Chapter 9: Heard

"Say that again," I said.

Edgar's eyes rolled back, and his hand fell away from my wrist.

"He needs a sedative," said the young healer, and nobody argued.

I turned around.

The stepmother was standing exactly where she had been, her keys in her fist and her face the colour of candle wax.

"You knew," I said.

"I know a sick man when I see one."

"You knew about the bond. You knew what happens if I never said it."

"I do not know what you're talking about."

She said it loudly, to the room, and Sabra took a half step back from the bed.

Osian's hand closed gently on my shoulder.

"Not here," he said.

I let him take me.

The guest room was as we had left it, with the fire burning.

A button from his shirt lay on the floorboards by the door.

I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers.

My hands were not steady.

"He feels me," I said. "Whatever I feel."

"For five years I've been living in that man's chest, and I didn't even know my name."

"Yes."

"Am I his?"

Osian did not answer at once.

He stood with his back to the fire, and the light cut him out of the dark.

"Lycans don't have fated mates," he said at last. "We choose."

"The Moon decides for wolves. For us it's a thing we do with our eyes open, for life."

"So I can't tell you what the Moon thinks of you, or him."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the true one."

His voice roughened.

"If you're bound to him, it's a rope someone else tied round your neck while you slept."

"I won't pull on it. I won't touch you again unless you tell me you want me, knowing all of it."

I looked at the button in my palm.

I thought of Edgar's hunger, and of the tall woman's face, and of a stone with no name.

I thought of the grave in the dark, and how Osian had said Lenna as though it were the most precious word there was.

I put the button down on the mantel.

"Touch me," I said.

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