My Mate's Last Message Wasn't for Me novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Grey Thread

The council clerk had handed the grey scarf back to me after the Hall session, and I had shoved it in a drawer.

That evening I took it out and spread it on the guest-room bed.

Pip sat cross-legged on the quilt with a bag of sugared nuts and watched me turn the hem over.

"Why are you looking at it like that?" she asked.

"Niles wouldn't tell me why I wore it."

"Because he's a liar."

"Because it wasn't the lab's rule. He couldn't say whose it was."

Pip leaned over and sniffed the wool.

"Soap," she said. "Wet sheep. Niles." She sniffed again and frowned. "That's strange."

"What is?"

"I can smell you in the room, Seren. You smell like cut grass and ink. But when I put my nose here, there's nothing. There's a hole where you should be."

"A hole."

"A wolf-sized one."

I took my sewing scissors and picked at the silver wolf-head stitch in the hem.

The thread was tight, and it took me a while to work the knot loose.

Inside the hem, wound round and round the wool, ran a second thread.

It was grey and stiff, a little waxy to the touch, as thick as a hair.

I pulled out a finger's length of it and held it under the lamp.

Pip stopped eating.

"I've never seen a thread do that," she said. "It's wrong."

"Don't tell anyone."

"I wouldn't tell my own mother." She wiped her fingers on her sweater and put her hand on my shoulder. "Is it bad?"

"I don't know yet."

I wound the thread around a spool, put the scarf in my bag, and went out to the practice lawn.

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