Reborn Luna Hears Every Lie novel · Chapter 12 of 40

Chapter 12: What He Cannot Ask Me To Be

Sera took the old Alpha insignia from her travel pouch and put it in Kael's open palm before he could say a word.

He stood in Dov's doorway with the spring dark behind him and the bronze disc sitting in his hand. Fen had walked him to the gate and stayed there. Kael had come alone past the low wall and the drying racks, and he had not knocked, because the door was already open and she was already standing in it.

'You brought this back,' she said.

'I said I would.'

'You said a lot of things in the archive.'

He closed his fingers over the insignia. 'I meant to give it to Dov. It belongs to the refuge now, not to me.'

'Then give it to Dov.'

He didn't move. Behind him the last of the light was going out of the sky, and the smell of Dov's herb bundles came through the doorway, sage and something bitter. Sera heard him think, before he said anything: I don't know how to stand here.

The amber light gathered at his temples, thin and low, the way it always did when he was deciding something. She had learned to read the shimmer the way she read weather. His thoughts came in short bursts, and under them the truth of him wanted to come in and wanted not to ask for it.

She stepped back from the door.

'You can come in,' she said. 'You can't stay the night unless I say you can, and you can't ask me for anything. Not forgiveness. Not the pack. Not the twins. If you open your mouth and a question comes out, you leave.'

Kael looked at her for a moment. Then he came in and set the insignia on the table and sat down in the chair by the cold hearth like a man who had been told where to sit.

Dov was in the back room, and Sera knew she was listening, because Dov listened to everything and pretended not to. The door between the rooms stood half open. Sera left it that way.

'You suspended Lirien's authority,' she said.

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