Chapter 11: Lend Me Your Hands

I tested it the next night, in the clinic, with the door locked and Dr. Quince standing guard in the hall.

Cedric sat on the edge of the cot in a clean shirt.

Four days of rabbit and a dead wolf had taken ten more pounds off him, and his collar stood away from his neck.

"Do I need to do anything?" he said.

"Sit still."

I stood in front of him and took a breath.

For three days I had been eating like a hunter.

I could feel my own wolf now, small and warm and awake, curled low in my stomach.

She was not strong.

But she was there.

I laid my right hand flat on Cedric's chest, over his heart.

"Flora," he said.

"Shh."

I closed my eyes and reached for her.

She came up slowly.

I felt her gather at the base of my spine, and then run down my arm and out through my palm.

Cedric sucked in a breath.

Under my hand, his heart gave one huge, startled beat.

Then another.

The lamp on the desk flickered.

A glass on the shelf began to hum.

I opened my eyes.

His eyes were gold from rim to rim, and a thin white light was moving behind them.

His hands had closed on my hips.

"Ash," he said.

His voice was low and rough and different, with another voice underneath it.

"He's here," Cedric said. "Flora. He's here. I can hear him."

"What's he saying?"

Cedric's mouth shook.

"He's saying, there you are."

My own eyes stung.

The glass fell off the shelf and broke, and neither of us looked at it.

I should have taken my hand away.

I knew it.

I kept it where it was, and slid it down under the edge of his shirt, over bare skin that was suddenly burning hot.