No Longer Luna novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Not Going Back

It took two hours and forty-one stitches to close Colton, and when I tied the last one my hands were steady and my knees weren't.

The clinic window had never closed properly, and gray morning was coming through it.

He lay on the exam table, white to the lips, under three of my mother's quilts.

"Skye," he said.

"Don't talk."

"I need to."

"You've lost a lot of blood, and I'm not a patient woman."

"Then listen." He turned his head on the pillow. "Please."

I sat down on the stool.

I'd stitched Rhys on that stool, with the same lamp.

The only light now was gray, and Rhys was standing in the hall outside the open door.

I had heard him stop there ten minutes ago.

I hadn't turned around.

"My father will make me stand down from the challenge," Colton said. "I'll go to him. I'll say what Calista did and that I was a fool, and he'll give me the seat back by dawn. I know him."

"Colton."

"Come home with me. Come to Saltmere. You'd have the crown, Skye, the real one, and no one would ever put you second again."

He reached for my hand with the one arm that wasn't strapped.

I let him take it.

It was warm and slack, a hand that had never once reached out for something it wasn't sure it could keep.

"You'd be safe," he said. "Your father's pack would be safe. We'd put all of it behind us."

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