Chapter 20: What It Costs

Ingrid's POV

At two in the morning Torin lay on my sofa above the bakery with a wad of gauze under his nose.

His boots hung off the arm.

He had walked up the back stairs on his own legs, said "I'm fine," and bled onto my kitchen floor.

Two of his own guards stood on the street below, men he had picked himself that night.

I had looked at both their faces before I let them stand there.

The twins were asleep in my bed with the door open, and I could see Orin's shoe from the sofa.

The healer sat in my kitchen chair with her bag at her feet.

She had refused to go to a motel.

"I did this," she had said, "and I'll sit in your kitchen if you'll let me."

I had let her.

Now she took Torin's wrist between two fingers and held it a long time.

"The bleeding will come in waves," she said.

"It'll get worse as the moon fills."

"How much worse?" I asked.

"Worse enough that he won't walk by the full."

"And if we do the rite?"

She looked at me, not at him, and I appreciated that.

"One in three that he lives."

The room went quiet.

Torin turned his head on the cushion and met my eyes.

"That's my number," he said.

"I've heard it twice now.

"My father gave it to me with a glass of wine in his hand."

"What else did he give you?" I said.

He told me.

He told me my wolf could only be freed by the man who bound it, on the stone, with his blood.

He told me Aldric had said no.

He told me Aldric was dying and had been for two years, and had no wolf of his own.

He told me Aldric had looked at the twins in the photograph and said "what the pack needs."

I listened with my arms folded and my back against the doorframe.

I was calmer than I thought I would be.

I think that was the moment I stopped being afraid and started being angry, and the anger was cleaner.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bearing the Ruthless Alpha's Twins from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.