First Love Jumped So Made Pregnant Me Fall? Alpha Now Your Death Sentence Is My Love Letter novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Silver on Her Fingers

Lydia weeps and begs the pack not to blame Carys, Cade orders Carys back under guard and is refused, Carys's silent wolf twitches at a metallic smell on Lydia's hands, and Cade's claws will not come.

I went to the clinic because I wanted to see her face.

Hattie walked on my left and Rhys on my right, and the whole pack watched us cross the yard.

Lydia lay propped on three pillows in the clinic's single private room, with her left leg in a cast to the hip and a bandage around her blonde head.

Godfrey sat beside the bed, holding her hand.

Cade stood at the foot of it with his arms crossed over his chest.

He had pulled his sleeves down to his knuckles.

The moment Lydia saw me, her face crumpled.

"Carys," she said, and burst into tears. "Oh, thank the moon. You're alive."

She held out both arms.

I stood where I was, and Hattie's hand closed on my elbow.

"I'm so sorry," Lydia sobbed. "I don't remember any of it. The last thing I remember is my chest hurting, and everything going dark, and then the river."

"You went off the tower," I said.

"Did I?" Her hands flew to her mouth. "Grandpa told me. I can't believe it. I would never, Carys. You know me."

Godfrey patted her shoulder.

"There, my dear. Don't distress yourself."

"But the baby," Lydia said. "Is it all right? Did the cold hurt it?"

"The baby is fine."

"Oh, thank goodness." She pressed her palms together and looked up at Cade through wet lashes. "Cade, please don't be angry with her. Please. You were out of your mind with fear for me, and I know that's why. She couldn't have known what her words would do."

She said it so gently.

Every wolf in the doorway heard her say it.

Cade's jaw was set so hard that a muscle jumped in it.

"Carys will move back into the Hall," he said. "Tonight. With two guards on her door."

"No," I said.

"You are eight months pregnant and someone wants you dead."

"Someone did want me dead," I said. "He signed his name to it. In front of forty witnesses."

"I was wrong."

"You tied me to a stone."

"I know what I did," he said.

His voice was low and torn, and for half a second I wanted to believe the sound of it.

Then I thought of the strap over my belly.

"You don't get to guard me," I said. "You gave that up."

Lydia drew a small, hurt breath.

"Cade, let her go," she said softly. "She's frightened. Anybody would be."

I turned my head and looked at her.

It was the first time that day I had looked at her properly.

She smiled at me with her whole wet, tender face.

She reached out again, and this time her hand found mine, because I had come too close without noticing.

Her fingers were cold.

The tips of them were stained a dull grey, as they had always been, from the honey jar's old silver lid.

I took the smell in without thinking.

Under the soap and the clinic and the salt of her tears, there was something sharp and flat and metallic.

It reached down into the place where my wolf had been asleep since March, and something in me twitched.

It was only a twitch.

It was the first thing my wolf had said to me in five months, and it said, wrong.

I took my hand back.

"I'm glad you're awake, Lydia," I said.

"I'm so glad you're alive," she said, and she meant it, or she looked like she did.

Godfrey rose, leaning on his cane.

"Child," he said to me, with real concern. "At the very least let me put two of my own people on your door. The elders' guard. Cade is in no state to be trusted."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll be at Hattie's."

"Hattie's cottage is a mile from the Hall."

"That's why."

I went out.

I had reached the corridor when I heard Hattie say, behind me, in a strange careful voice, "Alpha."

I looked back.

Cade had taken hold of the bed rail with one hand.

The knuckles were white and the muscles in his forearm stood out.

A wolf's claws come when he is angry, and he had never in his life had trouble finding his anger.

He stared down at his hand.

His fingers stayed the shape of fingers.

His nails stayed nails.

"Cade," Hattie said. "Your claws."

He did not answer.

He looked up, and his eyes were brown.

They were brown and ordinary, not gold, in a room full of wolves.

Nobody in that doorway said a word.

I knew exactly what I was looking at, because I had been looking at it in the mirror since March.

His wolf had gone silent too.

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