His Mate, Her Choice novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Usual

Dain smells monkshood in the tea Wynn has been given for eight years, and from her window she sees Halvard's men carrying the cellar's books out to the snow with a torch.

Dain did not say a word about Hollowmere on the stairs.

He said, "Supper can wait," to Alpha Halvard, and then to me, "Is there anything down here you need?"

I thought of the roll against my ribs.

"My shawl," I said, and took it from the hook, and kept it close in front of me.

The pack made a path up the stairs.

Not one of them looked at me directly, and every one of them saw me.

The room Luna Ottilie gave me was in the guest wing, beside the King's.

It had a window. It had a bed with a quilt, and a washstand with a jug.

I had not slept under a window in eight years.

Dain stayed in the doorway and didn't come in.

"I'll be next door," he said.

"If anyone knocks that you don't want, say my name. I'll hear it through the wall."

"Is that speaking for me?"

"That's you calling me. It's different."

I almost smiled.

I put the shawl on the bed with the roll inside it.

His eyes went to it, then away.

"You can come in," I said. "I won't bite."

"I might," he said.

He said it so flatly that it took me a moment to understand it was a joke.

By then he had stepped over the threshold and shut the door.

He went to the far wall and leaned on it with his arms crossed. The whole room stood between us.

"You're keeping the room," I said.

"I'm keeping my hands off you. It's easier with the room."

I sat on the bed, because my legs had begun to shake.

"Does it hurt?" I asked. "The bond. It does something to me, when you're close. I get hot and my ears ring."

"It does the same to me." His grip on his own arm tightened.

"It would be worse if I came closer. I'm told it eases when it's sealed."

"And you'd like it sealed."

"I'd like you to choose what you want. Then I'd like it sealed."

Someone knocked.

Dain's head came up. I saw his shoulders change.

"Dear?" Luna Ottilie called through the wood. "Your tea."

She came in with the cup in both hands, as she had for eight years.

She set it on the washstand beside me.

She did not look at the King at all.

"After a day like this, you'll need it," she said. "It's the usual. Don't let it go cold."

She touched my hair, and I held still.

Then she went out, and the door closed behind her.

I picked the cup up. I had half of it in my mouth before Dain crossed the room.

He was beside me before I saw him move.

He closed his hand over mine on the cup, and his thumb pressed the inside of my wrist.

It was the first time he had touched me since the cellar.

The heat went up my arm again, only this time I wanted it.

"Don't," he said. "Please."

"It's only tea."

"Give it to me."

I let him take it. He brought it to his face and breathed in, and his whole expression went dark.

"Monkshood," he said. "A lot of it, in honey so you won't taste it."

I looked at the cup.

"It's always been bitter," I said. "I thought that was the herbs."

"Monkshood keeps a wolf from rising." His voice was rough. "A wolf of twenty who has never once shifted."

"I haven't shifted since I was twelve."

"Because you've been drinking this."

"Half. Since I was fifteen."

I heard how it sounded, and said the rest.

"I poured the other half out behind the desk. I didn't know what was in it. It made me feel wrong."

He crouched in front of me, still holding the cup, and the gold had come back into his eyes.

"How long have you been given it?"

"Eight years."

He crossed to the washstand and poured the cup into the basin.

I watched it run down the drain.

I thought: Ottilie knew what it was every night. She touched my hair and said it was the usual.

My hands began to shake in earnest.

"Wynn." He didn't move toward me. "I will find out who ordered it. I promise you that."

"I know who ordered it."

"Then I'll find out why."

He set the cup down so hard that it cracked.

His other hand was on the frame of the washstand.

A piece of the oak had split away under his fingers.

I looked at the splinters and said, "It's old wood."

"It is," said Dain, and wiped his palm on his coat.

Another knock, this time quick and dry. A man's voice, thin and precise, came through the door.

"Your Majesty. Forgive me. I'm Ansel Henslowe, the King's clerk."

Dain opened it a hand's width.

A thin man in wire glasses stood in the corridor with ink on his cuffs.

"Alpha Halvard says the cellar is damp," he said.

"He has begun moving its contents into the yard. I have not yet examined the books."

I got up and went to the window.

Down in the yard, in the snow, two of Halvard's men were carrying a stack of ledgers out of the cellar door.

A third man walked behind them with a lit torch.

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