Severed Ties: Rise of the Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 35 of 48

Chapter 35: The Night Ride

The note came on the twenty-first night, folded inside a loaf of bread.

The stable boy swore he had crawled under the Greywater fence to deliver it.

It was in pencil, in Daphne's hand, and the letters ran downhill.

It said: Isla collapsed at supper. Hamish says she won't see the Hunter's Moon. Judith has the knife out. Come tonight. Bring the Elder, he can walk in anywhere.

I read it standing in the kitchen with the bread still warm in my hand.

"Her pulse was thirty-eight," Brigid said behind me. "Ten days ago."

"I know."

"She won't have a week."

"I know."

Ewan was already at the door, pulling on his coat.

"I can't go in," he said. "If I set foot in that house, I forfeit the Right. The Moot will give him the Keep."

"I know that, too."

"Then I wait at the gate."

"Then you wait at the gate," I said. "Send the truck for the Elder. It's an hour each way."

The shaved-headed wolf took the keys without being asked.

That left two hours.

We spent them in the east room at the top of the stairs, with the door shut and the lamp turned low.

I did not plan it.

I was standing at the window, looking down at the black road, when I said it out loud.

"I was afraid."

Ewan stopped in the middle of the floor.

"When I bit you in the hall. In front of everyone. I said I was sure, and I was." I didn't turn around. "But some part of me was afraid that I only said it because the bond already had its hand on the back of my neck."

"Thea."

"I told myself I'd never promise anyone anything again. And then I said 'mate' in front of four hundred wolves, and I wondered if that was me, or just the pull."

I heard him cross the floor.

He stopped a step behind me.

"Then choose again," he said. "Right now. Without the pull, with the door open, with nobody watching."

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