“There you go.” He took a few steps forward, turning around to get me to follow him. “That means you can put your guilt down and stop carrying it on your shoulders.”
“How do you know I was feeling guilty?” I questioned my decision to walk with this annoying companion.
Dash’s teeth gleamed white as he grinned with arrogance. “Because I know things.”
“What, are you psychic now?” I snorted, catching up to his longer strides.
“No,” he admitted. “I just know you.”
I opened my mouth to contest his claim, but found no words to throw at him. Despite the shifter’s absence, he did possess a strange ability to see the bigger picture and analyze it with shrewd observations.
“Do your amazing skills in reading people come in handy as a pack leader?” I questioned, ready to switch places in the hot seat.
He took a moment before answering, “Actually, they do. It’s advantageous to have a good idea what might happen three or four steps ahead of whatever negotiations I’m working on.”
Advantageous. Big word for someone who usually grunted. I smiled at my inside joke and kept him talking. “So, what big deals have you made for your pack?”
“Besides the ones I revealed at the park?” Dash kicked a stone, listening to it ricochet off the pavement and into the dirt. “I’ve made sure that our territory is safe. That’s my first priority.”
“And is it? Safe, I mean,” I clarified.
He placed both hands behind his head and let out a long groaning sigh. “It’s getting there. There’s a lot to fix, considering all the damage Cash had done with the surrounding communities.”
I nodded in sympathy at the hard job he had waiting for him in the mountains. “Not to be indelicate, but why are you still here in Honeysuckle if things are bad up in the Red Ridge territory?”
“I still own a house here, and I’d neglected the property for far too long. So, I’ve been fixing the place up as well as packing a few things to take back with me.”
My feet stuck to the ground as it dawned on me why Dash was here. “You’re getting ready to sell your house, aren’t you?”
He stopped moving forward but didn’t turn to face me. “Not yet.”
“But sometime. Someday, you’re going to put it on the market.” I didn’t know why the thought of him selling his house made me sad.
He cocked his head to the side so I could hear him better. “My place is with the pack, not here. They need a strong leader.”
Dash’s words made sense, but again, my rational side conflicted with my emotional one. But other than being a shareholder in Lee’s business, what else would hold him to Honeysuckle?
“I guess you deserve to have a life on solid ground, not torn between two places,” I admitted with reluctance. “It makes sense that you would go all in for your life there. Although I guess now you won’t be a married man anytime soon.”
The gold in the shifter’s eyes blazed to life. “I could if I wanted to.”
“What, are all the girls falling for the hot shifter leader?” I teased.
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. “It’s not like I’ve been a monk or anything. There’s been interest.”
“I have no doubt,” I snorted, remembering his enthusiasm when he’d talked about the Whitaker sisters at the potluck. Maybe one of them had captured his attention?
“But that’s not what I was talking about. Remember I said that my brother did a lot of damage as did the fight to oust him as leader,” Dash continued.
A shiver ran down my spine as he reminded me that he had been the instrument to remove his brother out of the pack and out of life itself. I should run far away from the killer next to me, and yet I wanted to hug him for his loss instead.
“Well, the leader from an adjoining pack at the edge of Georgia has made me an offer. Peace, trade, and shared ownership of a part of his territory in the mountains,” he said.
“And who would you have to marry?” I pushed.
“His daughter.” His glowing eyes watched for my reaction.
The more Dash revealed to me about his life, the less I understood it. Would he ever be able to marry for love, or would it always be something negotiated? A deal made to achieve something else? What a hard existence to commit to.
As much as he’d gone through, he didn’t need my pity. “Arranged marriages have been happening for millennia.”
“Would you be able to do it? Get married, I mean, to someone you had no feelings for?”
I tried to imagine what situation would be so dire where I might agree to hitch myself to a person with no emotional attachment. It seemed like an impossible scenario, but maybe he needed to hear my support rather than my real answer.
“If the safety of my family or people that I cared about was at stake, then yeah. I would consider getting married if that meant they’d be okay.” I almost believed myself.
Dash snorted. “Of course you would because that’s what you do. You save people.”
Realizing I needed to get back to Nana’s house to relieve Matt and send him home, I changed direction to mosey back. “Nothing wrong in putting others’ lives first before our own. Sounds like that’s the life you lead.”
Another long sigh peppered the air. “You have the makings of a great leader if that ever happens for you someday.”
Memories of Nana acting as the beacon of leadership for Honeysuckle Hollow filled my brain, and my fear for her health doubled. Picking up my pace, I rushed towards the house.
Dash caught up with me and held onto my arm. “I didn’t mean to make you worry about your grandmother.”
“I still need to get back,” I insisted, aiming for the glow of the
