“Don’t.” I gripped his hand. “I chose to come. Your pack might be a complete mess, but I still think it can be fixed.” Maybe I was delusional for thinking that, but after meeting some of the Weres at the sparring session, I knew they weren’t all bad. He just couldn’t see that right now. “I’ve only been with you a few weeks, and in that time you’ve been running all over the place. Before that, you seemed like this impossible, amazing guy who could do a million things at a time.” He laughed, but it wasn’t because I was funny. The sound he made was more of a resigned half-laugh. “But now I know you’re just a normal person. A very strong and powerful one, but nonetheless a normal person. There are only so many hours in a day, and you have to decide what’s most important to you. Being on the Seven and running the pack? It’s too much.”

He lay down on the bed beside me, careful not to touch my side. “I can’t believe it’s always been this bad.”

“It probably wasn’t. It takes time for a healthy pack to turn.” The next words were hard to say, but I had to say them. “If you had to choose—because I think you’re going to have to decide—would you leave the Seven or the pack?”

“I don’t know. I can’t believe I’m even thinking it. But I can’t leave my pack. They’re mine.”

That was what I thought. But he was going to undermine his rule of the pack with this meeting.

He sighed. “If I left the Seven, who’d take my place? Anders from the Scandinavian pack has too much on his plate right now. His mate just had a daughter. He’s not going to want to leave them for stretches of time. Vasile is in the same boat. Farshid doesn’t have a mate yet, but he’s dealing with enough right now. His region is in so much flux right now that it’d be too dangerous to leave his pack.”

Donovan was talking, but I wasn’t really listening. I had a crazy idea. It was perfect. Positively brilliant. I wasn’t sure anyone else would agree, but if they did it’d be epic.

“What? What’d you think of?”

I almost didn’t want to say it aloud, but I couldn’t keep it from him. “Tessa. She should take your spot.”

His face paled. “You’re out of your mind. There’s no way the Alphas would accept it. She only learned of our kind a few months ago when she was bitten.”