After the Tenth Bond Break: I Became the Luna of the Shadowfang Alpha novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Fifteen Years

Ansel drives her north and offers thirty days as a guest, no claim and no touch unless she asks. At the Shadowfang gate his aunt sees that Danica's eyes have turned gold.

The last time I saw him he was seventeen, and thin enough to count his ribs through his shirt.

Now he was tall and broad enough to fill the doorway of a truck, and he held the door open for me.

His hair was cut short, and a dark beard covered his jaw.

His eyes were the same steel grey, and they were taking in my duffel bag, my boots and the dust on my sleeve.

"You walked," Ansel said.

"It's three miles."

"You walked three miles out of a pack that tried to stop you."

"One of them tried. He's fine."

His mouth moved at one corner, and it was almost a smile.

He took my bag and set it behind the seat.

I climbed in before I could think about how strange it was to be in his truck.

It smelled of pine and old coffee.

He started the engine and turned north.

"How did you get here so fast?" I asked. "You said Shadowfang. That's six hours away."

"I've been parked at the next turnoff since the Council posted the Harvest Moon rite."

"That was a week ago."

"Yes."

"You waited a week."

"I slept in the truck. Your pack's guards walk the road twice a night, and they never looked in a window."

I stared at the dark road ahead.

"Why?"

He kept his eyes on the road.

"Nine rites. Wolves talk across three states, Danica. A bond broken once is a scandal. Nine times is a pattern, and I knew the name of the mate they kept breaking. I wanted to be close, in case you ever picked up."

"You could have called any time."

"No. You weren't mine to call."

He said it flatly, with no weight on it, and I didn't know what to do with it.

A mile passed.

"I want to say something plainly, and then I'll leave it," he said. "My aunt's house has a spare room, and my pack has more work than hands. Stay as long as you like. Thirty days, as a guest. No bond and no claim from me. And I won't touch you unless you ask me to."

"Why that last part?"

"Because you've just spent eleven months being handled."

I looked out the side window so he wouldn't see my face.

I did not ask why it had taken him fifteen years to come back.

I had decided in Carson's house that I would not ask that tonight.

I reached for the seat belt, and my hand would not close on the buckle.

I tried again.

It shook so hard the metal clinked on the frame.

"Adrenaline," I said. "It always does this."

"It does that for everyone."

He pulled over onto the gravel and turned in his seat.

He held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

I put the buckle in it.

His fingers closed over my wrist for a moment while he guided the tongue into the slot.

His hand was warm and dry and rough along the edge of the palm.

He did not let go at once, and I did not pull away.

My pulse beat against his thumb, and I knew he could feel it.

"Better?" he said.

"Yes."

He let go slowly, and put both hands back on the wheel.

For a long time neither of us said anything, and for the first time that day I let myself breathe.

We drove north through towns I had never seen.

I fell asleep sitting up.

When I woke the truck was stopped under a high wooden arch strung with lanterns, and snow had started to fall in the headlights.

A row of wolves stood along the road, men and women in coats with their breath showing, and not one of them spoke.

An older woman came down the line in an apron, drying her hands on a cloth.

She was short and broad and her braid was grey, and she walked straight up to my window.

"This is the girl?" she said to Ansel.

"This is Danica."

She opened my door without asking and took my chin in her floury fingers and tipped my face up into the lantern light.

She looked at my eyes for a long moment.

Her own went wide.

"Ansel," she said slowly. "This child's eyes are gold."

"They're brown," I said.

"They were," said his aunt Hester.

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