The Rejected Beast Bride's New Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Quenby's

Clover drops her bond ring into the proofing dough in front of a full bakery, then Leander's mother files to have her confined to the Hallam house.

I stared at his name until the letters stopped swimming.

"You don't know me," I said.

"I know you walked two miles in slippers with a fever of a hundred and three." Orrin capped the pen. "That's enough to be going on with."

"People are going to say things about you."

"People say things about me now. I have wings."

He stamped the form himself, slid it into a tray marked COUNCIL, and stood up.

Standing, he was even bigger.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?"

I opened my mouth to say home, and nothing came out.

At ten to three he walked me up Pell Street with his coat around my shoulders.

It came down to my shins and smelled of wet stone and cedar.

The lights were already on in Quenby's.

Wilda Quenby was standing at the bench in a bathrobe and a bandana, punching dough.

She saw me through the glass and dropped the dough on the floor.

Then she saw Orrin behind me, all seven feet of him, wings folded under his shirt.

She came out the door with a rolling pin.

"Who the hell are you?"

"The night desk," he said.

"He's fine," I said. "He's on my side."

Wilda looked at my slippers, my flat ears and my wet hair.

She put the rolling pin under her arm and took my face in both floury hands.

"Did that lion do this?"

"He didn't do anything," I said. "That's sort of the point."

She swore so hard a pigeon left the awning.

The apartment upstairs had been empty since January.

It had a sagging bed, a radiator that banged, and a window right over the bakery vent.

Wilda put me in the bed with three blankets and a bucket.

Orrin stood in the doorway with his head bent under the frame.

"Fluids," he said to Wilda. "If she goes over a hundred and four, call the Registry and ask for the healer on call. Not hers."

"I know how a fever works, Wings."

"I know you do." He looked at me. "I'll come by tomorrow night."

"Why?" I asked.

"To see if you're alive."

He ducked out.

Wilda waited until his boots hit the street.

Then she sat on the end of the bed and said, "Okay. Now tell me everything, and start with how tall."

The fever broke at noon.

I woke up soaked, starving and furious, which Wilda said was the best sign she'd seen in two years.

By five the next morning I was back at my bench in a borrowed apron.

My hands knew the work even when the rest of me didn't.

Flour, cardamom, butter folded in cold.

Knot the dough, egg wash, sugar on top.

Wilda sat on an upturned crate and ate a bun straight off the cooling rack.

"You're putting too much cardamom in," she said with her mouth full.

"You say that every day."

"I'm right every day."

"Then why do you eat four?"

"Quality control." She licked her thumb. "So the giant. Is he single?"

"Wilda."

"I'm asking for science."

"He's a volunteer. He signed a form."

"Men don't sign forms for women they don't think about, honey." She pointed the bun at me. "My ex wouldn't sign for a package."

I laughed for the first time in four days.

It came out rusty.

By half past seven the line went out the door.

Dock workers, nurses off nights, a wolf-kin crossing guard who bought a dozen every Wednesday.

I was sliding a fresh tray into the case when the bell over the door rang hard.

The whole room went quiet the way a room does when a lion walks in.

Leander filled the doorway in his navy suit, his mane brushed back, his face arranged into something patient and sorrowful.

He had a man from Hallam Security behind him.

"Clover," he said, for the room. "Sweetheart. You've had your night. Get your coat."

Every head turned to me.

My tail went stiff behind my knees.

"I'm working," I said.

"You're sick." He smiled at the customers like we were sharing a joke. "She gets confused around her cycle. My family's been very patient."

A nurse in scrubs looked at me, then at him.

"Get your coat," Leander said again, lower, and that was the voice from the bedroom door.

Something in my chest went cold and clear.

The proofing tub sat on the bench behind me, twenty pounds of dough rising under a cloth.

I pulled off my bond ring.

It was heavy gold, with the Hallam crest worn soft on top.

I held it up so the whole line could see it.

Then I pushed it into the dough with one finger, all the way down, and folded the dough over it.

"Two years," I said. "You never once touched me. You can dig for it."

Somebody near the door said, "Oh, damn."

The wolf-kin crossing guard started clapping.

Two nurses joined in.

Leander's face went dark red under the gold.

His lip lifted off his teeth, a real lion's snarl, there in a bakery that smelled of sugar.

Wilda came out of the back with her rolling pin.

"You're in my shop," she said. "Buy something or get out."

He didn't buy anything.

He looked at me one more time, and he left.

The bell banged behind him.

I stood there shaking while the line slowly started moving again.

Wilda fished the ring out of the tub with two fingers and rinsed it under the tap.

Then she hung it on the nail over the oven, next to a burned mitt.

"Wall of things that tried to kill me," she said.

At three that afternoon, a courier came into the shop with an envelope stamped by the Registry Council.

He made me sign for it.

Inside was a counter-petition filed by Leonie Hallam, chair of the Registry Council.

It said I was bond-sick and unfit to make decisions, and it asked that I be confined to the Hallam house for my own care.

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