They Hid My Fated Mate, So I Left With the Rival Alpha novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Last Twist of Leaf

Garth found the steward in two days, in a stone cabin above the tree line, with the door nailed shut from inside.

Ronan would not have him brought down to the hall.

"He'll talk in his own kitchen or not at all," Garth said. "He's eighty and he's terrified."

So on the second night I filled a pot with chicken soup, wrapped a loaf in a cloth, and rode up the mountain behind Ronan.

I was not leaving it to chance that the old man would eat.

The cabin door opened a hand's width.

One watery eye looked at Ronan's face, then at the pot, and then at me.

"You're the girl from the river," said the steward.

"I'm the cook," I said. "Open up, you'll catch your death."

He let us in.

The room held a bed, a stove and a shelf of jars, each labeled in careful old handwriting.

I set the soup on the stove and found a ladle without asking.

Ronan stood by the door with his arms at his sides, and I could feel him through the bond like a held breath.

"Sit," I said to the steward. "Eat first."

He ate half the bowl with his hands shaking.

Then he put the spoon down.

"Your father had me bring his wife a cup of tea every night," he said to Ronan. "Chamomile and lemon balm, for sleep."

"I know."

"It was never only chamomile."

Ronan didn't move.

"He came to me the week after the mating, the old Council elder," said the steward. "Your father's uncle. He said the Luna was ill and needed a tonic."

"My great-uncle," Ronan said.

I knew the man.

He sat at the right hand of the high table, white-haired and straight-backed, and on my first night he had called my bread adequate.

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