67. Hawthorn

Seff didn’t let go of Hawthorn’s hand. 
As they walked, they bumped shoulders with each step, giggling each time Seff was knocked out of balance. She nearly tripped on a tree branch. Hawthorn caught her, but they didn’t stop him from cackling.
“I don’t remember you being this clumsy, Seffy,” he guffawed, spinning her around so she stumbled into him. 
She stuck her tongue out but wrapped her arms around his torso. “I don’t remember you being so eloquent and easily amused.”
He lifted her feet on top of his and they waddled step by blundering step, laughing like they were drunk. Cheek pressed to his bare chest, Seff felt delirious with joy. Hawthorn smelled like a typical Alpha, but his scent was nostalgic—and something more recent. Old paper? Burnt?
“I wrote letters to you every day,” Hawthorn said suddenly, not breaking pace.
Seff’s smile broke. “You did?”
“Yeah. I thought you hated me and that’s why I never got a letter back.”
She closed her eyes and replayed her shouting match with Kiran after she found out about her hidden correspondence. 
* “You know about Hawthorn. He said he loved me at the Choosing. So you knew he was a threat. What, were you afraid I’d try to escape? I never… I never said I love him back!”*
Gods, why had she said that? Now, goofing off like pups, she felt guilt wash up in her as if Hawthorn had been there listening. She’d only read one letter. 
*“I’m going crazy without you.”*
*“My mind just keeps going back and forth between loving you more and finding reasons to hate you.”*
*“Did you fall in love with him and forget me?”*
“Hawthorn.” Seff’s voice cracked. He stopped walking and she stepped off his feet, craning her neck up to look at him. His eyes were cautious. “I was going crazy without you, too. I wrote every day. I was afraid *you* hated *me*. For choosing Kiran and leaving without a real goodbye. For just watching you walk away. My heart broke—for me, for you, for Allium. All I wanted was your hands on my hips and your lips on mine. And Kiran tried to *justify* holding all the letters…”
*“They would keep your heart rooted there, with them, instead of here. With me. I feared you would constantly be living a half-life. Your soul split. I want you whole, Seff—you deserve to be whole.”*
A myriad of emotions played on Hawthorn’s face, and her heart keened for his. “He thought my life would be split between the Sun and the Magnolia. That’d you be…” Her voice rasped and her throat thickened. “That you would only hold me back. But I—Hawthorn, I never believed him. I—”
Hawthorn grabbed her hips, yanked her chest to his, and met her lips with his own. Automatically she kissed back and closed her eyes. He tasted like sweat and salt, but she couldn’t get enough. A month was too long a time without his scent, his skinship. 
“I never really hated you,” he breathed against her lips. “Loving you was so much easier to do.”
The weight of the past month and a half crashed down on her then. Hawthorn sank in tandem with Seff to the ground, where he cradled her in a protective embrace as if he could fend off the world just for her. Something Kiran and Selene would do—but not out of faithful love, but selfish obsession. 
“I missed you,” Seff wept, her tears shamelessly wetting his forearm. “I didn’t fall in love with him. I didn’t forget you.”
He nuzzled her cheek with his, just like he used to. “I know. It was stupid of me to write that.”
“No it wasn’t,” she sniffed.
“I thought you insisted you weren’t weepy,” he said.
She knew he was fighting a smile. She laughed breathlessly with a hiccup. “I am after holding this all in for a month. It’s been…exhausting.”
Hawthorn squeezed her tightly. “You can tell me about it when you’re ready.”
“You’re not going to…” Seff stopped herself from asking if he was going to *demand* he tell her. *Oh gods, had my standards really become so low?* “Okay. I will.”
They rose back to their feet, falling into step hand in hand, easy as breathing. Only a minute passed before he said, “Well, you didn’t miss much.”
“Same old?” she asked with a quirk of her mouth that Hawthorn kissed a tear away from. 
“Same old,” he agreed. “Frisk parties, one or two unplanned pregnancies, a wedding that I wasn’t invited to… Hyacinth’s wives are still trying to grow the funds for filling the holes in some of the paths. Hyacinth…hasn’t been himself recently. He’s acting weird, like he’s rattled by something. He’s always been sleazy, especially when it came to sucking up to the Sun and Moon, but…” A pause. Then, “I heard he came to visit you.”
*“It’d be a shame to lose you, Seff.”*
It was a great comfort to hear at least some things hadn’t changed. But she frowned. “He did. You’re right, he wasn’t himself. He said some weird things…”
“He didn’t even admonish Cedar and Endine. Is it true they attacked you?” he suddenly remembered, frantically looking her up and down.
Seff laughed. “I’m okay, promise! Just a superficial bite.”
“Kiran let that happen?” he growled, eyes flashing. 
The protectiveness that roiled off Hawthorn was a different kind from the threats Kiran and Selene issued. With the Alphas, it was a promise of irrational violence. With Hawthorn whose Magnolia blood ran with chivalry, she felt safe under his wolf’s stance—he would fight for her, but he would never seriously harm. 
“Thank you for wanting to defend my honor,” she noted.
A dopey grin banished the seriousness, eyes lightening with humor. “Always, my lady. By the way, how much longer do we have to walk? Running all the way from the College was exhausting, I won’t lie.”
“Not far, I promise.”
“Do I have to enter naked?”
Seff’s cheeks flamed. She wore a long blue slip, and since she no longer wanted anything to do with the vengeful Luna, she had no qualms ripping a good thick strip for Hawthorn to wrap and tie around his waist. She looked away quickly as if she hadn’t seen him before. 
“How do I compare to Kiran?” he asked mischievously, bending down to her height. 
She scowled and pushed his face away playfully. “I’m not answering that.”
“C’mon, I won’t be offended.”
*Kiran’s bigger*, she thought bitterly. She said, “Definitely you.”
Whether he believed her or not, Hawthorn beamed. “As I always thought. If your legendary sex endeavors are so widespread and highly spoken of, it means they’re hiding something. Meaning he’s compensating for a small prick.”
Seff’s bark of laughter echoed into the night. She clamped her hand over her mouth and wished to die on the spot. Hawthorn threw his head back in silent hilarity. She punched his arm as hard as she should. “Don’t say that!” she hissed.
“Why?”
Seff pointed. “Because his harem is right there.”
The glow of golden light emitted from the torches on either side of the massive Keep entrance doors. Seff had never noticed them, or even how the rowan trees became the apple orchard. She made out two wolf forms sitting guard but didn’t sense any prowling amongst the trees. Again, the confidence of loyalty to the Sun was solidified in their very blood. 
Heart picking up the pace as she realized they hadn’t even come up with a plan, Seff only made it forward one step before Hawthorn grabbed her wrist. She turned. 
The emotion in his green eyes was staggering. “Seff,” he whispered, his voice filling all the empty crevices in her chest, “do you love me back?”