Chapter 24: The Green Door Rebuilt

My teeth went through his skin, and the whole world turned gold.

He cried out, a raw broken sound, and his body arched against mine.

Blood ran into my mouth, salt and iron, and under it the taste of cedar and bread.

The bond opened in my chest.

I felt him.

Not his thoughts, only the plain weight of him, a great aching tenderness, and a fear so old it had worn a groove.

He felt me, too.

I knew it, because he went still and made a sound I had never heard from him.

"Thea," he said. "You're so afraid."

"Yes."

"Of what?"

"Of wanting you this much."

He laughed, shakily, with tears in his voice.

"May I?" he said.

"Yes. Do it. Now."

He turned his head and put his teeth to the place where my neck meets my shoulder.

It hurt for exactly one breath.

Then it did not hurt at all.

Heat spread down my arm and through my chest and into the soles of my feet, and my wolf threw back her head and sang.

The bond settled between us like a hand coming to rest.

It did not take anything from me.

I was exactly as angry as I had been, and exactly as free, and I could still say no to him.

I tested it, lying in his arms with his blood on my mouth.

I thought no, as hard as I could, and nothing happened except that he smiled against my skin, because he felt me thinking it.

"Good," he said. "Keep that."

A year later, on the first of April, the lower row had forty houses.

I stood at the end of the east row with a bucket of paint and a brush as wide as my hand.

The wind came up the creek, and it carried cut wood and fresh sawdust and wet earth, and nothing burned.

Every house on the row had a door.

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