Unwanted Shewolf novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Warden

The Warden of the Hollow is not what the pack stories said, Dustin begs her to come home and will not say why, and the moon is rising.

Elias did not follow me over the line.

I heard him shouting my name until the trees swallowed it.

The Moon Path climbed for six hours, and I walked it with the shawl pulled tight and my brother's gray face in my head.

By late afternoon I reached a gate of two split boulders with a stone ring behind it.

A man was standing in the gap, chopping kindling with a hatchet.

Every story in my pack said the Warden of the Hollow ate his offerings.

I had pictured claws and a chain around his neck.

He was tall, with black hair and a scarred left hand, and he wore a plain gray work shirt with the sleeves pushed up.

He looked at me, and he looked at the basket on my arm.

"You're early," he said. "Offerings come at moonrise."

"I turned eighteen at noon."

"Then you've walked six hours on your birthday to be eaten." His mouth moved at one corner. "That's a terrible present."

"The stories say you eat people."

"Only the ones who talk through dinner."

He set the hatchet down.

"Rafe Ellery," he said. "I keep the altar. You can still turn around, Hazel Marrick. The road home is open until the Moon opens the altar, and nobody here will stop you."

I had not told him my name.

"The Moon told the stones you were coming," he said. "The stones told me."

I did not understand that, and I did not ask.

"I'm not going back," I said.

He nodded once.

"Then you eat first."

He led me through the stone ring to a low house built into the hillside, with a fire already burning inside.

On the table he set out a pot of stew and two bowls.

I unpacked the basket and put Sydney's chicken sandwich and the lemon cake beside it.

Rafe picked up the cake and sniffed it.

"Is this yours?"

"My brother's mate made it."

"She bakes well."

He ate half of it standing up, and I watched him close his eyes at the first bite.

It was the first time anyone had looked happy because of something I carried in.

He showed me a small room off the kitchen with a narrow bed and a thick wooden bolt on the inside of the door.

"The bolt is on your side," he said. "I don't have a key."

I turned the bolt over once to be sure.

He saw me do it, and he did not say anything about it.

I was washing my hands at the kitchen pump when the bell at the gate rang.

Rafe was at the window before I could dry them.

"Someone from your pack," he said. "Alone. On foot."

I went out onto the step.

It was Dustin, with his boots wet to the knee and his hair stuck to his forehead.

He had run the whole path.

"Hollow law lets kin speak to an offering once, at the gate," Rafe said quietly, behind me. "That's all it lets them do. Do you want to hear him?"

I stepped up to the gap in the boulders, and Dustin took hold of the stone on his side.

"Hazel, come home."

"No."

"I'll undo the betrothal myself, I swear it. I'll go to the Brannocks tomorrow and tell them it was a mistake."

"Why didn't you say that at breakfast?"

He rubbed his jaw.

"Elias would have," he said, and stopped.

"Would have what?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Then you can't have me back."

His eyes were wet, and I looked at them without feeling a thing.

"Whatever the Goddess asks you at the altar," he said, "don't answer her. Please. Just say nothing."

"Is that what you came up here to tell me?"

"Yes."

"You came six hours up a mountain to tell me to say nothing," I said. "You couldn't tell me happy birthday?"

He flinched.

I had not expected that to land, and it did.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?"

He didn't answer.

I stepped back from the gap.

"Go home, Dustin."

He stood there until Rafe came to my shoulder, not in front of me.

Then he turned and walked back down the path, and he did not look round.

"Silence is allowed," Rafe said after a while, very low. "A lie at the altar kills you. A refusal doesn't. Whatever else your brother wants, that part's true."

"You heard all of that."

"Hollow law doesn't give me a choice."

I looked at him, and the corners of his eyes had gone tight.

Above the ring of stones the sky was darkening to violet.

On the far ridge the edge of the moon cleared the trees.

"The altar's opening," Rafe said. "This is the last time I'll ask. Do you want to walk home?"

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