Chapter 10: Past Midnight

Bess went home at eleven with her spade over her shoulder and a warning for the truck.

"I'm two doors down," she told Gideon through the window. "I sleep light and I hear everything."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good."

I locked the cottage door and turned off the lamp.

I did not go to bed.

I sat at the kitchen window with my grandmother's blue shawl around my shoulders and watched the truck.

Gideon had turned off the engine and rolled down the window. He sat behind the wheel with his head tipped back against the seat.

He wasn't sleeping either.

Every few minutes, his hand drifted to his chest and pressed there, over the place where the bond ran thin.

I knew what he was feeling. The second heartbeat, laid over mine, faint and fast.

I had carried it alone for a week.

Now someone else knew.

I told myself I was glad.

At 11:58 I stood up.

I had no reason to. I just knew, the way I had known for five years, what happened at midnight.

His mind-link would close. His phone would go dark.

And at three minutes past, it would ring.

The clock on the stove said 12:00.

I stood in the dark kitchen and counted.

At 12:03, a phone buzzed in the cab of the truck.

The sound was tiny, but the lane was so quiet I heard every bit of it.

Gideon's head came up.

He had the phone out of his jacket before the second buzz.

I saw the screen light his face blue.

I saw his thumb move.

"Laney?"

I was out the door before I knew I'd moved.

My bare feet hit the cold porch boards. His voice floated across the yard, low and warm and automatic.

"Another one? No, listen, I'm..."

"Rule one," I said.

He turned.

He stood by the open truck door with the phone against his ear and a stricken look on his face.

I could hear a thin voice in the speaker.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Alpha Signed Away His Pregnant Luna from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.