Chapter 19: The Creek

I took him to the bend first.

It was a quarter mile below the falls, where the water slowed.

The bank dropped away there in a shelf of black mud and alder roots.

I had not stood there in fifteen years.

Kellan stopped three steps behind me.

"You don't have to," he said.

"I do."

The creek went by, clear and cold.

There was nothing to show what had happened on that bank.

No stone, no mark, only water that had gone on running.

"Nessa," I said.

My voice was small in the open air.

"Nessa Harlow. It was Aldric, and Osric helped him. Both of them have been named."

"The whole pack knows your name now."

My throat shut, and I let it.

Kellan knelt in the mud and laid a white lily on the bank.

He had brought it in his coat.

He did not say a word, and I loved him for it.

When I could breathe again I held out my hand.

"Come upstream," I said. "I'm taking the creek back."

The pool above the falls was warm with noon.

The water lay green and clear in a basin of flat grey rock.

Sun came down through the larch in patches.

Nothing had ever happened here.

I stripped on the rock without a word and stood in front of him.

My ribs showed. My hip bones showed.

But my skin was clear now, and the bites had faded to silver marks.

"Tell me something," I said.

"Anything."

"If you die in two days, I want this to be the last thing I remember. Not the hall."

"I'm not going to die."

"Then you won't mind making it worth surviving."

He had his shirt off before I finished.

He caught me by the waist and lifted me, and the cold water hit my thighs and my gasp turned into a laugh.

He kissed me in the shallows.

His mouth was hungry, and I tasted salt and water.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Hid My Sister's Killer, So the Alpha Poured Truth Down My Throat from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.