Chapter 9: Rain on the Practice Lawn

Seren's POV

It began to rain halfway through the third run of the figure, and neither of us stopped.

The lantern hissed on its post.

Water ran down my face and into my collar, and my practice shirt stuck to my back.

Cormick's hand stayed at my waist, and his palm was the only warm place on me.

His other hand had been shut in his coat pocket since sundown, as if it held something he would not put down.

Twice he had looked past me at the dark gate, and both times his jaw went tight.

"Again," he said.

"It's pouring."

"I know."

"You'll catch cold."

"Wolves don't catch cold."

"I do," I said. "I'm a slow shifter. Everything about me is slow."

He stopped moving.

The rain drummed on the stones around us, and he looked down at me with water running off his black hair.

"Say that again," he said.

"That I catch colds?"

"That you call yourself slow, like it's a flaw."

"It is."

"You held for five minutes. I couldn't hold a half-shift that long in my best year.

"It isn't slow, Seren. It's control."

"That's easy for you to say."

"Why?"

"Because the Alpha-heir has never been told he wasn't enough."

Something moved in his face.

"I've been told it every day for three years," he said quietly. "By the Rite."

I had no answer.

He took his hand from my waist and drew the other out of his pocket, slowly, as if it hurt to open it.

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