His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Release

Lorcan's POV

I went to the Moon-Keeper's house before sunrise, and I didn't tell anyone.

It sat on the hill above Stonebridge, a low stone place with a crooked chimney and a goat tied at the door.

She was already awake.

She was sitting at her table with a bowl of porridge.

She had been expecting the knock for weeks.

"You've come to sign," she said.

"Yes."

"Sit."

I sat.

She pushed a roll of old paper across the table, and then a small knife with a bone handle.

The release was short.

It was four lines in a hand older than my father's.

I had read it a hundred times in my head.

"You know what it does," she said.

"The thread dissolves. The pain goes, and the want goes."

"And the knowing."

"I know."

"She'll be as far from you as any woman in the county," the Moon-Keeper said.

"You will not feel her fear, or her grief, or her heat.

"If she is lying to you, you won't hear it in your own chest. If she's leaving, you'll find out when the door closes."

"I know."

"Say why."

I looked at the knife.

For four years I had known what Corinna felt before she did.

I'd known when she was tired and when she was pretending.

I had loved that and used it, and then I'd told myself the whole of it was love.

"Because I can't tell anymore what's hers," I said.

"The want, the forgiveness. I touch her and I can't separate what she chose from what the thread hands her.

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