Chapter 16: The Greenhouse

The elders adjourned the Moot until morning.

Braden's wardens took Jolene out through the kitchen with her hand still pressed to her stomach.

Nobody stopped them.

I did not go to the guest rooms.

I walked out the back of the lodge, past the empty clinic and the kitchen garden, to the greenhouse my father had built for my mother.

I had grown rosemary, yarrow and feverfew there for twenty years, and I had not set foot in it since the night I left.

The door stuck, and I put my shoulder to it.

Inside, it smelled of dry earth and dead mint, and the glass roof held the last of the dusk.

Half my seedlings had died.

The potting bench along the south wall was still there, scarred wood, with my gardening apron hanging on its nail.

I put my hands flat on it and let my head drop.

My knees were not quite steady, and I did not know if it was the day or the wolf.

She was pacing under my ribs, wanting something, and I knew what.

The door scraped behind me.

"I told myself I'd give you an hour," Alexander said.

"It's been twenty minutes."

"I lasted nineteen."

I turned around.

He stood in the doorway with his coat open and his hair wet from the drizzle.

His eyes went around the glass room once and came back to me.

"You were magnificent in there," he said.

"I told a hall full of people I was furniture."

"You told them you were done being furniture. They heard the difference."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and I pressed my hand against my mouth.

He crossed the floor and pulled me against his chest.

I stood stiff for a breath, and then I turned my face into his coat and shook.

He held me there and said nothing, with one big hand spread against the back of my head.

When I lifted my face, his thumb found the wet on my cheek.

"I said I wouldn't ask you for anything," he said.

"I know."

"I'm going to break it."

"Then break it," I said. "Quickly."

I kissed him.

It was nothing like the barn.

I kissed him slowly and deliberately, with my hands in his wet hair, and he made a rough sound deep in his chest and lifted me.

My hips hit the edge of the potting bench, and he set me on it and stood between my knees.

"Here?" he said against my mouth.

"Braden's lodge is two hundred yards away. I've wanted this in his shadow since the day I walked into that hall."

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