Roxie shook her head. She understood his feelings, but she could see his father's perspective plain as day. Looking back, she was almost glad that his father had prevented the proposal. Her stomach twisted at that thought, but if they were going to get through this, they could not be the starry-eyed kids in their early twenties they had been a few years ago. They had to be grown-ups.<br/><br/>"I would have said 'No,' Alaric." It would have been a disaster, even if she would have wanted to be with him back then. "Because he was right. It would have been a bad thing to do back then, the packs would have fought even more than they already did and....And I wasn't a good mate for you." She was a nobody from a lesser pack, marrying her back then would have opened him up to challenges and it likely would have met that his brother would have ended up leading the pack.<br/><br/>"We're on more even footing now...Both sides probably realized that when we decided to meet." She sat down on the bed and began to consider what that meant. "Why did your father let me live?" She peered up at him, because that was a question she could not answer. Usually, if one wolf killed another, that was the price they would pay. Roxie was a kid from the wrong side of the track with no notable family or friends back then, he could have demanded she suffer the consequences for her actions. She had expected something like that to happen back then, but the demand never came.<br/><br/>"He had you pretend to be Alex today, have you pretended all this time? Do most people in your pack think I...I killed you?"