He Never Noticed I Stopped Talking, Until My Wolf Woke novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ribbon
Conall asks Rowena to cut the clinic ribbon on Friday and learns in front of the pack that she's having surgery that morning; the scan says the silver was placed.
Conall found out I'd stopped telling him things in front of two hundred wolves and a tray of scrambled eggs.
It was Founders' Day breakfast in the lodge hall, the Sunday after the first snow.
He stood at the head table with a microphone in one hand and his notes in the other.
"The new pack clinic opens this Friday at ten," he said. "Rowena will cut the ribbon."
He didn't look at me when he said it.
He looked at his notes, because he had already decided, and I was the Luna, and Lunas stood where they were told.
Bronwyn Carmichael sat on my left with her laptop open, the way she did at every pack meal.
She was the Beta, Conall's oldest friend, and the one person at that table who always remembered how I took my coffee.
She slid a cup across to me now, with oat milk, and mouthed, "Eat something."
On my right, Conall's mother had set a mug of her herbal tea at my place, the way she did every Sunday.
Adelaide had brewed it for my shoulder for three years, and I had drunk every cup.
I picked up the mug and held it. I didn't drink.
"I can't cut the ribbon," I said.
My voice carried farther than I meant it to.
Conall looked up. "It's ten minutes, Rowena."
"It's at ten. I'll be in surgery. It starts at nine."
The hall went quiet in a way I had never heard it go quiet.
A fork hit a plate somewhere near the back.
"Surgery," Conall said. "What surgery?"
"The silver under my shoulder blade. A surgeon in town is taking it out on Friday."
I said it plainly.
Bronwyn's hand stopped over her keyboard.
Conall put the microphone down on the table. It squealed, and he didn't notice.
"Since when do you have..." He stopped. "The healer said you were clean after Moonfall."
"The healer took out the bullet," I said. "The pieces stayed."
"You never said anything."
"No."
Adelaide put a hand on my arm, and her eyes were wet.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said. "Why would you carry this alone? I would have sat with you all day."
She took the shawl from the back of my chair and settled it around my shoulders, right over the scar.
It was a kind thing to do, and I let her.
Conall came down off the dais. Two hundred heads turned to follow him.
"When did you book it?" he asked.
"In October."
"October." He said the word like it was a place he had never been.
"I bought a dress for the Full Moon Gala in October too," I said. "You didn't see it until I walked in wearing it."
"I would have gone with you to pick one."
"I know. I didn't send you a picture, because I knew you'd say it looked nice without looking."
Somebody coughed. Somebody else very carefully put down a glass.
"Last winter I went to the Winter Ball alone," I said. "I stood at your table as Luna for an hour. You came in from a phone call when the dancing was nearly over."
"Rowena."
"I stopped telling you things, Conall. I stopped about a year ago. I kept waiting to see when you'd notice."
He opened his mouth and nothing came out.
I could feel the pack looking at the back of his neck.
There was a version of me that would have stayed, and smiled, and cut the ribbon on a different Friday.
I put the mug down, untouched, and the shawl slid off my shoulders onto the chair.
So I stopped waiting for him to ask.
"Eat your eggs, everyone," I said. "I'm going for air."
I walked the length of the hall with my back straight, and nobody said a word until the door shut behind me.
The corridor outside smelled of pine and wet boots.
I made it as far as the coat rack before I heard Conall's footsteps coming fast.
"Who's driving you?" he said.
It was the first question he had asked me in months that was about me.
"Penny."
"I'll drive you."
"You have a ribbon."
"Rowena, I'll cancel the..."
"Don't," I said. "Not so it looks good for you."
He stood there with his hands open, and for once he didn't have a plan.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was Penny, the pack nurse, my best friend, who had pulled the scan from the hospital portal that morning because I'd asked her to.
I read the message once, standing under the coat rack, with the Alpha of Silver Ridge watching my face.
"Rowena, I need you to look at the image. The six fragments aren't scattered. They're lined up along the bone, evenly spaced, like stitches. Somebody put them there."
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