Chapter 22: Why He Signed

I waited until the cottage was quiet.

The old woman had changed my bandage and gone home. Joss was asleep on the couch with his boots on.

Torin sat on the porch step in the cold, with his elbows on his knees.

I sat down beside him, and he didn't look at me.

"Camille said you knew," I said. "At the Harvest Moon. When you signed."

"She's right."

My stomach dropped.

"You knew what?"

"Not the Passing. Not any of it."

His voice was low.

"I knew what happened when you took the ring off."

I waited.

"You laid it on my table, and I felt it go," Torin said.

"Four years that ring sat on your hand, and I never felt it. The second it hit the wood, my wolf screamed."

"Screamed."

"Your name. Over and over. It nearly tore me open. The cuff cracked."

I remembered the cuff cracking and his hand shaking on the pen.

"I was supposed to be furious," he said. "I was supposed to fight you in front of the pack."

He shook his head.

"Instead I stood at that table with my wolf throwing itself against my ribs, and I thought: it's hers."

"You didn't know."

"I didn't know how, or why. For four years it went quiet under your hand, and I called it habit."

He turned his head and looked at me for the first time.

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