My Alpha Expected Me to Read His Mind, So I Left His Pack novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Stairs at Three

Burning with fever in a room over an Astoria bakery, Freja opens the door to Ansel, who has stood on the landing for four hours and, for the first time in ten years, says his plan out loud before he does it.

The room over the bakery in Astoria cost eleven hundred dollars a month and smelled like cinnamon at four every morning.

I took it on the first night, sight unseen, from a woman at the bus station who said her sister rented it out.

By Tuesday I had a job answering phones at the ferry office on the river.

The pay was bad and nobody there knew a single wolf.

That was the whole point.

By Wednesday night I had a fever of a hundred and three.

I lay on the narrow bed in my coat with the window open and my teeth chattering.

My wolf paced under my ribs.

Forty miles south, a boundary stone I couldn't see pulled on me.

I had no thermometer, no medicine and nobody to call.

I held the phone and scrolled to Cordelia's number, and then I put it face down on the floor.

She'd said call me when you land.

I hadn't, and some small stubborn part of me didn't want to.

I fell asleep sweating and woke up shaking.

The clock on the phone said 3:07.

Somewhere below me, on the stairs, a board creaked.

It creaked again, and then there was nothing.

I knew who it was.

I knew it the way I knew my own pulse, before I could have said how.

I got up on legs that didn't feel like mine and crossed the room with one hand on the wall.

I opened the door.

Ansel stood on the landing in his black coat with a thermos in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

His hair was wet from the rain.

He looked like he had not slept in a week.

He also looked like he had been standing out there a long time and had run out of ways to knock.

"How long have you been on the stairs?" I said.

"Since eleven," he said.

It was the first answer he had ever given me without being asked three times.

I stared at him.

"You drove forty miles to stand outside my door for four hours."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you knock?"

His eyes went to the floor, then back up to mine.

"I didn't know what I was going to say."

Something in my chest went hot and tight, and it wasn't the fever.

"Then why come at all?"

"Because Nolan called the ferry office," Ansel said. "He talked to a woman who said you hadn't come in. I didn't know if you were sick or if you'd left."

He swallowed.

"I didn't want to guess."

The word hit me in the stomach.

I leaned on the doorframe because my knees were not entirely reliable.

"You've never once asked me anything in ten years," I said. "You don't get to start now because I'm burning up."

"I know."

"Say what you're doing here. Say what you want."

He looked at me for a long moment.

His jaw worked the way it had at the supper.

I watched him fight it, whatever it was, and I saw the moment he decided to lose.

"Give me your hand," he said, and then, rough, like he was correcting himself, "I'm going to take your pulse."

I held out my wrist.

He set the thermos and the bag on the floor of the landing.

His fingers closed around my wrist, hot and careful, and my wolf went absolutely still under my skin.

Not quiet.

Still, the way an animal goes still when it has finally been picked up.

I hadn't known I had been waiting for that.

He counted my pulse under his breath.

Then he swore very quietly.

"A hundred and thirty," he said. "That's too high."

"Your hand is cold."

"No," he said. "You're that hot."

He didn't let go.

I should have pulled my arm back, and I didn't.

"Odessa sent willow bark tea," he said, nodding at the thermos. "Nolan sent the pills in the bag. I brought a wet cloth and a towel."

He took a breath.

"Freja, I'm going to say what I'm about to do. All of it. Out loud. Is that all right?"

I nodded because I couldn't have said anything.

"I am going to come in," Ansel said slowly, "put this on your table, and sit on the floor until your fever breaks."

In ten years, it was the first plan he had ever said to me before he carried it out.

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