Chapter 16: Mine Is Not a Word

"I'll break the law before I let him take you," Tobias said.

He said it in the empty hall after midnight, with the lawyer's paper crushed in his split hand.

I sat on the edge of the dais with my boots hanging.

"Which law?" I said.

"All of them. The writ, the Moot's peace, the old border rules. I'll put forty wolves on the gate and let Crane try me."

"And then you're a man who ignored a Moot writ the week before the Moot."

"Yes."

"Tobias."

"I don't care what it costs me."

"I know you don't," I said. "That's the problem."

He stopped pacing.

"You're about to decide for me again," I said. "You decide, and then I'm the thing you protect, or the thing you burn."

"Thea."

"Mine is not a word I use for myself," I said. "And it isn't one I let anyone use for me. Not him, not you. Say you hear me."

He swallowed.

"I hear you," he said. "You decide."

"Yes."

"Then decide."

I looked at him in the lamp light, big and tired and bleeding through the bandage on his leg.

I had made a rule that morning, and the rule was mine to break.

"The bathhouse," I said. "Now."

He stared at me.

"Thea, you said no touch."

"I said you don't touch me." I stood up. "I'm going to touch you. Come on."

The Stonebrook bathhouse stood behind the kitchen, a stone room with a tin tub, a long bench, and a drain in the floor.

The stove was cold, and the tile was colder.

I shut the door and put my back against it.

"This doesn't forgive you," I said.

"I know."

"It doesn't mean anything about the Moot."

"I know."

"Take your shirt off."

He did, one-handed, because the other was still wrapped.

I pulled my own over my head and dropped it on the floor.

His eyes went to my breasts and stayed there, dark and hungry, and his hands stayed at his sides.

"You're not allowed to move," I said.

"Yes."

"Say yes."

"Yes, Thea."

My wolf rolled in my chest.

I crossed the tile and put my palms flat on his chest, and I could feel his heart slamming under the scars.

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