Chapter 5. The Man From the River

June's POV

At first light, the cell door opened, and it wasn't him.

It was a woman of sixty or so, with silver hair in a long braid and fingertips stained green. She carried a bag, a tin cup of water, and an expression like a winter storm.

"Maren," she said. "Healer. Hold out your wrists."

I held them out. The silver had left red, weeping rings. She cleaned them without gentleness and without cruelty, the way I'd cleaned a hundred wounds myself. Quick. Exactly.

Halfway through the second wrist, she stopped.

She leaned closer. Sniffed. Frowned. Sniffed again, at my neck this time.

"Well," she said slowly. "That's interesting."

"What is?"

"Last night, Garrick swore you had no scent at all." She sat back on her heels. "This morning you've got a thread of one. Faint. But there."

I stared at her.

"I've seen that before," Maren said. "Twice. In wolves we kept sedated for a week after bad wounds. When the dose stops, the scent comes back first, a little at a time, like water seeping up through sand." Her sharp eyes held mine. "That's not a curse, girl. That's something wearing off."

My stomach turned over.

Something kept pushing me down, Sorrel had said.

I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning. Since the bread.

Every morning since I was ten, the kitchen in Ashgrove forgot my share of everything. Except the bread. They never once forgot the bread.

"Who's been dosing you?" Maren asked quietly.

"I don't know," I whispered.

It was true. But for the first time, I thought I might know where to look.

Maren studied me for a long moment. Then she wrapped my wrist, stood up, and left without another word. I heard her voice in the corridor, low and sharp, talking to someone.

Then his footsteps.

* * *

I knew they were his before he reached the door. I didn't know how I knew.

He came in with Garrick behind him. In daylight, the Alpha of Thornfall was even bigger than I remembered. Tall and broad, dark hair cut short, a beard kept close. A thin white scar along his jaw. Gray eyes, the cold, clear gray of a winter sky.

He didn't crouch this time. He stood in the doorway and looked down at me.

"Alpha Bram has asked for you back," he said. "Under Council law. The Council convicted you eleven years ago. I have no judgment that says otherwise." His voice was flat. "At dawn tomorrow, you'll be taken to the ford and handed to Ashgrove."

The floor seemed to drop away under me.

"He'll kill me," I said.

"He has the Council's judgment. I don't."

"He sent the whole pack to hunt me. Then he waited for me at the river. Alone." My voice was shaking. I didn't care. "Why would he do that, if he wanted me dead? Why does he only want me alive?"

Something flickered in his face. Then it was gone.

"That's between you and your Alpha."

"He's not my Alpha. I rejected his son and his house in front of the Moon."

"Then that's between you and the Moon," he said, and turned to go.

"Don't look back."

He stopped.

I hadn't meant to say it. It came out of me from somewhere very deep, under eleven years of fog. A voice in black water. Arms around my chest. Somebody young and frightened, breathing hard against my ear.

I've got you. I've got you. Don't look back.

I'd forgotten that voice my whole life.

I'd just heard it again, telling me I was going back to Bram.

"You were there," I whispered. "At the river. The night my parents died. You pulled me out."

He didn't turn around for a long moment. When he did, his face was very still.

"Yes," he said.

"Then you know what I was. A ten-year-old girl in the water."

"I know what I found."

"And what did you do?" My voice cracked. "After you pulled me out. What did you do?"

He looked at me. Something moved behind those winter eyes. Something that looked, for half a second, like pain.

"I went home," he said.

That was all. He shut it away so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"Garrick," he said. "The chain. We'll move her to the gatehouse tonight."

* * *

Garrick came forward with the silver. I didn't fight. I held out my wrists.

Ronan stepped in beside him to check the lock. Close. Closer than he'd come since the night before.

And the air between us changed.

It hit me first as heat, then as scent. Without the bread, with my own wolf awake and pressing against my ribs, I could smell him clearly for the first time.

Snow. Iron. Woodsmoke. Something warm underneath, like the sun on a stone wall.

My whole body leaned toward him before I could stop it.

Mate, Sorrel breathed. June. That's our mate.

No.

No, not again. I'd felt this before. I'd lived on this pull for three months. And at the end of it, a man had told me to kneel.

I looked up.

Ronan had gone absolutely still, with the chain in his hand. All the color had drained out of his face. His nostrils flared once, and I watched him breathe me in, and I watched him understand.

Then his jaw locked.

He stepped back. One step. Then another. Like a man backing away from a fire.

"No," he said quietly. Not to me. To himself. To whatever was howling inside him.

Garrick looked from one of us to the other. "Ronan?"

"Lock it," Ronan said. His voice was rough. "Lock it and get out."

"You feel it," I said.

He didn't answer.

I stood up, with the silver burning my wrists.

Every kindness in my life had come with a bill. Bread came with something in it. Rhett's smile came with a kneel. And now the bond, the one thing the Moon was supposed to give for free.

"You feel it," I said. My voice was shaking. "And you're still taking me to the ford at dawn. You're handing your own mate to the man who hunted her."

His hands were fists at his sides.

"It changes nothing," he said.

"Then tell me the price, Alpha."