Chapter 7: The Gate

He was sitting outside the pack gate when I found him.

He had not gone to the guest house.

He sat on the cold side of the fence with his back to the post.

His long coat was spread under him, and he was looking up at the moon.

It was a day past the quarter, and thin.

I stopped ten feet away with the notebook against my chest.

"You were here before," I said.

Duncan turned his head slowly.

"I was."

"Seven years ago. The night of the first cut."

"Yes."

"You felt it?"

"I was in my office at Highmoor, with a pen in my hand," he said.

"A hook caught in my ribs, and somebody pulled it. Then I could taste blood. It wasn't mine."

I had not expected him to say it so quickly.

I had walked here with a whole speech, and it went out of my head.

"I was nineteen," I said. "I bled on a kitchen floor, and a man four hundred miles away tasted it. And you didn't come."

"I came."

"You sat outside a fence."

"I drove seven hours," Duncan said evenly. "I got here in the dark and asked for you by name."

"And?"

"The Luna-mother of this pack told me you were bonded and sleeping, and that your mate was with you."

"Hester."

"Yes."

"She said that."

"She said it three times in seven years."

I held out the notebook.

He took it, opened it to the last page and read down the GATE column.

I watched his jaw tighten, and I watched his throat move.

"She wrote it all down," he said.

"She writes everything down."

"I didn't know that." He closed the book and held it in both hands.

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