Wrong Girl, Right Alpha novel · Chapter 47 of 48

Chapter 47: Dawn on the Ridge

Nora's POV

I woke warm.

I lay under the furs in the stone den with a fire popping in the hearth.

The doorway was open on a pink morning.

The door lay broken against the wall where I had left it, with its pins in a heap beside it.

Ronan sat on the floor next to me with his back against the bed.

He was asleep sitting up, with his bare chest rising and falling, and my hand was in his left hand.

I looked at the hand.

It was steady.

I lifted my other hand and touched the skin over his heart.

The gray lines had gone.

In their place lay a spray of fine white scars from the old bite to the middle of his chest.

They were flat and smooth and perfectly cool.

He woke when I touched him.

He turned his head, and his eyes were brown, and for a long time he did not say anything at all.

"You were cold," he said finally. "At the door. You were cold, and I couldn't..."

"I'm warm now."

"You are."

His voice cracked.

He put his forehead down on my hand.

I let him.

I let him cry, and I stroked his hair, and the sun came over the ridge and lit the wall.

At last I sat up, and the furs fell off me, and I saw my own side.

A star of silver scar covered my right hip and ribs, pale and puckered.

It was cold to the touch, a small steady cold, and it didn't hurt.

"That stays," Ronan said, watching. "The healer says."

"And my wolf?"

I reached for her.

She was there, curled up very small at the back of my mind, breathing slowly.

She didn't answer.

"She's asleep," I said. "She won't shift for months."

"The healer says until spring."

"What else?"

He hesitated.

Then he lifted a strand of my hair from my shoulder and held it up to the light.

It had been brown to my shoulder blades all my life.

From the left temple back, a streak the width of two fingers had gone white.

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