Chapter 18: The Last Night

Rhys went to wake the people he trusted, and Hattie went to the cellar to tell Lydia.

I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the man in my bed.

Tomorrow, at dusk, I would be condemned in front of the whole pack before the moon came up.

I had one night.

"Hattie," I said, over my shoulder. "Don't come in until it's light."

She looked at me, and at Cade, and she shut the kitchen door.

I closed the bedroom door and turned the key.

"Carys," Cade said. "You don't have to."

"I know what I have to do." I pulled my nightgown over my head. "This isn't that."

His eyes went over me, slowly, from my shoulders to my heavy breasts, to the tight round swell of the baby, to my thighs.

He swallowed.

"God, look at you."

"Don't talk. Lie still."

I pulled the quilt down.

He wore a thin shirt, and I unbuttoned it myself, one button at a time.

The grey had crossed his chest in a hard clean sweep and was creeping down his ribs.

I laid my mouth against it.

It was freezing.

He hissed through his teeth, and his hand came up into my hair.

I kissed down the line of it to his stomach, and he shook under my mouth, and I took his jeans open and found him hard.

He was hot in my hand, the only warm thing left in him.

"Carys, I can't--I don't want to hurt--"

"Then let me do it."

I took him in my mouth.

I took him slowly, as far as I could, and I felt his whole body arch off the bed.

He made a broken noise.

His fingers tightened in my hair, and he did not push.