Half Claimed novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Kind One

In the morning I answered nobody's petition, and Lorne Corvin did not ask me to.

He found me at the river with a basket of damp winter ledgers I was drying in the sun.

"May I carry something?" he asked from ten feet off.

"You may carry the wet ones," I said. "The dry ones bite."

He laughed, a real one, low in his chest, and picked up a ledger like it might break.

We walked along the bank where the alders drop their leaves into the water.

He did not stand close, and he did not look at my neck.

It was a strange relief to be looked at as a person.

"You're allowed to say no," he said, after a while.

"I know. I said it to Torrance."

"You boiled him."

"A little. Mostly I read him the guest-law."

"The kettle was better." He shifted the ledger. "I'm not going to ask you for an answer today, Miss Colter."

"Yvaine."

"Yvaine. I'm going to ask you what you want, and you can tell me to mind my own business."

Nobody had asked me that.

Verity had told me what I'd be, and the Moot had told me what I was.

Every Alpha in the yard had told me what I smelled like.

I stopped walking.

"I want to know who rang the bell," I said.

His brown eyes sharpened, and the tiredness went out of them.

"Good," he said. "I'd start with the bell."

"Why?"

"Because a claiming is the biggest night of your Gathering."

"It's the one night nobody should be able to ring a false alarm."

"Unless they knew the night."

"Everybody knew the night."

He turned the ledger over in his hands.

"I don't think your Alpha ran because he didn't want you," he said. "I'm told he ran like a man who'd been shot."

"Why are you telling me this?" I said. "You petitioned for me."

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