Chapter 3 A Bed I Shouldn't Share

The second door on the left opened onto a room that had been cleaned for a guest who was expected to stay.

There was a bed with a quilt on it that smelled of cedar shavings, a washstand with a chipped pitcher, a window that looked out over the black pines. A fire had been laid in the grate, and someone had left a match on the mantel. The room was warm. That was the first thing I noticed, because the corridor had been cold enough to see my breath, and the warmth of this little room felt like a hand on the back of my neck.

I sat on the bed and did not light the fire.

The wall beside me was thin. I could hear Silas moving on the other side of it. A drawer opened. A drawer closed. Water ran into a basin and stopped. His boots came off and hit the floor, one and then the other, and then the bedframe creaked as he lay down.

My wrist was warm.

I looked at it. The mark had not been there when I arrived. A bond-broker does not get a mark, because a mark is what the moon gives to a true pair and the moon does not deal in counterfeits. I had checked my wrist in the motel outside Lake Placid with the bathroom light on, and there had been nothing there but the pale skin and the small white line of an old cut from a fence I had climbed when I was twelve.

Now there was a faint silver crescent just below the bone.

I rubbed at it with my thumb. It did not come off. It was not ink or dirt or the kind of mark a wolf leaves with his mouth. It was under the skin, and it was the exact color of moonlight on water, and when I pressed it I felt a pull in my chest, like a rope going taut somewhere behind my ribs.

I stood up and paced the length of the room. Six steps to the window. Six steps back. The floorboards were old and did not creak, which meant someone had fixed them recently, which meant this room had been prepared.

The pull did not go away. It got worse when I stood still. It got worse when I thought about him on the other side of the wall, the way his hand had felt on my back, the way his mouth had moved against my neck. I have faked four bonds in my life. I know what a counterfeit feels like from the inside. It feels like holding your breath under water. It feels like a costume that is a little too tight at the shoulders. It does not feel like a rope in your chest pulling you toward a door you should not open.

I opened the door.

The corridor was dark. The sconces had been turned down for the night, and the runner was black in the shadows. I stood there in my bare feet and listened to my own breathing, and then I heard his voice through the wall, muffled and low, and I could not make out the words but I knew the rhythm of them. He was talking to someone. No. He was talking to himself.

I closed the door and went back to the bed.

I did not sleep. I lay on top of the quilt with my boots on and stared at the ceiling, and the pull in my chest did not ease. It had a direction. That was the strangest part. It pointed east, toward the wall, toward the Alpha's room, and when I turned on my side to face away from it the pull got sharper, as if my body knew where he was and resented being asked to ignore it.

Somewhere around the middle of the night I heard him get up. The floorboards on his side of the wall creaked once. Then his door opened, and his footsteps came down the corridor, and they stopped outside my door.

I did not move. I did not even breathe.

The handle turned. The door swung inward on its old hinges, and Silas stood in the gap with the dark behind him and the faint silver light of the moon on his shoulders.

"Deke," he said. Not a question.

"I am here."

"I know you are here. I could smell you through the wall." He came in and closed the door behind him. He was wearing a long dark coat over his shirt, and his feet were still bare. "You have not lit your fire."

"I did not need one."

"You are cold." He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, and the mattress dipped, and the rope in my chest went slack all at once, like a knot had been untied. I let out a breath I had not meant to let out. He heard it. Of course he heard it. "There. You feel it too."

"I do not know what I feel."

"You feel the bond." He said it plainly, the way you would say the weather. "You have been faking them for so long that you do not recognize a real one when it is pulling at you. That is a hard thing to learn at your age."

I sat up. "This is not real. I built it. I know what I built."

"You built the scent," he said. "You did not build the rest. The rest came from somewhere else, and it came the moment you stepped onto my porch, and it has been pulling at both of us since." He turned his face toward me, and his clouded eyes were almost silver in the dark. "You are frightened."

"I am not."

"You are. Your heart is going like a rabbit's." He reached out and put one hand flat on the quilt, near my knee, not touching me. "I am going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to the words and not the fear. There is a curse in this territory. It took my sight eleven years ago, and it is waking up now, and the elders say a true bond is the only thing that can hold it back. I sent for a broker because I needed a bond. Any bond. I did not expect it to be true."

"You sent for me," I said. "Through Rennick."

"Through Rennick." His mouth curved. "He thought he was sending me a spy. I thought he was sending me a tool. It seems the moon had other plans."

The mark on my wrist was warm again. I looked at it, and he followed the direction of my eyes even though he could not see it.

"Show me your hand," he said.

I gave him my hand. He turned it over and ran his thumb along the inside of my wrist, and the touch went up my arm and into my chest and stopped my breath. The mark was silver and clear under his thumb, and it was not fading.

"That should not be there," I said.

"No," Silas said. "It should not."

He let go of my hand, and the loss of his touch was so sharp that I leaned toward him before I could stop myself. He heard the movement. He turned his head and his mouth was close to mine and neither of us moved for a long moment.

"There is a door between our rooms," he said quietly. "I am going to leave it unlocked. I am going to go back to my bed and lie down and try to sleep. What you do with the door is your own business."

He stood up. He went to the door and opened it, and the dark corridor waited beyond.

At the threshold he stopped. "One thing you should know before you decide. The last time the curse woke, it took my mother in one night. She was the Luna. She was the strongest wolf in this house. When the mine breathes again, it will not care that you are a liar or that I am blind or that neither of us asked for this."

He went out and closed the door, and I heard his door open and close a moment later.

I sat on the bed with my hand in my lap and the silver mark glowing faintly in the dark, and I listened to the mine under the house, and the mine was not silent.

It was breathing.