Given to an Alpha Who Saw Through Every Lie novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: House Rules

In the Alpha's house Nan tells him the truth in private, and he sets terms. Colt and Regan are coming tomorrow.

Dane Hargrove's house sat on the ridge above town, an hour's drive from nothing.

Carrie released me from the clinic at midnight with a bag of pills and a look I couldn't read.

Dane carried my suitcase to his truck himself.

Colt had packed it in four minutes and thrown in a single shoe from each pair.

Nobody spoke on the road up. The headlights went from pavement to gravel to two tracks through the pines.

When he shut the front door behind us, he turned around and said, "Now."

I stood in his kitchen in a hospital wristband and a borrowed sweater.

"Now what?" I said.

"Now you tell me the truth. The whole pack isn't listening."

I thought about it for about as long as it took the fridge to hum once.

Then I told him everything.

I told him about the wine and the bitter taste, and the perfume on Colt that was not his.

I told him about the hallway, and what I heard through the door that never latched.

"Regan said to get rid of me before I remembered," I finished. "Colt said he'd do it in ten minutes."

"He did it in nine," Dane said.

He pulled out a chair and pointed me into it, and he stayed on his feet.

"Carrie tested the broken glass," he said.

"The wolfsbane was in your glass, not the bottle. Nobody else at that party got sick."

"So someone put it there on purpose."

"Someone handed it to you on purpose. I watched Regan Rycroft pick that glass off the tray."

My hands were cold, so I wrapped them around the mug he put in front of me.

It was chamomile. I took a sip to be sure, and it was only chamomile.

"Why did you take me?" I asked. "You could have said no."

"Colt gave you a girl with no memory and no wolf. You don't need a ward."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Someone brought wolfsbane into my pack and gave it to a member at a gathering," he said.

"That's a crime against my table. And you're the only person alive who knows what you drank."

It was a reasonable answer, and he didn't look away while he gave it.

"There's another thing," I said. "You walk out of every room I walk into. For years. Why?"

Something moved in his jaw.

"I don't like parties," he said.

I waited. He said nothing more.

"Rules," Dane said, and he was the Alpha again.

"In front of the pack, you're a woman who doesn't remember. Lie as much as you like, and lie well."

"And in private?"

"In private you never lie to me. Not once, not about small things."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll hear it, and I'll stop believing the rest."

"That's fair," I said. "What else?"

"You sleep in the room across the hall from mine. I don't touch the people in my care."

I nearly asked who had made that rule up, and then I realized it was his own.

He was telling me where the line was, so I'd know if he ever crossed it.

"One more thing," I said. "Who else knows I'm faking?"

"Carrie. She guessed at the clinic and she won't say."

"Okay."

"Give me your wrist."

I gave it to him before I thought about it.

His hand was large and warm and dry.

He turned my arm over and laid two fingers on the inside of my wrist.

My pulse hammered against them, and there was no hiding it.

"Say your name," he said.

"Nan Thackeray."

"Say you hate me."

"I don't hate you."

His fingers stayed where they were.

"Good," he said quietly. "That one was true."

He held my wrist for a long moment, then kept his grip a beat longer than he had to.

He let go and stepped back so fast that his chair scraped.

He rubbed his palm against his jeans and did not look at me.

I told myself it was a wolf thing. Wolves don't touch much.

"Go to bed," he said. His voice was rough. "Lock the door if it helps. It won't help."

I got as far as the hallway. At the foot of the stairs I turned back.

"What happens tomorrow?" I said.

"Colt will bring Regan up here with a casserole.

Regan will try to find out how much you remember."

"And what do we do?"

Dane picked up my empty mug and looked at it, not at me.

"We let them," he said.

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