Page 26
We returned to the cottage, away from the pack. Not only would the wolves be more comfortable with a field operative not sleeping in their midst, but I’d be able to be alone with Ruby in the cottage, and she’d be more comfortable there.
Back outside the cottage, I’d split enough kindling by dark to burn through a fortnight, if we even lived that long.
The cold had come down hard after sunset, the kind that makes the axe ring instead of thud, and I worked without a lamp. Before me, the shutters were closed and a line of light shone under the door. Shadows moved across that line, indicating she was pacing.
I listened to each movement. The creak of the third floorboard by the hearth. The soft rustle of paper, because she’d brought her parents’ files back with her and couldn’t stop reading them. Wolves hear everything. Tonight I’d have given a great deal to hear less.
Her scent had soaked into the cottage by now. Into the blankets, the chair by the wall, the very air I’d have to breathe when I went back in. Even out here, with the wind coming down off the ridge, a thread of it found me. Rain and smoke and a hint of honey beneath, and every time it reached me my wolf rose up hard against my ribs.
Go to her.
I split another log.
She’s ours. You know it. Stop pretending you don’t.
I knew it. That was the trouble. The silver was locked in the cellar, sealed and harmless, and nothing had changed. The pull was still there, steady as a heartbeat. The silver had never been the reason. It had only been my excuse.
She’d killed six of my wolves. Sara Corrin had taught half the pups in the pack to swim. Somewhere out on the north line, her son was running in the dark while I stood here aching for the woman who’d put his mother in the ground.
I should have hated her. I had, abstractly, once upon a time, just as I’d hated every member of the Crimson Order.
But I’d read her files. Elisabeth Mays had stolen a six-year-old girl to grind her into a blade, one lesson at a time. Ruby hadn’t chosen any of it. Now that she’d started asking questions, she’d been discarded.
I brought the axe down so hard the block split along with the log.
I wouldn’t let them have her. Not the Order, not the clearance team, not that woman in her office with her tea and her seal. Not even any damn figure in all of Graycroft. Even if wanting her tore me apart. Even if my pack never forgave me for it.
The door to the cottage opened.
She stepped outside with the red cloak over her shoulders like a blanket, unpinned. She stood there a moment beneath the moonlight, and then she walked across the frozen ground over to me.
“Conan, come inside,” she said in a gentle voice.
I didn’t move. The axe stayed in my hand.
“You’ve been out here for two hours.” She folded her arms beneath the cloak. “You must be freezing, even for a shifter. Why are you avoiding me?”
I could have lied and told her the pack needed kindling. The pile at my feet would have called me a liar anyway.
“Because I’m afraid of what I want,” I admitted in a quiet voice.
She tilted her head, studying me the way she’d studied the cottage that first day. Measuring. “What do you want?”
I didn’t answer. I set the axe in the block and left it there, and still I didn’t answer, because the truth sat too close to the surface and my wolf was pressing against it from beneath.
“I won’t take advantage of you,” I said at last. “Not when you’re hurting so badly.”
“You’re hurting too.” She said it simply. “I watched you at the graves. I watched you when I said Sara’s name.” She reached out and took my hand. Her fingers were cold. “Why can’t we help each other?”
My mouth parted, but I had no answer.
She tugged my hand. “Come inside, where it’s warm. I’d like to be able to see you.”
I took a deep breath, exhaled, and followed her in.
Inside, the fire had burned down to a low, warm glow. She let go of my hand to adjust a log. I stood just inside the door feeling far too large for the room, as if I’d forgotten how to be in my own home.
She straightened and faced me, the firelight catching the red in her hair.
