Three Wolves, One Irresistible Pull novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Jorund

The healer cut the silver out of my thigh at dusk and packed the wound with moss and salt.

I bit a leather strap through, and Eira held my hand and swore at the ceiling.

The raider with the Chancellery seal was in the cells below, with a Host guard on his door.

He would not speak yet.

At midnight, a knock came at my door.

Not a polite knock.

A single flat thud.

"Come," I said.

Jorund Segrave came in and shut the door behind him.

He had a bandage across his ribs under an open shirt, and a cut over his eye that had been stitched.

He stood in the middle of my room with his hands hanging at his sides.

"You should be in bed," I said.

"I should be in the tower."

"Then go."

He didn't move.

"Twice today my body answered you before I did," he said.

His voice was raw.

"I've been alpha of Redmoor for nine years, and nobody has ever made it do what I didn't choose."

"I didn't mean to."

"I know you didn't."

He took a step closer.

"That's the part that scares me."

"Jorund."

It was the first time I had said his name.

It stopped him where he stood.

"Listen to me," I said.

"I'm holding my voice still tonight.

"Nothing I say to you is an order, a note or a pull.

"It's only talk, and you can walk out through any word of it.

"If you want to go, go."

He stared at me.

I kept my mouth flat and my voice dead level, and I did not move.

It was the hardest thing I'd ever done with it.

The seconds went by.

He did not leave.

"Then here is what's mine," he said.

"I want you."

It came out of him.

"I've wanted you since the Ash Ford.

"I had you in my hands, a prisoner, with my whole pack baying for your throat.

"I let you walk away because I couldn't stop looking at your face."

My breath caught.

"That wasn't the Pull," he said.

"That was three years ago.

"Whatever you did in the clearing, you didn't do that.

"I'm staying because I want to stay, and I'll leave if you tell me in your own plain voice that you don't want me."

"I want you, too," I said.

I said it flat and plain, with nothing under it, just my own voice, rough and low.

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