Chapter 32: Twenty-Four

On the morning of the sixth, a courier knocked on the door of our bedroom.

It was the same courier who had carried every box across the lake for twenty-two years.

He was older now, with a grey moustache, and he stood on the threshold with his cap in his hand.

"Alpha Winslow," he said. "I'm to put this in your hands. Nobody else's."

He held out a small box wrapped in cream paper.

A silver ribbon was tied around it, and I knew the knot.

I looked back at the bed.

Jasper lay on his side with his eyes shut and the corner of his mouth tucked in.

"You're a terrible liar," I said.

"I wasn't lying," he said into the pillow. "I said I'd send one every year."

"You live in this house."

"It's still sent."

I took the box from the courier and thanked him, and he went down the stairs smiling.

I sat on the edge of the bed and untied the ribbon myself.

The paper came off in one piece.

Inside, on a bed of white wool, lay a snowflake of pale moonstone with its six points even and clean.

I turned it to the window, and there was the tiny mark cut inside one arm.

It was not crooked.

"The tip," I said. "Lorna said the tip was crooked, last year."

"I know."

"It wasn't."

"I cut this one twice," Jasper said, "in case she was right."

I laughed so hard that I had to put my forehead on his shoulder.

He pulled me down, and he kissed me, slow and warm, until the bed creaked.

"We have a count," I said against his mouth.

"We have an hour."

"We have forty minutes."

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