I Gave My Sister My Fiancé and Watched Them Fall novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Mill Cottage

Sent out of her own house, Yvaine is steadied by Hamish's touch in front of Tobias and her father, and her silent wolf says Hamish's name.

"My wolf is not awake," I told the stranger at the gate. "She hasn't made a sound since I was a child."

"She made one just now," Hamish Rathbone said. "I heard it across the river."

He kept his hands in his coat pockets.

That was the only reason I did not shout for the wardens.

"When a mark is released, the bond-line under it wakes," he said. "Yours woke loud."

"I don't know what a bond-line is."

"No," he said slowly. "I can see that."

Behind me the rite hall doors banged open.

My father came out first, with Tobias a step behind him, and both of them were breathing hard.

"Yvaine." My father stopped at the top of the steps. "Come inside and apologize to the Alpha."

"For what?"

"For making a scene before the whole pack."

"I gave Melisande exactly what she wanted," I said. "You were standing right there."

Tobias came down the steps and lowered his voice, as he always did when he wanted me to feel unreasonable.

"Yvaine, listen. Nobody is angry. We say you were overwrought, the Alpha lets it pass, and in the spring we sort it out."

"The Release can't be taken back, Tobias."

"There are ways around everything."

"Not this." I held up my wrist. The scar was pale and smooth. "You taught me that law yourself."

My father's face went grey.

"You will go to the old mill cottage tonight," he said. "Just until the pack calms down. Your mother will bring your things."

"The mill cottage has no roof over the loft."

"It has walls."

I looked at him.

Twenty-four years I had been the daughter who did not need to be asked twice, and the one thing he asked me that night was to leave my own house quietly.

"Fine," I said.

I turned toward the river path.

Then my knees went.

It was not weakness. It was a heat that rose from the scar on my wrist and ran up my arm and into my chest, and everything in me answered it at once.

The ground tilted.

A hand closed around my elbow and held me upright.

The touch went through me from my arm to my spine.

It was warm and rough, and my wolf, silent since I was a child, lifted her head inside me and went still, listening.

I looked up.

Hamish had left the gate and crossed the whole yard without my seeing it.

"Easy," he said. "Breathe out."

I breathed out.

He did not let go until my feet were steady under me.

Tobias had gone stiff. "Take your hand off her."

Hamish turned his head slowly.

"Off your what?" he asked. "She spoke the Release in front of four hundred of your people. We all heard it."

"That is none of Ashfall's business."

"Then it's none of yours either," Hamish said. "She's free."

"Yvaine has family here," Tobias said. "She doesn't need a stranger's help."

"Her family," Hamish said, "put her out of her own house a minute ago."

My father stepped forward. "You are on Cedarvale land, Alpha Rathbone. Be careful."

"I'm leaving."

He let go of my elbow.

Then he turned to me, and his voice dropped so low only I could hear.

"May I walk you to the cottage?"

Nobody had ever asked me that.

I said, "No."

"Then I'll stand on the ridge where you can see me, and I'll go when your lamp goes out."

"Why?"

"Because if your wolf is waking, the first night is bad," he said. "You shouldn't be alone for it."

He went.

I walked down the river path alone with my mother's thistle still in my braid.

The mill cottage was cold and smelled of damp flour sacks.

I lit one lamp and sat on the floor, because the bed was gone.

Through the window I saw a dark shape on the ridge across the water, not moving.

My hands were shaking, and I pressed them between my knees.

The heat in my chest turned slowly and settled low, and a voice rose in me that was not my own.

It was not a word she had ever said before.

It was a name.

His.

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