Father Sold Me to an Alpha, So I Signed My Sister's Name novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Free Witness

I did not sleep.

Before dawn I gave up, put on a sweater, and went down to the hall to find a pot of tea.

Conrad was sitting on the bottom stair in the dark with his elbows on his knees.

He had said he would be there, and he was.

I stopped on the third step from the bottom.

"You've been here all night."

"I said I would be."

"I don't want you to be."

"I know."

He looked at my hands.

My right knuckles were swollen and purple where I had hit his ribs.

I had not noticed until now, because I had not stopped being angry long enough to feel them.

"Give me that," he said.

"No."

He stood, took my right hand anyway, and turned it over in the grey light.

His thumb ran across the bruises, slow and careful, and then along the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was.

I should have pulled away.

I stood on the stair and watched him do it.

"You hit hard," he said. "And with your thumb tucked wrong."

"You'd know."

"Tuck it in."

He closed my fingers over my thumb, one at a time, and held my fist in both his hands.

His eyes had gone gold again.

"The light," I said, before he could.

"What light?"

"That's the lamp. It makes your eyes look like that."

"There's no lamp lit on this floor, Linnea."

I took my hand back.

"You wrote terms in the car," he said, very softly. "My room, my lock, no mark, no bond. No 'mine' until you said it first."

"I remember my terms."

"You said it first. Twice. In a cabin, with a rusty knife in your hand." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'm only fixing a hand. I haven't claimed a thing. Tell me which of your rules I've broken."

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