Chapter 14: The Dress with the Moon

Lorna Pierce drove up our road at two in the afternoon with a long white box on her passenger seat.

Rhett was on the porch with the phone at his ear, calling his beta and then the border wardens.

Dad stood in the yard with his arms folded and watched her park.

"Miss Pierce," he said.

"Mr. Rawson. My father sent me with a dress for tonight."

She held up the box and looked miserable.

"He picked it himself. He said Jessa would know what it meant."

Dad did not move.

"Then you'd better come in," I said.

I took her up to my room and shut the door.

She sat on my bed with the box on her knees and looked at my bookshelf, my old ribbons and the broken kitchen clock I had never fixed.

"I like it here," she said. "It smells like toast."

"Lorna."

"Yes."

"I have to tell you something about your father, and you're going to hate me for it."

"I won't."

"You don't know what it is."

"I know it's about him." She set the box down. "Say it."

So I did, plainly, from the hall steps on, and I did not look away from her once.

I told her about the silver chain, and the stone that rang all night.

I told her whose daughter I was.

She did not interrupt once.

When I finished she sat very still with her hands between her knees.

"I was three," she said at last.

"Lorna..."

"I remember being carried. I remember a smell, and a lot of shouting, and being told it was a bonfire."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fated Mate Was the One Man I Could Never Have from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.