Chapter 18: The Wolf Moon

By January his side had healed to a white seam, and I could hardly see my own feet.

Nine weeks he had spent in the hold's guest wing.

He ate what Joanna told him to and chopped wood for the kitchen because the Warden said a man who lies around is a man who plots.

He never once came to my door.

I'd noticed.

I noticed his eyes going to my belly and then straight to the floor.

I noticed him standing in the courtyard every night with his hands in his pockets, looking up at my window.

Tonight the moon was full over the mountain, round and white.

I put on a nightgown and Maud's wool robe, and I walked the length of the guest wing with a candle.

I stopped at the last door.

I knocked, three times.

It opened at once. He stood there in an undone shirt with the lamp behind him.

"Nora."

"It's a full moon," I said.

His throat moved. "Yes."

"Full moons only, Alpha. Those were your rules."

"They were."

"Then I'm inside them." I stepped past him into the room. "Close the door."

He closed it.

I put the candle on the table and turned around.

"There's no bond," I said. "You cut it. Nothing is pulling me down this hall. If I wanted to be somewhere else, I'd be there."

"I know."

"I want to be here."

He breathed out hard.

"Tell me what you want," he said. His voice had gone rough already. "Tell me exactly. I'll do it."

"Take your shirt off."

He took it off.

The seam on his side showed pale in the lamplight. His chest was broad and hard, and he stood perfectly still while I looked.

I put my palm flat on his sternum.

Frost spread under it in a thin white star.

He hissed through his teeth, and the frost steamed off him in a curl.

"Cold," he said.

"Always."

"Don't stop."

I walked him backward until his knees hit the bed, and he sat.

I stood between his legs and untied the robe. It fell. The nightgown went over my head.

I was huge, pale, round and ridiculous, with four little lives moving under the skin.

I crossed my arms over it without meaning to.

"Don't," Rhys said.

He put his hands on my hips and turned his face into the swell of my stomach.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Substitute Luna, Runaway With His Quadruplets from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.