Chapter 8: The Storm

The pack doctor stitched Ronan's side at the kitchen table and said he'd live.

Then she looked at me.

She said I would be the one to make sure of it, since he wouldn't listen to her.

By nine that night the wind had come up off the ocean and the power was out across the ridge.

Wynn lit candles in the lodge hall and went to check on the pack.

I sat on a kitchen stool and watched Ronan eat soup with one hand, shirtless under a blanket.

He had not asked again.

He had asked once, in the pines, and then Wynn had arrived, and he had let it go.

He was waiting for me.

I put down my spoon.

"I need to tell you something," I said. "You can say I'm lying."

"I won't."

"I can hear what people are thinking."

He did not laugh.

He did not blink either.

"Since when?" he asked.

"Since the morning of the engagement dinner."

"What can you hear?"

"Anything. Surface thoughts, whatever's in front of them. Wolves and humans."

"Not through walls. A few hundred feet in the open, as long as nothing solid is in the way."

I took a breath.

"Dorian had men on the cut bank today. I heard them at the checkpoint."

Ronan set his spoon down very carefully.

"The tea," he said slowly. "The thing you told your sister. The wolfsbane."

My head came up. "How did you know I told her about..."

"I was at the suite door. Wolves hear well."

It was a fair answer. I let it go.

"Dorian plans to poison my father," I said. "He's been planning it for weeks."

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