are the best parents ever. You know that, right?"
Their sad, wistful looks told her that although they knew Maddy was no longer a child, that didn't mean they'd ever accept it. Rhydian slipped his hands around Maddy's waist, hugging her from behind in that way which was already growing so familiar it was hard for Maddy to remember ever not having him there beside her. He kissed the top of her head as she slid her hands along his forearms and enfolded them over his. She tilted her head sideways and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, murmuring the three words that signified vulnerability like nothing else.
"I love you, Rhydian."
"You mean it?" His eyes danced with mischief.
"Of course!"
"Even when I do this?" Maddy squealed as Rhydian tickled her armpits and along the front of her neck. She squirmed as he pretended to bite her and ended up whirling her around for a proper kiss instead, his hand cupping the nape of her neck. Her inner wolf embraced the wolfblood boy's playfulness as the full moon neared, focused on one thing. Rhydian, her Rhydian, would now be a part of her life.