Chapter 13: Lyra's Bruise

Wynn had already let her in by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs.

Lyra stood in the front hall with her wedding coat buttoned wrong.

Her curls were flat on one side, and her bare feet were cut up from the gravel.

The bruise along her jaw was dark at the edges, four fingers wide.

"I fell," Lyra said before I could speak. "On the steps at the lodge. It's nothing."

Wynn made a sound in her throat and went to find a blanket.

I walked up to my sister and stopped an arm's length away.

Her mind was loud and frightened, and I heard it all at once.

He locked the door. He took my face in his hand. I only asked about the tin.

"You asked about the tea tin," I said.

Lyra's eyes went wide.

"I didn't say that out loud."

"No," I said. "You didn't."

She sat down hard on the bottom stair.

Ronan came down behind me and stopped in the doorway of the front room, giving us the whole hall.

He had pulled on jeans and a shirt he hadn't buttoned, and he kept his hands at his sides.

"There's a kettle on," he said to Lyra. "And a room with a lock on the inside. Yours, if you want it."

Lyra looked at him.

I heard the old thing rise in her, quick and ugly. Kestrel animal.

Then it sank again, because he had said it so plainly.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Reborn to Get the Alpha She Rejected from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.