Chapter 3 ELEVEN MINUTES

IDRIS I had rehearsed this for three years. I wrote it, rewrote it, and delivered it to my bathroom mirror in two languages. I had a version for her anger and a version for her tears. I had a version in which she struck me, which I privately rated the best, because it was the only one in which I was allowed to feel something simple. I had no version in which she asked how long, and then put both hands flat on the counter so I wouldn't see them shake. I saw them shake. Cinnamon. Burnt sugar. Rain on wool, because she had walked home in it and she always forgot an umbrella. I had known that about her for three weeks and kept it for three years, like a stone in a pocket. My wolf, which had been barely conscious for months, lifted its head and began to pace. It had a word for her. I had given my word, in the privacy of my own skull, never to use it. Eins. Zwei. Drei. A habit from a Swiss boarding school and a father who believed that counting could replace feeling. It worked about as well as you would expect. Vier. Fünf. She was not twenty-one anymore. I had known that, in the way you know the sun is far away. Her braids were pinned up and one had come loose behind her ear. There was a burn scar across the back of her left hand that had not been there before, and she held herself like someone who had learned to take up exactly as much room as she needed and not an inch more. She was beautiful the way a lit window is beautiful from the street: with a whole life inside it that was not mine. "You're staring," she said. "I know. I apologize." "Stop it." "I'm trying." From the pass-through, a voice said, "I can see your hands, Alpha." "Noted," I said. "I measured. Eleven feet." A pause. "...Why did you measure?" "I wanted to know how much room I'd been given." Tunde said nothing to that. Maryam's mouth twitched, very slightly, and then she flattened it like a woman putting out a small fire. I have been threatened by board members, by the Council, and once, memorably, by a very determined goat. None of it prepared me for Tunde Bello holding a heavy tray at the correct distance. He had stood beside her when I should have. I had never been able to decide whether to thank him or to be afraid of him, so I did both quietly and often, from a long way away. Maryam turned to the machine. I assumed she was making a point of not looking at me. Then I heard the grinder, and the hiss of milk, and I understood that she was making something. She worked with her back to me, quick and unthinking, the way you do something your hands have done ten thousand times. When she turned around, she set a paper cup on the counter between us and slid it two inches toward me, as if it might go off. "On the house," she said. "You look like you're about to fall over, and I don't want to mop." I looked at it. A pumpkin-spice oat-milk latte, with a drizzle. The kind of drink that arrives with its own sprinkles. I take my coffee black. I had taken it black on the first day, standing at that counter, when I looked at her and forgot how to finish a sentence. It took me a moment to understand what I was being given. A person who doesn't remember your order can't get it wrong on purpose. I picked up the cup. "It's hot," she said. "I'm aware." I drank. It was the most violent thing I had ever put in my mouth, and I have attended three Okafor family dinners. I swallowed it without a flicker, because I deserved it and because I wanted her to see me do it. She watched me. Something shifted behind her eyes, a small recalculation, like someone who had come braced for a fight and found the other person simply standing there. "Good?" she asked. "Remarkably sweet." "Tunde," she said, without turning, "write that down." "Already did," said the pass-through. I set the cup down. My wolf lunged against the inside of my ribs, and the brand answered it with a slow, deep pulse that I felt in my teeth. I put a hand against the counter and waited for the room to stop tilting. When it did, she was looking at the place where my shirt covered the marks, and her face had gone very still. Behind the register hung a small framed photograph of a woman laughing, her head thrown back, with Maryam's jaw and Maryam's eyes. I had never met her. I looked away at once. I had no right to that, either. There was also the matter of why I was here. I had told exactly two people I was dying: my attorney, who had aged ten years in the telling, and myself. I had decided Maryam would be the third. Not because she could save me. Because she had a right to know what her refusal had cost, and a right not to learn it from a lawyer, a headline, or my mother. I made myself speak before I lost my nerve. "I'd like to ask for one conversation," I said. "Not tonight. Whenever you choose. Wherever you choose. There are things I owe you, and I can explain some of them." I did not say all of them. There was a piece of paper in my coat pocket, soft as cloth from handling, and it was why I could not say all of them. I will tell you about it when I can. For now, understand that I had read it four hundred and seventeen times, and it had never once changed. My hand drifted toward the pocket. I stopped it halfway, and put it back on the counter. She saw. She saw everything. That was always the trouble with her. "You had a conversation," she said. "Three years ago. It lasted about forty seconds, and you did all the talking." "Maryam." "You already used your one chance." It was not said angrily. That was the worst of it. She said it the way you read out the balance on a closed account. Eleven minutes. That was how long I had sat in the car outside that hall, with the engine off and a piece of paper in my hand, deciding whether to walk in and ruin her life or walk away and end it. Eleven minutes was all it took to become the kind of man who does the first thing and calls it the second. I had spent every day since trying to find the minute I should have used differently. "Understood," I said. She looked startled. I think she had expected me to argue. My father would have argued. My mother would have smiled and found a way around it. I straightened up as much as the brand would let me. "Thank you for hearing me. You owe me nothing, and I won't ask again." That was a lie, or at least a promise I didn't believe I could keep. But I meant it in the moment, and I think she heard that, too. She turned away, toward the register, as if to dismiss me. I made one mistake. I reached out to push the cup back across the counter, a stupid, polite, automatic gesture, and as I moved, the tips of my fingers brushed the edge of the counter, a quarter of an inch from her hand. The bond went off like a struck match. White heat, from my fingertips to my spine. Every nerve I owned remembered her at once. And on the other side of that tiny gap, I saw her whole body go rigid, her breath catch, her lips part, and I knew with perfect, terrible certainty that she had felt every bit of it. Neither of us moved. Neither of us was breathing.