Chapter 10: Dawn

Dane's POV

I woke before the sun and lay still, because she was asleep on my chest.

Her hair was across my arm. Her hand was open on my ribs.

For ten years I had slept alone with my back to the wall.

I had never once slept like that.

Then the smell reached me.

I had breathed it all night and been too far gone to name it.

It was Nan. It was rain and pine smoke with something warm underneath.

It was not the faint, flat scent I had walked away from for six years.

My wolf rose in my chest, and it said: Mate.

I did not move. I did not breathe.

Every wolf knows the word. A mate's scent hits you the first time you share a room.

It had never happened with her. Not once in six years of parties and funerals and pack meetings.

I had stood eight feet from her. I would have known.

Unless someone had made sure I couldn't.

I thought about Ernest's heart stopping in the front hall.

I thought about the thermos in his hand, and Carrie's face when she sniffed it.

I thought about my own nose twitching at the tins above his stove.

I did not know what any of it added up to. I knew it was something.

Nan stirred.

She mumbled my name in her sleep, and my wolf nearly came through my skin.

I eased out from under her and put a pillow where I had been. She curled around it.

I stood and looked at her a moment longer than a man with sense should.

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