Don't Touch Him! He's Not An Alpha, He's My Patient novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: His First Word

Wylie speaks for the first time in five years, Freja names Tilly's night visit in front of the whole pack, and Tilly lifts the Moonwell key on a chain and tells her to ask on her knees.

Tilly got up off the rug and smoothed her robe.

"Relax. I nipped him. I wanted to see your face."

"You put your teeth in a stilled wolf's neck to see my face."

"It's a love bite, Freja. Not a crime."

Mom took her by the shoulders and steered her out.

Dad followed them without a word to me.

Ansel stood in the doorway a second longer.

"You didn't have to say that about my mate."

"You didn't have to hold my wrist."

He shut the door hard enough to rattle the lamp.

I locked it behind him and turned back to Wylie.

The bleeding had stopped.

The marks on his neck had swollen into two red crescents.

I cleaned them with yarrow and watched his face.

For four years that face had never changed.

Not when I cut his hair.

Not when I talked to him at night about Gran and the pearls and Biscuit and Dillon's door.

Not when the old Alpha died and I cried on the end of his bed.

Now a muscle jumped in his jaw.

I froze with the cloth in my hand.

His throat moved.

His lips moved.

"Freja."

It came out cracked and rusty.

I sat down on the floor.

"Say it again."

His eyes found mine.

They were dark brown, and they were looking at me, not through me.

"Freja."

I put my forehead against his knee and shook.

The pain of the bite had done what four years of drops and baths and talking hadn't.

My sister had nearly killed him, and she'd woken him up.

I didn't sleep.

I sat on the floor with my back against the daybed and my hand around his ankle until the window went gray.

He didn't say anything else.

But twice in the night his foot moved under my hand.

At seven the breakfast bell rang.

Stonemere eats together, the whole pack at the long tables in the dining hall.

I wasn't leaving Wylie alone in that house for one minute.

So I put his boots on him and walked him downstairs with my hand on his back.

Sixty heads turned.

I knew most of those faces.

The pack mothers who'd watched me grow up.

The boys I'd beaten at swimming in the lake.

A woman I'd once stitched up after a bad fall leaned toward the girl next to her.

"That's the one who clawed her sister's face open."

"I thought she was banished."

"She was. Look at her now, walking in like she owns the place."

I stopped.

So that was the story.

For five years my family had told Stonemere I attacked Tilly and got thrown out.

I sat Wylie at the end of the family table and put a plate of eggs in front of him.

Then I looked up.

Dillon Lund sat beside Tilly.

He was broader than I remembered, with a good jacket and the same square jaw.

He looked at me once and then at his coffee.

Tilly had her hand on his arm and a tiny bandage on her scalp where I'd pulled her hair.

She'd turned the bandage toward the room.

Dad stood and tapped his glass.

"Welcome to our guests from Hollow Pine. And a reminder that in twelve days Stonemere hosts the Gathering, where my daughter Tilly will be mated to Ridgeback's heir under the Hunter's Moon."

The hall clapped.

Tilly kissed Dillon's cheek and looked at Wylie while she did it.

I fed Wylie a forkful of eggs.

He chewed and swallowed.

Then I stood up.

"I need the Moonwell," I said. "Tonight. Gran's law gives it to any healer of her blood. My patient has twelve days before the stillness kills him."

The hall went quiet.

Dad's face darkened.

"This isn't the time."

"It's the only time I've got."

"You severed your blood from this pack."

"Gran's law doesn't say pack. It says blood. Mine's the same as it was when you were bleeding on her kitchen table."

Somebody at the back laughed and turned it into a cough.

Mom stood up beside Dad.

"Freja, sit down. You're making a scene."

"I'm not the one who made it."

I turned so the whole hall could see me.

"Last night, Tilly went into my patient's room in her robe and sat on his lap. He can't move on his own. He can't speak. She bit his neck."

Dillon's coffee cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

A pack mother at the next table put her fork down.

Mom's voice came out very low.

"Do you have to turn everything into a scandal?"

"It's already a scandal, Mom. I'm just turning the lights on."

Tilly's eyes filled with tears right on cue.

"I was checking on him. Somebody had to, since she left him alone all night."

"I was on the floor beside him all night."

"Then why didn't you stop me?"

"Because you and your mother were holding the door."

A murmur ran down the tables.

Dillon set his cup down and looked at Tilly.

Tilly wiped her eyes, and when her hand came down, she was smiling.

She hooked a finger under the neck of her blouse and pulled out a thin silver chain.

An iron key swung from it.

I knew that key.

Gran had worn it every day of my life.

"I'm Stonemere's healer now," Tilly said sweetly. "The Moonwell's mine. If you want it, you can ask me on your knees."

Sixty people waited to see what I would do.

Behind me, a chair scraped.

A hand closed on my wrist, warm and careful.

Wylie was standing.

He looked at my sister with dark, clear eyes, and spoke to me:

"Don't."

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