The Alpha Hunts the Exiles, So I Let Him Catch Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Key

The Bell-keeper brings bread and the date of the sweep; Nahia makes her terms with Unai, takes the key to her own cell and starts the first night against the cellar wall.

Beñat Mendiboure came down the cellar steps at dawn with a tray, and he took them one at a time because of his knees.

He was alone.

He had left Aritz at the top of the stairs, I could hear the boy breathing there.

"Daughter," Beñat said warmly. "I thought you might not have eaten."

I was on the pallet with my cape around my shoulders.

I said nothing.

He put the tray on an upturned cheese tub.

His good boots were wet to the shin and clotted with grass and red mud.

It had not rained in a week.

"Eat," he said. "It's only fair. We are not savages in Haizpea, whatever they say in Roncal."

He sat on a cheese bench and folded his hands over his belly.

He looked at me for a long time, at the scar and the cropped hair.

His eyes were friendly and wet and entirely awake.

"Ane Etxart," he said. "That's a pretty name."

He smiled.

"I knew every soul in the Roncal valley once. Old Txomin had a niece called Ane. She died of fever at nine."

"Another Ane," I said. "There are a lot of us."

"There are." He smiled. "You've a way with the ewes, they tell me. Aritz says you walked down off that mountain whistling."

I had not whistled.

Aritz had lied for me, and he had done it badly, and my stomach turned over.

"I don't whistle."

"No. Of course."

He tapped one finger on his knee.

"I'll tell you a kindness, daughter, since you're alone. My nephew is a good man. A soft one."

"Is that a kindness?" I said.

"Fairness is how Alphas lose their bells," Beñat said. "Do you know how a stranger is sentenced?"

"At Candlemas. For three ewes."

"If the three ewes come."

His voice dropped, pleasant.

"On the night of the full moon, Sunday week, the wardens sweep the border," he said. "We take the Hollow."

"I don't know any Hollow," I said.

"You'll be asked to guide us, being from over the stone. A woman who knows the paths."

"I know the paths to my own flock and nothing else."

"Of course," Beñat said.

He stood, with a hand on the shelf.

"Eat," Beñat said again, from the stairs, and went up.

I did not touch the tray.

The iron door shut behind him and I sat with my fists in my lap and made myself breathe.

He knew me.

He had known me under the elm and said nothing in front of two hundred people.

He had not asked once where I got the scar.

A man who did not ask about a burn was a man who knew exactly where it came from.

By noon I had stopped shaking.

By evening I had decided.

Unai came down alone when the yard was dark.

He carried the lamp, and he stopped three steps from the bottom and looked at the untouched tray.

"Eat, or I'll have to carry that out and my uncle will notice," he said.

"Your uncle knows who I am," I said.

He said nothing for a long moment.

Then: "I think he does."

"He's going to make me guide the sweep to the Hollow. And you know what's in the Hollow."

"I know the wardens' word for it," Unai said.

"You don't know what's in it."

"Then tell me."

"No," I said.

The lamp swung in his hand.

"I can't make you," he said.

"No. You can't."

I stood and walked to the foot of the steps and looked up at him.

"I'll make terms," I said.

"Go on."

"I stay in your tower until Candlemas, on my feet and by my own choice.

"Not because a key turned. You'll give me the key to this door."

"Why would I?" he said.

"Because I'm not a prisoner. I'm a hostage. Your law says the Alpha keeps one."

He understood.

For the first time that day his mouth moved at one corner.

"And the second term?" he asked.

"Nobody touches the Hollow before Candlemas. Not you, not the wardens, not the Bell-keeper."

"I can't promise that."

"Then I'll go up in the morning and tell your uncle my name," I said.

He breathed in.

"I can promise to be the man standing in front of it," Unai said slowly.

"If the sweep comes, I'll lead it. The wardens move when I say. They'll go where I point."

"That isn't the same promise," I said.

"It's the one I can keep."

I held his eyes.

It was true, and I could see him know it was true, and that was what I had needed.

"The third term," I said. "My real name. You say it to nobody."

"Not to my uncle."

"Not to your wardens," I said. "Not to me, until I say."

"Not to you."

My name is Nahia Iribarne, and I had not heard it spoken in five years.

I wanted it back from him last, not first.

He heard that, and it went in.

"Done," he said.

He took an iron key from his coat and put it in my palm.

He closed my fingers around it, as I had closed his on the bell.

"It's the only one," he said.

"And the fourth term. Nobody touches anybody unless I start it."

"That one," Unai said, and his voice went rough, "I would have asked for myself."

I looked at the key.

I looked at the man, who had knelt on those stones twenty hours ago with his face between my thighs and counted.

I had not thought about anything else all day.

"Come down," I said. "All the way."

He came down the last three steps and set the lamp on the shelf.

I took his coat in both fists and walked him backward until his back met the cellar wall.

His breath came short.

"Your name is not a word I get to say," he said. "But I can think it. I thought it under the elm. I've thought it every night for five years."

"Don't."

"Then I won't."

I kissed him.

His mouth was warm, and shaking, and he kissed me back slowly, learning me again with his mouth and his hands.

I bit his lower lip and he groaned.

I pulled his shirt up out of his trousers and put both hands on his bare stomach, and the muscle jumped under my palms.

"Take your coat off," I said.

He shrugged out of it and let it fall.

Something small and folded dropped out of the pocket, and I did not look.

"You've got too many clothes on," I said.

"So have you."

"Then fix that."

He did it with great care.

He unbuttoned my shirt without tearing it and peeled it off my shoulders.

He drew the cape down.

He kissed the scar at my collar and then the unscarred skin beside it.

I undid his belt myself.

He was hard in my hand, hot and heavy and thick, and he made a raw sound in his chest.

"You'll make me lose count," he muttered.

"Good."

He lifted me.

He put his hands under my thighs and set my back to the wall.

My legs went around his waist.

The stone was cold against my shoulder blades and he was warm everywhere else.

"Say it," I said. "Say what you want."

"You," he said into my neck. "On me. On my cock, anywhere you'll let me."

"Here."

I reached down and took him in my hand and guided him, and he pushed into me.

It was slow and deep and it filled me completely, and I gasped against his shoulder.

He stopped, buried to the root, trembling all over.

"Is it-"

"Move."

He moved.

He drew back and thrust in, and I felt every inch, and the wall took my weight and he took the rest.

His hips rolled, steady, and each stroke ground against my clit.

I clawed at his back through the thin cotton, and he swore in Basque.

"Hiru," he panted, though he had not reached three, he was counting me not the strokes. "Lau. Don't stop, don't you stop."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You did once."

The words went through me and I locked my ankles harder.

"Harder," I said. "Unai. Harder."

He gave it to me.

The wall rang with it and the cheese wheels trembled on their shelves.

I came with my face in his neck and my teeth in his shoulder.

He followed me with a long raw groan and held me against the stone with his forehead on mine, shaking.

When we could breathe, he lowered me slowly to the floor.

My legs would not take me, and he held my elbow until they did.

"My uncle brings the bread at dawn," he said, buttoning his shirt. "He'll look for the key."

"Then I'll hide it."

"Where?"

I smiled at him and tucked it down my shirt.

He stared, and then he laughed, a short broken laugh I had last heard five winters ago.

Then boots came down the top stairs, fast, and a fist knocked twice on the iron door.

"Alpha," Aritz said, low, from the other side.

"My guardian wants the cellar door left unbarred tonight. He wants to see what the Roncal woman does."

Unai looked at me, and I looked at the key against my skin.

"Then she'll do what she likes," he called back. "As she does."

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