Exiled Mate, Future Luna novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Nine Days

Rhys's POV

The trucks were gone by two, and I was still standing in my kitchen with a cup of coffee I hadn't drunk.

My hands wouldn't stop.

I set the cup down and laid them flat on the counter, and they shook against the wood.

She had held my hand up in front of forty wolves and said she was staying.

I had waited eighteen years for someone to say a thing like that to me, and I could not make my mouth answer her.

The stairs creaked behind me.

Sierra came in barefoot, in my grey shirt, with her hair knotted up.

"You don't sleep either," she said.

"I'm fine."

"You're gripping the counter hard enough to crack it."

I looked down.

There was a new split running through the old oak, and I took my hands away.

She sat on the stool across from me and waited.

She did that, I had learned, and it made lying to her impossible.

"I wasn't ready to say it at the gate," I said. "You said you chose here, and I thought, she'll take it back by morning."

"Why would I?"

"Because everyone does. Nobody has picked this house on purpose in a very long time."

I didn't tell her the rest of it.

Then I did.

"I was the one who held the cellar door," I said. "I was eleven. She told me to open it for nobody but her."

Sierra's face didn't move, but she leaned in.

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