After My Alpha Drugged Me for Ten Years novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Morning Tea

In the lodge cellar Ruby brings a cup of herbal tea and a fresh log to sign, and Hazel pours the tea down the drain. Ramsay tells her the man she called believes she died six years ago; by dawn the withdrawal breaks and her wolf says one word: run.

"You know him," Ramsay said.

He hadn't asked it as a question, and I didn't answer.

"He's the Cedar Fork Alpha. He wasn't even Alpha ten years ago." His thumb was still on the dark screen of his phone. "You met him once, at a moot, for an evening."

I kept my face still and looked at the drain in the floor.

If he knew how long I had been carrying that number, I would never have another phone, another needle, or another night alone.

Ramsay waited until it was clear I wouldn't speak.

Then he put the gold chip in his pocket and left.

The steel door shut with the sound it had made for ten years, and for the first time since I was nineteen I could hear the lock turning and feel my heart go hard against it.

Someone had heard me.

Someone who answered on the first ring and said my name before I had.

I sat on the cot and pressed my palm over the mark on my neck, and it was cold and quiet and told me nothing.

At seven the slot in the door slid open.

Ruby came in with a tray.

She wore a different cardigan, pale green this time, and she had brought a candle, which made no sense and which I liked anyway.

"It's chamomile and honey," she said, setting the cup on the little table. "And a bit of something for the nerves. Ramsay says you haven't slept properly in years."

The bitter, green smell was there under the honey.

It was the smell of every morning I could remember, and I thought: that's the cabin's kitchen, the stove, the herbs by the window.

I told myself that, and I almost believed it.

"I wanted to ask about the dress," Ruby said, sitting on the end of the cot. "For the Ceremony. Cream or ivory? I can't decide, and everyone I ask just says whichever. You must have an opinion."

Nobody had asked me for an opinion in ten years.

My throat closed up.

"Ivory," I said.

"I knew it." She smiled, and she looked at the cup, and I saw her waiting.

I picked it up and held it to my mouth and tilted it so she could see the level drop.

She watched for a moment longer.

Then she took a clipboard from under her arm.

"One more thing, and I'm sorry. It's the log. Ramsay says it has to start tonight, dated, and you have to sign." She held the pen out. "It only says you took your tea and understand why."

I took the pen.

I thought of ten years of mornings, and of the shelf, and of the fire.

I signed.

Hazel Hoglund, and tonight's date, in the neat hand I had been forced to practice, and I made the line as steady as I could.

Ruby squeezed my hand and stood.

"I'll come back for the cup in a little while. Drink the rest, it works better warm."

When the door shut behind her, I crossed the cellar in three steps and poured the tea down the drain.

It went in with a faint hiss, and the bitter smell came up from the pipe and filled the room.

I stood there with the empty cup and the pen mark still wet on my fingers.

The log was false from the first line.

I had signed a statement that I drank it, and I hadn't.

That was a small thing, and the first small thing I had done on purpose in a decade.

Ruby came back at nine, collected the cup without looking into it, and left the candle.

At ten Ramsay came down alone.

He stood just inside the door with his hands in his jacket pockets, and for a while he only looked at the cot.

"Rowan Larkin thinks you're dead," he said.

I looked up.

"Six years ago I sent Cedar Fork a notice. Lung fever, quick, no visitors. I had the flowers delivered myself." His voice was perfectly level. "He didn't come to the funeral. I assumed he'd stopped looking."

"He picked up on the first ring."

"I noticed."

Ramsay let that sit.

"The land is not his and neither are you," he said. "If he crosses my border without cause, the Alliance will bury him. You should think about that before you waste another call on a man who didn't come in ten years."

The door shut again.

I turned his words over until the candle burned low.

Whatever Rowan believed, he had answered.

By midnight my hands were shaking.

It began small, a tremor in the fingers, and then my jaw ached and the cellar was too bright and too hot.

I lay on the cot and sweated through the clean sheets while my stomach rolled over and my skull pounded.

I had been dosed every morning for ten years, and tonight I had missed one.

I knew what this was, and I knew it would get worse, and I held on to the cot rail and breathed.

In. Out.

Near dawn something stirred at the very bottom of me.

It was slow at first, a weight turning over, and then a rush of heat along my spine and a pressure behind my eyes.

A voice came, hoarse and enormous and ten years old.

It spoke, and it said: "Run."

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