He Starved My Wolf for Ten Years, So I Burned His Proof novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Hand

Bram learns she could barely hold a pen, and the healer Maeve admits she has been cutting the dose for two years.

"Say it," I told him.

Bram stayed in the doorway with one hand on the frame.

"Say what?"

"That you watched me pour it out and you're going to call someone."

He looked at the plant, at the curled brown leaves, and then back at me.

"I came up to see if you'd eaten," he said.

"I ate."

"Good."

He came into the room and shut the door behind him.

I stood up too fast and the walls swung.

His hand moved, a quick half-reach, and I jerked away from it so hard I hit the dresser.

He dropped the hand.

"That tea was approved by the healer," he said. "It's the dose that keeps you safe until the ceremony."

"Safe from what?"

"From your wolf."

He said it plainly.

"My wolf is the size of a dog and she hasn't spoken in ten years," I said. "What am I safe from, Bram?"

His jaw moved.

"You were not stable when you were eighteen."

"I was eighteen and my grandmother had just died."

The words hung there.

I had not meant to say them yet.

Bram's eyes went flat and careful, and he looked at the window instead of at me.

"I know what night it was."

"Do you?"

"I know what night it was," he said again, lower.

I let it go.

There was a notepad on the dresser, the kind you leave for guests, with a pen next to it.

I picked up the pen.

My fingers would not close properly around it.

I got it into my fist and wrote my name across the top sheet, and the letters came out as a jagged line that ran downhill.

Wynne Larkin.

I turned the pad around and pushed it across the dresser at him.

"That's my signature," I said. "That's what it has looked like every day since I was nineteen."

Bram looked at it for a long time.

"Now tell me what the logs looked like," I said. "The ones I burned. You've read them."

He didn't answer.

"Bram."

"The first year, yes. I read them." He was still looking at the page. "After that Emmett Crane sent summaries. Compliance reports." He chaired the Alliance, and he was Fiona's father.

"So you never read them again."

"The reports said you were stable. They said you were signing every morning."

"Did you ever see one of the pages yourself? After the first year?"

His thumb moved along the edge of the dresser.

"The signature was neat," he said slowly. "Small. Slanted to the right."

I held up my shaking hand between us.

"Does this look like it can write small?"

Neither of us said anything.

Somewhere downstairs a door opened, and a woman laughed.

Bram took a step back from the dresser.

Something moved across his face, quick and ugly, and was gone.

"The ceremony stands," he said.

His voice was the old voice again, smooth and finished.

"I'll have a guard outside your door. If you need anything, ask him."

"I need you to answer one question."

"No."

"You don't know the question."

"I know exactly what the question is," Bram said, "and the answer doesn't help either of us."

He had his hand on the door when I said it.

"I felt it too. In the clearing. You felt it, Bram. I watched you put your hand on the wall."

He did not turn around.

"The bond is broken," he said. "What you felt was the wolfsbane leaving your blood. It does strange things on the way out."

"Is that what you told yourself every time it hurt?"

His shoulders went rigid.

Then he went out and closed the door, and I heard the lock turn.

I sat down on the bed because my knees would not hold me.

My neck was still hot.

I put my fingers on the mark and felt it beat, steady and slow.

Ten years.

I had been so sure it was dead.

The lock turned again.

I stood up fast, ready for him.

But it was an old woman in a canvas apron, carrying a tray with a single cup, and she shut the door with her hip and set the tray down.

She was small and brown-eyed, with short white hair and a mouth carved with deep lines.

Maeve Tolland.

She had come to the cabin every month for ten years with her bag of herbs and her little vials.

She had never once said more than good morning.

"You already poured the wolfsbane out," Maeve said, looking at the plant. "Good."

"What?"

"I'd have done it myself, if you hadn't. That's no tea for a living wolf."

She lifted the cup from the tray and sniffed it.

"This one's only water and honey. I made it myself."

I could not move.

"Why are you helping me?"

Maeve set the cup in my hands.

Her fingers were dry and strong and they did not shake.

"Because Ada Larkin asked me to," she said. "And because for two years now I have been cutting your dose in half, every month, behind Emmett Crane's back."

She tipped my chin up with one finger.

"Your wolf has been awake in there, girl. She's been listening to every word."

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