Chapter 10: Not For You

In the morning he told me, the way he'd promised.

I woke at first light with my head on his arm and the husky stretched across our feet.

The storm had blown itself out.

Halvard lay awake beside me, looking at the ceiling.

"Ten years ago I broke faith with my wife," he said.

He said it flat, without hurry.

"It was once. A woman from the next pack, on a night I had no sense."

"My wife found out in a week."

I didn't move.

"She called the Rite on me. She stood where you stood. I was twenty-five, and the lake took my wolf."

"Halvard."

"That's the second howl," he said. "The one you heard. It's been down there ten years."

I lay still, listening to the stove tick.

My first feeling was not what I'd expected.

I didn't pull away.

I only turned my head and looked at him.

"You pulled me out," I said. "Knowing."

"I've pulled fifteen people out of that hole. Eleven are walking around."

"Why didn't you tell me before last night?"

"I did tell you." The corner of his mouth moved. "I said ask me in the morning."

"That's not the same."

"No." He turned his head on the pillow. "Tell me to leave and I'll sleep in the barn."

"It's your cabin."

"I'm not asking about the cabin."

I thought about it for a full breath.

"No," I said. "I'm not telling you to go. I want the rest of it. When I ask."

"When you ask."

"And you will not lie to me about it."

"I haven't in ten years," he said. "I don't intend to start with you."

That was when Bess's snowmobile came screaming down the track again.

She did not waste time on hellos.

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