His Mate, Her Choice novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Not for Sale

I didn't ask Ansel what he meant that night.

By the time I reached the end of the corridor, both doors had closed.

I stood in the corridor with my hand flat on the wood of Dain's door.

I could hear him breathing on the other side.

I could have knocked.

Instead I went to bed and lay awake until the window turned grey.

By then I had decided to ask the man who lied less well than a king.

Fenn apologized at breakfast.

He stood at the long table with his nose taped and both eyes going purple.

Two hundred wolves put down their forks.

"I'm sorry I put my hands on you," he said, thickly, to the table cloth. "It was wrong."

"Look at me when you say it," I said.

He looked.

I had never seen anyone so unhappy and so angry at once.

"I'm sorry I put my hands on you," he said again.

"Thank you. Sit."

He sat. Nobody said a word, and nobody looked at him.

Beside me, Dain buttered a piece of toast.

He did not look at me either, but his knee found mine under the table and stayed.

I let it.

Then I put down my napkin and told him I had a morning's work to do.

Ansel was in the cellar.

He had set up a folding table among the sooty ledgers we had pulled from the snow.

He was reading them by electric light.

A cord ran down the stairs from the hall. Somebody had made sure he had power.

"Miss Bramley." He did not look up.

"I heard you last night."

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