Chapter 20: Easy

I woke with his hand on my hip, exactly where I had put it.

The grey blanket had slid to my waist, and the stove had burned down to a red line.

Caleb lay on his side, awake, watching me.

"You didn't move it," I said.

"You didn't tell me to."

I looked at his hand, spread wide and warm on my skin.

"Terms, Alpha," I said, but I kissed the corner of his mouth when I said it.

"I'm not the Alpha."

"Then I'll think of something else to call you."

He laughed into my hair, and I felt his whole chest move.

I would have stayed there all morning.

Then I heard voices outside the hut, low and many, and a boot scuffing on the frost.

Caleb sat up.

"The dawn watch," he said. "They've come to relieve me."

"All of them?"

"There are never more than two."

I pulled on my dress and my father's coat and opened the door.

Seven wolves were kneeling in the frozen grass in front of the hut.

I knew every face.

The big man in the front was the baker, who had pointed his finger at me across the feast table on my birthday and shouted that I was a poisoner.

Behind him knelt the woman who had called me a viper in the garden, and the young man who had screamed that I knew it would burn.

None of them looked up.

Caleb came out of the hut and stopped at my shoulder, and the baker's head turned toward him.

"Alpha," he said, thickly. "We've come to..."

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