Chapter 18: Nothing Owed

Caius's POV

I heard the lamp hit the floor from the other end of the corridor.

I was on my feet and halfway to her door before I stopped myself.

I stood with my palm an inch from the wood.

She had not called me, and she had a lock on the inside.

"Marlo?" I said, low.

"I'm fine," she said, through the door. "I knocked over the lamp."

"Do you want me in there?"

There was a long silence.

"No," she said. "Thank you for asking."

I sat down on the corridor floor with my back against the wall opposite her door.

It was the hardest thing I had done all week, and I had broken a table in half.

My wolf wanted the door off its hinges.

I told it to wait, and it paced.

Around five Winnie came out of the next room in a yellow dressing gown and stopped over me.

"Your Majesty," she said. "You're lying outside her door like a golden retriever."

"I'm sitting."

"You're guarding it."

"I'm not guarding. I'm available."

She looked at me for a moment.

"That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard," she said.

"I hate that I like you."

She stepped over my legs and went downstairs to find the coffee.

At breakfast Marlo came down with her right hand wrapped in a dish towel.

She ate toast with her left, badly.

"Don't help," she said, before I'd moved.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were holding the butter out."

"I was holding the butter near you."

The corner of her mouth moved, and Winnie covered a laugh with her cup.

I had brought something with me, and I set it on the table beside the marmalade.

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