Chapter 20: The Mark

The bullet had gone through his side and out again, and it missed everything it could have killed.

The Blackmoor healer told me so four times before I stopped shaking.

I sat beside his bed in the east wing, in his shirt, with a basin of water going cold beside me.

Outside the door, the sergeant dragged a man in by the collar and threw him on the floor.

It was Garrow Lazenby, still in his cast, with his lip split and the scope of a rifle strapped across his back.

"Found him on the far ridge," the sergeant said. "Hiding in a drainage pipe."

Garrow looked up at me.

He had been laughing at me for three years, and he was not laughing now.

"Who sent you?" I said.

"Kettlewell." He wet his lip. "He paid. He wanted you gone before the vote."

"And the Council?"

His eyes slid away.

"Quill said the bride, not the Alpha," he said. "She wanted the Alpha alive so Blackmoor would bleed for it. That's all I know. Don't kill me."

I stood.

The sergeant put a hand on her knife.

"Lock him with the Beta," I said. "They'll have a lot to talk about."

They dragged him out.

The door closed.

I stood in the silence and listened to Mathis breathe.

His eyes were open.

I did not know how long he had been awake.

"You told them not to hurt him," he said. His voice was a rasp.

"I told them to lock him up. There's a difference."

"You are very hard to love, Sabine Ardrey."

"Then you should stop."

"I don't think I can."

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He put up a hand that shook, and I took it and held it against my cheek.

It was hot and dry, and it smelled of iron.

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