His Pups Called Me Mama. He Called Me Nobody. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Window

Elspeth climbs into the nursery as a wolf, Arlo keeps her secret, and she draws the silver out of Clover with her own hands, until Aldric walks in, breathes her in, and says one word: mate.

"Turn around," I said.

"You'll be killed," Mags said. "You know that."

"Turn the car around, Mags."

She turned the car around.

She left me at the ridge above the lake at two in the morning, with her jacket around my shoulders and her face like thunder.

"One hour," she said. "If you're not back, I'm coming down there and I'm biting everybody."

"Half the pack is drunk on moonwine."

"Then they'll taste sweet."

I left the jacket on a rock and shifted.

It hurt less the second time.

The Langtry border ran along the creek.

Last night I could feel it in my chest like a fence.

Tonight it was nothing but water and stones.

He'd cut me out, so the land didn't know me anymore.

It didn't see me cross.

The pack house was dark except for the kitchen and one window on the second floor.

The nursery.

I knew every loose board on that porch roof.

I'd climbed it for five years, every time Arlo threw a shoe out the window to see if it would fly.

I shifted back on the roof, naked and shivering, and pushed the window up.

The air inside was hot and smelled wrong.

Like a burned penny.

Clover lay in her little bed under the carved moon, so flushed she looked painted.

Her breath rattled.

Mister Buttons, her gray felt rabbit, had fallen on the floor.

I climbed in.

A small voice said, "Mama?"

Arlo was sitting up in the other bed with his blanket pulled to his chin.

His hair stuck up at the back the way it always did.

"Hi, bug," I whispered.

"Why are you naked?"

"Long story. Can you find me something to wear without waking anybody up?"

He thought about it seriously.

Then he climbed out of bed and brought me his own bathrobe.

It had rockets on it.

It came to my hips.

"It's very small on you," he said.

"It's perfect."

He watched me kneel by his sister's bed.

"New Mama said you left because you didn't love us anymore."

My hands stopped.

"She's not your mama," I said. "And that's not true. Not one word of it."

"I know," Arlo said. "I could tell from her face."

I put my palm on Clover's chest.

The silver was in her.

I could feel it, the way you feel a splinter, a cold hard ache under the heat.

My mother used to do this.

I was six the last time I watched her, at the healer's house in the Silver Moon village.

A boy who'd been shot with a silver bullet, and my mother with her hands flat on his ribs, her face gray and her lips moving.

Fairholt blood calls silver home.

It just doesn't ask your permission first.

"Arlo," I whispered. "I need you to keep a secret. Maybe the biggest one you ever kept."

"Bigger than when Clover ate the soap?"

"Way bigger."

He nodded slowly.

"Okay."

"Whatever you see, don't shout."

I pressed both hands flat on Clover's chest and called the silver.

It came.

It came up out of her like a cold tide and into my palms.

Into the blisters the lake had already opened.

It felt like holding a fistful of lit matches.

I bit my lip until it bled.

Silver beaded on my skin, small bright drops that ran off my fingers onto her quilt.

Clover's rattle softened.

Her flush faded from red to pink.

She opened her eyes and looked at me.

"Mama," she croaked. "You're all shiny."

"I know, baby."

"Where's Mister Buttons?"

Arlo was already handing him over.

She tucked the rabbit under her chin and fell asleep again, breathing.

I sat back on my heels and shook.

Arlo touched one of the silver drops on the quilt with his fingertip and snatched it back.

"Ow."

"Don't touch it."

"Is that what was in the lake?"

"Yes."

"Who put it there?"

I looked at him.

He looked back with his father's amber eyes, which had always noticed everything his father didn't.

"I'm going to find out," I said. "Now I need you to get back in bed, and you never saw me."

"But you'll come back."

"I'll come back."

"Promise on the moon."

I glanced up at the little carved moon on the shelf, glowing.

"I promise on the moon."

He got into bed.

I folded the silver into the corner of the quilt so no one would touch it.

I reached for the window.

The nursery door opened.

The hall light came in, and Aldric Langtry came in with it.

He'd taken off the ceremonial coat.

His shirt was open at the collar, his sleeves were shoved up, and he had a damp cloth in one hand, the kind you lay on a feverish child's head.

He stopped when he saw me.

For a second he didn't understand what he was looking at.

The banished nanny in his son's rocket bathrobe, blood on her lip, silver dripping off her hands.

Then he breathed in.

I watched it hit him.

Five years of wolfsbane, gone from my blood in a single day.

Five years of a scent I had kept buried in the ground, and all of it came up at once and filled that small hot room.

The cloth fell out of his hand.

His chest heaved.

His eyes went from amber to gold, bright as coins.

And my own wolf, who had been asleep for five years, stood up inside me and looked straight at him.

She knew him.

Oh, God, she knew him.

"Mate," Aldric said.

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