The Omega's Reflex novel · Chapter 3 of 6

Chapter 3: The Healer's Word

Ilsa examines Marcus and confirms the gift is real and rare. Rodrick demands the mate claim be tested at the winter feast under pack law. Raven sets the date.

Ilsa's room smelled like pine tar and dried mint.

She had me sit on a wooden stool by the window and take my coat off.

Raven stood by the door with his arms crossed.

Rodrick stood by the other door with his hands folded.

"You don't need to be here," I told Rodrick.

"I'm on the council."

"You're not the healer."

"No," he said.

"I'm the man who's going to watch her tell you the truth."

Ilsa was old and small and had no patience in her at all.

She took my left hand and turned it over.

Then my right.

Then she pressed two fingers into the inside of my wrist and held them there.

"Hold still."

"I am."

"Breathe out."

I breathed out.

She watched my face the whole time.

Then she went to the shelf and came back with a needle and a small clay cup.

"Hold out your finger."

Raven moved off the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Testing something."

"You'll prick him?"

"I'll prick him," Ilsa said.

"Unless you'd like to hold his hand for it."

Raven stopped.

I put my hand out.

She pricked the pad of my ring finger.

A bead of blood came up.

I felt it.

A small, sharp, ordinary pain, exactly where it should be.

Ilsa caught the blood in the cup.

She turned to Raven.

"Your hand."

He gave it to her without a word.

She turned his palm up and looked at the pad of his ring finger.

There was a bead of blood there too.

Same finger.

Same hand.

Same moment.

Nobody in the room said anything for a while.

Ilsa wiped my finger and Raven's with a cloth.

Then she set the cup down on the table between them.

"It's real," she said.

Rodrick laughed.

"I didn't feel anything."

"You didn't prick him," Ilsa said.

"You did," Rodrick said.

"You're the one holding the needle."

"Ilsa," Raven said.

"Tell me what it is."

She sat down on the other stool and looked at me for a long moment.

"There's a name for it in the old books," she said.

"The reflex."

"Not a bond trait. Not a wolf trait. A blood trait, and it runs in one family in a hundred years, if that."

She looked at my blood in the cup.

"I've read about it. I've never seen it."

"So what does it do," I said.

"Exactly what you said this morning."

"Any pain done to your body returns to whoever caused it."

"Full measure."

"Not a flinch. Not a share. The whole thing, all of it, into the one who did it."

She picked up the cup.

"It doesn't work on pain you take willingly," she said.

"It doesn't fire on what you choose."

"Only on what's done to you."

Raven's head came around.

"What does that mean?"

"It means the herb in your brazier last night was meant to be a harm," Ilsa said.

"And it landed on the man who put it there."

The room got very quiet.

Rodrick hadn't moved.

His hands were still folded.

I looked at them.

I looked at the small red burn on his left palm.

He saw me looking and put that hand behind his back.

"Nobody put anything in my brazier," Raven said.

"Then who burned their hand last night," Ilsa said.

She said it flat, like a woman reading a list.

Rodrick smiled at her.

"You're a healer, Ilsa."

"Stick to the needle."

"Say it again in front of the council and I'll have you out of this court."

"Then I'll say it in front of the council," she said.

"Gladly."

Raven stepped between them.

"That's enough."

He looked at me.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"He pricked me with a needle and I felt it."

"That's how it's supposed to work."

"I know."

I got my coat back on.

My hands were steady.

I don't know why they were steady.

Ilsa put her hand on my arm on the way out.

"Don't let them make you prove it on command," she said quietly.

"That's how they'll break you."

I nodded.

The council met in the long room above the hall.

Forty people, all of them seated, all of them watching me walk in.

I stood in the middle of the floor because there was nowhere else to stand.

Raven took the Alpha's chair at the head.

Rodrick stood up before anyone had called the meeting to order.

"I'll be brief," he said.

"The Alpha took a husband under contract to settle a debt."

"Everyone in this room knows it."

"Last night they sealed the bond, and this morning the omega told the pack he has a gift out of the old books."

"The healer says it's real."

"I don't care whether it's real."

"What I care about is this."

He turned and faced the room.

"Under pack law, a head Alpha's mate must be confirmed before the pack."

"Confirmed," he said, "at the winter feast."

"It's the law. It's been the law for two hundred years."

"It's the only thing that makes a claim to the crown stick."

A murmur went around the room.

Raven's hand closed on the arm of his chair.

"The winter feast is nine days out," he said.

"Then we have nine days," Rodrick said.

"Good."

"There's no reason to move it."

"There's every reason," Rodrick said.

"Your stepbrother married a stranger for money and now claims a mate bond nobody can see."

"If the claim is good, it survives nine days."

"If it's not, the pack deserves to know before the thaw."

Somebody at the far end of the table said, "He's right."

Somebody else said, "The law's the law."

Rodrick turned to face me.

"Nine days," he said.

"You'll stand in the hall in front of the whole pack and be confirmed as the Alpha's mate."

"Or you won't."

Raven stood up.

"Enough."

"I'm not finished," Rodrick said.

"Say the rest," Raven said.

"Say what happens if he fails."

Rodrick looked at me.

He smiled.

It was a kind smile.

That was the worst part.

"If the claim fails," he said, "the marriage is void."

"The debt your family owes goes back on their heads, whole, with two winters of interest."

"And you go home."

He spread his hands.

"Back to the Greens. Back to the house you came from."

"In disgrace."

"You'll be the omega who married the Alpha of Wanderich for nine days and got sent back."

He said it slow, so the whole room could hear it.

"Every pack from here to the southern market will know your name by spring."

"Nobody will take you. Nobody will hire you. Nobody will look at you."

"That's the price," he said.

"Take it or step out of the claim now, while you still have your coat on."

The room waited.

Raven was looking at me.

I stood in the middle of the floor with forty faces on me and I thought about my sister Sable in a cold house with a debt on the door.

Then I said, "Nine days."

Rodrick nodded once, like a man agreeing about the weather.

"Then we're done here," he said.

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