Forced To Bear The Alpha's Son novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Delphine

Sorrel demands her sister's story, Matvei gives her a flat version and dresses her torn knee, and the Madam is coming to the gate.

I waited until the pack-house was dark, and then I went to find him.

His study was at the end of the east corridor, behind a door with a line of light under it.

I did not knock.

Matvei sat at a desk covered in maps with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He didn't look up.

"You have a key to your room," he said. "I gave it to you so you could use it."

"You promised to tell me what happened to my sister."

"I did."

"Then tell me."

He set down his pen.

The torchlight caught the scar through his eyebrow, and for a moment he looked tired in a way he hadn't looked in the cell.

"I rode through House Lark eight years ago," he said. "I was coming home from the war. It was raining, and the Madam let my men sleep in her barn."

I stood very still.

"Your sister brought us bread. She was the first person in that house who looked me in the eye."

"She told me you were kind."

"I was not kind. I was twenty-five and I had been killing people for three years."

He said it without any heat at all.

"I told her I would come back with the money to buy her out," he said. "And I did. Two months late."

"Two months."

"A siege I would not leave. When I got there, she was dead."

"Of what?"

"Fever." His jaw moved. "I did not ask more."

I waited for the rest.

There was no rest.

"That's all?" I said. "You came late, you got a grave, and you went home?"

"That's all I have."

"You gave her your word."

"I know what I gave her."

His voice had not risen, but something in the room had gone tight.

I wanted to throw the inkwell at his head.

I wanted to cry, and I would have cut off my own hand before I let him see it.

So I turned on my heel and walked out, and the first step down the corridor stairs tore my knee open again.

I gasped and caught the rail.

Hot blood ran down my calf and soaked the linen.

"Sit," Matvei said.

He had come up behind me without a sound.

"I'm fine."

"You are bleeding on my floor." He took my arm above the elbow. "Sit."

I sat on the stair because my leg would not hold me.

He knelt on the step below and unwound the bandage with quick, careful hands.

His fingers were warm and rough, and they stopped on the back of my knee.

I felt it all the way up my thigh.

I told myself it was the cold air.

"You ran on this for nine days," he said.

"Eight and a half. I had a rest."

"It's the worst I have seen on a person who is still walking."

"Is that a compliment, Alpha?"

"It's a fact."

He took a pot of salve from his pocket as if he had been carrying it for days.

I noticed that and set it aside to think about later.

He spread it over the wound with his thumb, slow, and the sting made me hiss.

"You hate me," he said.

"I've known you for a day."

"You hated me before I said a word. Your eyes did it the moment I walked in."

"My sister told me you would keep your word."

"And I did not."

"No."

He didn't flinch, and he didn't argue.

He wound the clean bandage up my calf and tied it off, and his palm stayed on my shin one breath too long.

Then he stood.

"Your knee will hold if you stay off it for a day," he said. "You won't."

"No."

"Then at least keep the bandage dry."

"Are you telling me what to do with my own leg?"

"Yes."

I laughed. I hadn't meant to.

It cracked in the stairwell and bounced back up the stone.

He looked at me, and for a heartbeat something at the corner of his mouth almost moved.

Then he put his face back together.

"The Madam of House Lark will be at the gate at dawn," he said. "You will stand beside me."

"Why? She wants me gone. If I'm there she'll see me."

"Exactly. She'll see you standing next to me, healed and fed and unchained. She needs to see what she's lost."

"And what am I?"

"My claim," he said. "Whatever she asks you, you say nothing. I'll do the talking."

"I don't take orders."

"You took the oath."

I opened my mouth to argue, and found I had nothing.

"Dawn," he said, and went back up the stairs.

I sat in the dark with my bandaged knee and my sister's face in my head.

He had said he did not ask more.

I had spent my whole life learning to tell when a man was lying, and that sentence rang strange.

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