Chapter 16: Anywhere in This House

Hazel's POV

They locked the elder in the Seer's stone room with four wolves at the door and a trial set for noon.

Ronan did not speak to anyone after that.

He took my hand and walked me out of the hall, across the yard and down the slope behind the kitchens, to the bath house.

It was a long low building of black stone, built over a hot spring.

He barred the door behind us.

Steam hung over the pool in the lamplight, and the whole room smelled of cedar and wet rock.

"You said anywhere in this house," he said.

"I did."

"I'm holding you to it."

"I'd be insulted if you weren't."

He didn't touch me yet.

He stood with his back against the door and his hands flat on the wood, and I saw that they were shaking.

"I looked at that cup," he said, "and I wasn't a man, Hazel. There was nothing in me but the wolf."

"I know. I felt it."

"If you hadn't stepped in front of me..."

"I did."

"If you'd been wrong about the Seer..."

"Ronan." I crossed the stone floor and put my hand on his face. "Look at me. Does this look like a woman the bond is eating?"

His eyes went over me slowly.

"All week I've been loud and hungry and furious," I said. "I have never felt so awake in my life."

"Hazel."

"The bond doesn't take," I said. "It gives. You've been afraid of the wrong thing for thirty-one years."

Something went across his face then, and I felt it go through the bond too: his old fear that the bond would eat me give way at last.

He pulled me into him so hard that the breath left my lungs.

His mouth came down on mine, and this time there was no mocking line and no rule.

He kissed me hungrily, and I kissed him back.

I tore at the buttons of his shirt, and he lifted my dress over my head in one pull and tossed it on the bench.

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