The Thirteenth Moon novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Creek

Torin takes her wrist and the crescent warms under his thumb; he says he left because of her.

I held out my left arm before I decided to.

Torin crossed the white stones, and nobody stopped him.

He took my wrist in his bare hand and turned it over, and the crescent glowed silver under his thumb.

It had never done that for anyone.

It had never done that for Davin.

Heat ran up my arm, slow and steady, from the crescent to my elbow.

Torin shut his eyes.

"Get your hand off her," Davin said from the dais.

Torin didn't move.

"Seize him," Davin said to the two enforcers at the foot of the steps. "He's under exile. He crossed the line."

The envoy's voice cut across the clearing.

"The witness-fires are lit," she said. "No blood is shed on these grounds tonight, and no wolf is taken from them. That is older than the Alpha's seat."

Davin's jaw worked.

The enforcers looked at each other, and neither of them stepped forward.

Torin let go of my wrist and looked at me for one more second.

"Not here," he said, low. "The creek. If you want to hear it."

He walked back into the trees.

I stood on the step with the heat still running through my arm, and the whole pack watching me.

Then I went down the dais and walked out through the east gap, and nobody said a word to me.

The east trail drops through the pines to the creek, forty minutes on a bad night and twenty on a good one.

I took it in fifteen.

He was standing on the flat stones at the bottom, with his back to me, the way he used to stand there in summer, skipping stones while I talked.

"You came," he said, without turning.

"You said you'd tell me something."

"I did."

"Then start." My voice shook, and I hated it. "You walked out of this pack thirteen moons ago in the middle of the night. You didn't say goodbye. You didn't leave a note. I spent a year thinking something happened to you."

"I know."

"You were my friend."

He turned around.

In the moon he looked thinner than I remembered, with a beard now and the leather jacket over a dark shirt.

There was a long scar I didn't know across the back of one hand.

"I thought you chose it," he said. "I thought you wanted him."

"Chose what?"

"The vine. The seat. Davin." His mouth tightened on the name. "Your father's debt was gone the day he put the vine on you, and I thought that was the price you were willing to pay. I thought you'd decided."

"I was twenty-five and the pack owned my father's name." I took a step closer. "Nobody asked me anything. They told me it would clear the debt, and it did."

Torin looked at the ground.

"I didn't know that."

"You never asked."

"No." He swallowed. "I didn't."

The creek ran loud around the stones between us.

"Give me your wrist again," he said. "Please."

I held it out.

He took it more gently this time.

His thumb found the crescent, and the heat came up my arm again, slow and sure.

I felt it in my chest, then in my stomach, then low in my hips.

I breathed in.

He heard it.

His head came up, and his eyes had gone from grey-green to something paler and brighter.

"Brynn," he said, rough.

"Don't." But I didn't pull my arm away.

His thumb moved once across the pulse under the crescent.

"Did it feel like this when Davin touched you?"

"No."

"Did it ever?"

"No." My voice came out small. "Never. Not once in thirteen moons."

He let out a long unsteady sound.

"It woke the night they cut the vine," he said. "I was standing at the back of the clearing, watching Orrin do it. I felt it come up in my chest the second the blade touched your arm."

"Felt what?"

"You."

The word hung between us in the dark.

"I couldn't stay," he said. "You were promised to my Alpha, and I was his beta and his best friend. I couldn't stand next to him every day and feel that."

"So you left."

"I left."

"You could have told me."

"What would I have said?" His hand tightened. "That I'd just realized?"

I pulled my arm free then, and my skin felt cold where he'd been.

"You didn't leave because of Davin," I said. "You left because it was easier than telling me."

Torin looked at me for a long moment.

"I didn't leave for me," he said. "I left because of you."

And before I could ask what that meant, he stepped back off the flat stones and was gone into the dark.

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