Chapter 9: The Porch at Night

Bram's POV

She screamed my name at two in the morning.

I was on the porch with my back against the wall, awake, because I was always awake after midnight.

The cry came through the planks behind my head.

"Bram, no. Please. Bram, don't."

I was on my feet with my hand on the door before I knew I had moved.

I stopped.

She was asleep.

If I walked in, she would wake up to a man of my size standing over her bed.

So I did what I could.

I sat down against the door with my back to the wood and talked to her through it.

"It's Bram," I said. "I'm on the porch. Nobody's in there but you."

"The stove's out. The tomatoes need water in the morning."

"You turned down a Luna today and gave her a cutting. Nobody has done that in all of Northvale."

I said whatever came to mind, low and steady, until her breathing slowed.

When the cabin went quiet, I stayed where I was.

She was afraid of me.

She had been afraid since the first morning, in the hall, when she looked at me and went white to the lips.

I had thought it was the contract.

I had thought she was an Alpha's daughter who hated being handed to a laborer.

But a woman who hated me would not have claimed me in front of her brother.

So the fear was not of me.

It was of something she saw when she slept.

Whatever I did to her in her dreams, I was not doing it here.

I put my head back against the door.

On the windowsill inside, I knew the jam jar stood where she had left it, with its strip of black braid.

I could smell it from the porch.

That bitter, green smell had been in my mother's room for nine days.

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