He Starved My Wolf for Ten Years, So I Burned His Proof novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cup

Caged in an SUV and brought to Ashmoor, Wynne pours Fiona's wolfsbane tea into a plant, and Bram sees it.

The cage was built for something bigger than me and still left no room to stretch out.

Two enforcers lifted me in by the elbows and bolted the door.

Silver ran through every bar.

It did not burn the way it should have, because the wolfsbane had dulled my skin to nothing.

That was the only good thing the wolfsbane ever did for me.

The SUV rocked down the logging road.

Through the bars I watched the cabin get smaller behind us, a thread of smoke still rising from the chimney where the logs had burned.

I felt no sorrow about it.

Bram rode in the front seat with his back to me.

Twice I watched his hand rise toward his neck, then drop back to his knee.

He was feeling it too.

He could not have missed it, the burn in the bond, and he was not going to say a word.

The road came out of the trees and the valley opened up.

Ashmoor.

I had not seen it since I was eighteen.

The pack houses were the same grey timber with green roofs, but there were more of them now, and a new stone hall stood where the orchard used to be.

People came out onto the porches as the SUV rolled past.

Women with kids on their hips.

Old men leaning on rakes.

Nobody waved.

They all looked at the cage, and then they looked at the ground, and two of the children were pulled back by the collar.

At the pack house the enforcers unbolted me and walked me inside.

They put me in a bedroom on the second floor with a bed, a basin, a small plant on the sill and silver mesh bolted over the window.

Someone had made the bed.

Someone had put a vase of dried lavender on the dresser.

That did more to scare me than the cage had.

I sat on the edge of the mattress with the cuffs still on and waited to see who would come through the door.

It was a woman about my age.

She was pretty in a way that came from looking after herself, with honey-colored hair in a loose braid, a cream sweater, and a tray in her hands.

A small silver leaf pin sat on her collar.

"Oh, you poor thing," she said, and meant it.

She set the tray on the dresser and came straight over and looked at my wrists.

"They shouldn't have left these on you. I told Bram. I told him this morning."

She turned and called down the hall, and a minute later an enforcer came in with a key.

The cuffs came off.

My wrists were raw and grey and shaking.

The woman made a small sound in her throat.

"I'm Fiona," she said. "Fiona Crane. I think you know why I'm here, and I'm so sorry, I wish we'd met some other way."

I knew who she was.

She was the woman I was about to sign my grandmother's land over to.

I did not say that.

I said, "Hello."

Fiona's whole face softened with relief.

"I brought soup. And tea, it's chamomile with a little honey. Maeve says you need to build your strength back slowly."

She lifted the lid on the bowl.

It smelled like chicken and thyme, and my stomach cramped so hard that I put a hand over it.

I ate three spoonfuls before I made myself stop.

I would have eaten the whole thing if I'd been alone.

"There you go," Fiona said gently. "Now the tea. Drink it while it's hot."

She put the cup in my hands and stood over me, smiling.

It smelled like chamomile.

Under the chamomile, so faint that a person with a working wolf would have caught it in a second, was a bitter green thread.

I knew that smell.

I had swallowed it every morning for ten years.

"Thank you," I said.

I lifted the cup and made a show of blowing on it.

Fiona's eyes stayed on the cup.

They did not leave it.

"I'll go and tell Bram you're settled," she said, after a long moment. "Finish it all, won't you? It's the best thing for you."

She touched my shoulder and went out.

The door clicked.

I waited until her footsteps had gone all the way down the stairs.

Then I carried the cup to the window and tipped it into the plant on the sill.

The tea soaked into the soil.

I set the cup back on the tray, empty.

My hands were shaking worse than before.

If I was wrong, if it was only chamomile, I had thrown out the first kind thing anyone had done for me in a decade.

I watched the plant.

The leaves were green and shiny and perfectly healthy.

Then, one by one, they began to curl at the edges.

The whole plant drooped in less than a minute.

Wolfsbane.

A full dose, in a cup carried up the stairs by a woman who said she was sorry.

The floorboard behind me creaked.

I whirled.

Bram was standing in the open doorway.

I had not heard him come.

His eyes went from the dying plant to my face, and stayed there.

He had seen the whole thing.

And he said nothing at all.

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