Chapter 12: The Registry Page

I woke with my head on his chest and a feeling in my own that wasn't mine.

It was a low, steady warmth, and under it, a sharp thread of worry.

It took me a moment to understand I was feeling him.

The mark on my wrist had closed overnight. When I lifted my arm, I could feel Soren's pulse in it.

"Good morning," he said, from somewhere above my hair.

He wasn't asleep. He had been lying still for a long time, and I could feel how carefully he had done it.

"You're worried," I said.

"You can feel that."

"It's loud."

He let out a short breath that was almost a laugh.

"Yes. I'm worried. You're about to get up and regret this."

"I'm trying to be the kind of man who can survive it."

I sat up, holding the sheet.

I didn't regret it. That was the trouble.

What I felt was bright, and warm, and scared of being wrong, and I had been wrong before.

"Soren," I said. "I need to ask you something, and I need a real answer."

"All right."

"Your coat was on the chair last night. A paper fell out of it."

His whole body went still. Through the bond, I felt it go cold.

I reached over the side of the bed and picked up the folded sheet from the rug.

It was a page from the Lycan court registry.

At the top, in a clerk's neat hand, it said LINDSTROM, LINNEA, daughter of A. Lindstrom of Stonebrook.

Under that: Mother's line pure, unbroken, eight generations. Residence, Lyon, embassy of the crown.

The date at the bottom was four months old.

Under it, in the same hand that had signed my terms, someone had written: Lyon, spring. Move the treaty talks there.