Chapter 15: The Pull

I stopped at the edge of the cedars.

Every part of me wanted to drag my sister out of that water by her hair again.

I didn't.

Last night I'd told him that if he changed his mind, he'd say it out loud and I'd let him go.

So I stood on the frozen needles in his shirt and let him choose.

Wylie's head came down an inch.

Tilly rose up on her toes.

Then he stopped.

His whole body jerked.

"No," he said through his teeth.

"You don't mean that."

"I've meant it for five years."

He took her wrists and lifted her hands off his chest.

It took him a long time.

The tendons stood out in his arms, and the water shook around him.

"It hurts you," Tilly said, delighted. "Doesn't it? It hurts to push me away."

"Everything about you hurts."

He let go and stepped back until the stone rim stopped him.

Then he turned his head and saw me.

His eyes were amber all the way through.

"You didn't stop it," he said.

"It wasn't mine to stop."

Something moved in his face that I didn't have a word for.

Tilly saw me too.

She didn't cover herself.

She never had.

"Oh, good. You can watch. He came up here on his own, Freja. I was just having a bath in my own pack's pool."

"You've never bathed in this pool in your life."

"I'm Gran's blood too."

"You're Gran's blood the way a cut finger is a healer."

Footsteps crunched on the path behind me.

Ansel came through the cedars in his Stonemere jacket, with a thermos in his hand.

It was his guard shift.

He stopped dead when he saw his little sister in a wet slip in the Moonwell.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing," Tilly said. "Go away."

Wylie pushed off the rim and walked toward her, steady this time.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Don't Touch Him! He's Not An Alpha, He's My Patient from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.