Leaving My Alpha Husband in Ice Cold Regret novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Warden

Halvard hauls her out and restarts her heart, she wakes bondless and numb in his cabin, and when Lucan pounds on the door she tells the Warden to open it.

The first thing I felt was a hand on my breastbone, pressing down hard.

The second was the water coming out of my mouth.

I rolled onto my side on the ice and coughed until my ribs ached.

"There you are," a man said above me. "Four minutes. Breathe. That's it. Again."

His voice was low and dry and completely calm.

I opened my eyes.

He knelt over me in a heavy parka, soaked to the shoulders, with silver hair plastered against his cheek.

He was not old.

Thirty-five, maybe, with a dark stubble and brown eyes and white scars running across the backs of both hands.

"Your heart's going," he said. "Strong. Better than most."

"Most?" My voice came out a rasp.

"Most of the people I pull out of there."

He slid one arm under my knees and one behind my back and stood up with me.

Across the ice, at the edge of the shore, sixty wolves stood in a black line, and none of them came any closer.

The old herbalist stood in front with her arm out.

"The caller is not to be touched!" she was calling. "Not by kin, not by mate, not by any wolf!"

I saw Bess fighting against two women who were holding her back.

And I saw Lucan on his knees at the shoreline, in the same place, with his hands in the snow and his head bowed, shaking.

Gold had gone out of his eyes.

I could see it even from forty steps away.

They were only brown now.

Plain brown, a man's eyes.

Then the Warden turned his back to them and carried me toward the yellow window.

There was an iron stove, a narrow bed, and a pile of wool blankets.

A grey-muzzled husky lifted her head from the rug, looked me over, and put it back down again.

He set me in a chair by the stove and put a blanket over me.

"Dry clothes on the hook," he said. "My shirt, sorry, it's what I have. I'll stand with my back to you."

He did.

He stood facing the wall with his arms folded while I peeled off the wet green dress with fingers that wouldn't close.

When I had the shirt on, I lifted my hand to my neck.

The mark was there, under my fingertips.

A smooth patch of skin, as cold as the rest of me.

No heat, no pull, no ache.

For five years there had been a low hum in my body whenever Lucan was within a mile of me, a thread tied to a hook behind my ribs.

I had stopped noticing it years ago.

Now I noticed the quiet.

It was enormous.

"Dressed," I said.

The Warden turned around.

He crouched in front of me and looked into my eyes, one then the other, with a small flashlight.

"I'm Halvard Strom," he said. "Most people call me the Warden."

"Neve."

"I know. I was there." He clicked the light off. "You'll be numb a few days. That's normal. Your wolf will sleep through the worst of it. If you start to cry and can't stop, that's normal too. If you don't cry at all, that's also normal."

"I don't feel anything," I said.

"No."

"I thought I would feel something."

"The bond was the thing that felt." He said it plainly. "You've got nothing wired to him now. It'll come back as your own."

I stared at the stove door.

I waited for grief to arrive, or rage, or the sick horror of having thrown away five years.

Nothing came.

"Is that all?" I said. "That's the whole thing?"

"That's the whole thing."

"Then why does everybody die of it?"

"They don't die of that part." He stood and filled a mug from a pot on the stove. "They die in the water, because nobody gets to them in time. You had me."

I took the mug.

It was broth, scalding and salty, and I drank half of it.

"There's one more thing," he said, and I knew by his tone it was the one he hadn't wanted to say. "Until the Thaw Moon, you can't go more than a mile from this lake."

"Excuse me?"

"The ice keeps what it's borrowed. You walked into it and it took your bond, and it doesn't let go of the person until the ice goes out. After that, it's up to you what you say at the water. But until then, a mile. You'll feel it if you try."

"So this is a sentence."

"It's the law. Not my idea." The corner of his mouth moved. "You can have the cot or the floor. The dog prefers the cot, but I'll talk to her."

Then a fist hit the cabin door.

Three blows, hard enough to shake the hinges.

"Neve."

The voice was thick and torn, and I knew it as well as my own.

"Neve, open the door. Please. I'm not going to hurt you."

Halvard didn't move.

He stood with the empty pot in his hand, watching my face.

"I can keep him out," he said. "That's part of the job. Nobody gets in until the caller says."

I looked at the door.

I thought of him on his knees in the snow, brown-eyed and empty.

"Do you want it opened?" Halvard asked.

"Yes," I said, and stood up in a stranger's shirt. "I want him to see me."

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