Chapter 13: The River

Larissa's POV

I was at the river before the sun was.

Nobody stopped me at the lodge door, because guest-right had ten minutes left on it and nobody wanted to be the wolf who touched me inside them.

The water ran black and fast below the rapids.

Snow lay along the bank, and the log boom was still there, a gray pile of timber wedged against the stones.

I stood on the exact edge and looked down.

I felt nothing.

That was the worst part.

Fifteen years I had been told this was where I had lost my father, and I had never once remembered a thing about it.

Boots came down the path behind me, slowly, on purpose, so I would hear them.

"I'll go if you say," Corbin said.

"Stay where you are."

He stopped.

I didn't turn around.

"Who was on the bank?" I said.

He didn't ask what I meant.

"Your uncle," he said. "In his barn coat. He put his hand flat between your shoulders and you went in."

My hands closed in my pockets.

"You saw him do it."

"I saw all of it. I was twelve, and I was standing about where you are."

"And you told no one."

"My father made me swear. A boy's word against the Alpha of Ashgrove's brother, and the leech law waiting behind it."

His voice was steady, and it cost him.

"I told myself I'd say it when I was grown. Then I was Alpha, and I told myself I'd say it when I could prove it. Then it was fifteen years."

I looked at the water.

Somewhere under the surface, a man I could not picture had gone in after me and never come up.

"He came to my birthdays," I said. "He taught me to drive a stick. He sat with me in the hospital when I broke my arm."

"I know."

"He made soup."

"Larissa."

"Do you know what I thought, every time he put a bowl in front of me?" I said. "I thought, he's the only one who stayed."

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