Chapter 9: What Elias Read

Elias's POV

She had her palm flat on the door and her eyes wide, and I watched her work it out.

I did not need to hear her to know what she was thinking.

Her mouth said, "How long have you known?"

"Three months," I said. "Since the first week."

She took her hand off the wood fast.

I should have told her at the border stone, and I knew it.

I had been telling myself I was waiting for the right moment.

What I had really been waiting for was a reason she would not hate me.

I came to Redcedar because the money was good and the territory was far from anyone who knew me.

An Alpha wanted a lone wolf who answered to no pack, to stand a gate and keep his daughter inside it.

The pay was triple the usual.

I took it, and I did not ask what the daughter had done.

Then I saw her in the courtyard on my third morning, carrying a bucket across the yard.

Two hunters stood and watched her with their arms folded.

Nobody held the gate for her.

Nobody said her name.

She walked with her head down and did not look at either of them.

That night I went down the cellar stairs for the first time, because the guard before me had left a note about it.

The note said only: stay out of the Moon Hall.

I went anyway, because a note was the only warning I could hear.

The oak door had been left open a hand's width.

I walked in.

I felt a thin draft, and nothing else.

The room was round, with a floor of black stone.

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