Chapter 24: The First Morning

I woke in his bed with the winter sun coming in at the window, and the other side of the quilt was empty.

I lay still and listened to the house.

A pan clanked in the kitchen below.

A man's voice said something low, and a woman's voice answered it, dry and unimpressed.

I knew that dry voice.

Ida was in the Alpha's kitchen at dawn, and I could guess why.

I smiled into the pillow.

Then the stairs creaked, slow and careful, and the door opened with an elbow.

Caleb came in with a wooden tray.

He was in his shirtsleeves, with the mended cord still wound twice around his right wrist, and his hair stuck up at the back.

On the tray were a jug, two glasses, and a plate of Ida's brown bread.

"Ida tasted it," he said. "Before I poured. She said if I looked at her like that again she'd pour it over my head."

"Good for her."

"I'd have let her."

He set the tray down on the quilt beside my knees.

Then he poured two glasses, and the milk was white and thick and cold from the cellar.

My throat tightened.

For one moment I was back at the window in the first life, and a man in a black coat was watching me with a glass in his hand.

Caleb saw it in my face.

He did not say a word.

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