Chapter 2

My thumb slipped. The screen went black. I turned. Kane stood in the doorway, dish towel over his shoulder, eyes locked on the phone in my hand. "Nora." His voice dropped half a register. Not angry yet. Close. "Why do you have my phone?" "It kept buzzing." I handed it back without a tremor. "Sounded like patrol. You had your hands in the sink." He glanced at the dark screen. Then at me. His nostrils flared, just slightly. Wolves can smell a lie the way humans smell smoke. But I'd spent seven years swallowing every feeling I had. There was nothing left on my skin to smell. The suspicion in his eyes dimmed. Not gone. Filed away. "I'm going to shower." The bathroom door clicked. Water hissed through the pipes. I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my palms flat against my knees to stop them from shaking. When he came out, towel low on his hips, steam still rising off his shoulders, he sat beside me. Close enough that his heat rolled over me. His hand found my thigh. "It's been a while." Low. Unhurried. His wolf rumbling under the words. "Come here." The mark on my neck, the one he'd given me on our mating night, the one that never fully took, went warm. Six months ago, I would have melted. Let him find the hem of my shirt. Let his mouth land on that spot below my ear. But all I could see was his hand on Selene's back. Had he touched her like this? On all those moon nights I spent alone, had she been the one feeling this heat, hearing this voice say come here? I stood before his fingers could climb. He froze. "What's wrong?" "Tired." I poured a glass of water at the dresser. The cold pushed the nausea down. "Kane. Hypothetically. If someone who didn't belong walked into the Moon Hall during the Rite, what would happen?" Silence. Then the creak of the bed. "You know what would happen." His tone cooled. "My father would strip them of pack protection in front of everyone. Declare them rogue. Every border wolf in three states could hunt them and nobody would blink." A pause. "That's why I've never pushed it. It's not that I don't want you there. The cost is too high." The cost is too high. My knuckles went white around the glass. "I'll sleep in the guest room tonight." He didn't ask me to stay. He let me go. I lay awake until the ceiling turned grey, and seven years played behind my eyelids. Our first Blood Moon as mates. I sat on the porch wrapped in a blanket, listening to the pack's howls roll across the valley, pretending one of them was calling for me. He came home at dawn smelling like woodsmoke and wine. It was wild, baby. My uncles nearly started a challenge. I told him I understood. The second year, I baked his mother's honey cake and left it at the Moon Hall gates. It never reached him. The guards must have eaten it, he said. Sweet of you to try, though. I apologized for the trouble. Year after year. The same excuse. The same me, telling herself that patience was a form of love. Now I knew patience was just another word for blindness. At first light, I heard him moving. Shower. Clothes. The cedar oil he only wore when he was going somewhere that mattered. He didn't knock on the guest room door. The front door shut. His truck rumbled down the drive. I was dressed and behind the wheel of my old Subaru in three minutes. He didn't take the north road toward the Moon Hall. He turned east. Toward the river lofts in town. He parked outside a glass-front building and waited. Two minutes. Then she walked out. Dark hair. Camel coat. The kind of walk that doesn't come from confidence. It comes from knowing you're expected. Selene Vance opened the passenger door and slid in like she'd done it a thousand times. Sixty feet away, through the windshield, I watched my husband lean across the console and pull her into him. His hand cradled the back of her head. They kissed the way people kiss when they've stopped counting. A jogger passed. A woman walked her dog. The world didn't care. I waited for the rage. The grief. The chest-crushing devastation. Nothing came. Just a vast, arctic silence. Then Selene pulled back from his mouth. And over his shoulder, her eyes found my car. She looked straight at me. And she smiled.