Chapter 8: Ezra's Nose

Ezra's POV

I had a rule about other packs' sickbeds.

I stayed out of them.

Then Imogen said, "I'll go and look at him," and I said, "I'm coming with you," before I could stop my mouth.

The healer's cottage sat behind the Penhallow house at the end of a gravel path.

It was one room with a stove and four cots.

Jasper lay in the nearest, shirtless, with wet cloths on his chest and a basin on the floor.

The Beta stood at the foot of the bed.

His wife held her son's hand.

Celia sat on a stool by the head of the cot in her white dress, a silver flask in her lap.

She stood up when she saw Imogen.

"Mimi," she said. "Thank you for coming."

"I came to look," Imogen said. "I'm not here to mend anything."

She stopped three paces from the bed and put her arms around her own ribs.

I stayed one pace behind her and a little to the left.

If anyone touched her, I wanted to be the first one in the way.

Jasper turned his head.

His eyes were bloodshot, and when he saw her something flickered in them, then died.

"You came," he said.

"I wanted to see if you were lying."

"I'm not." He tried a laugh and coughed. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help."

I breathed in.

I do it without thinking whenever I enter a room.

Under the stove smoke and the herbs, under sweat and fever, I caught a thread that did not belong.

Bitter.

Sharp, and faintly metal, and old.

My wolf lifted his head.

I knew that smell.

When I was twelve, my grandfather's best friend had been poisoned at his own table.

It had taken the pack's healer five days to find out what it was.

By then the man could not stand.

I took a slow step to the side and leaned over the cot to look into the basin.

Keep reading free with an account. Start "I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.