Chapter 30 · The Second Draw

The lock turned at midnight. One click, no rattle — he'd had the mechanism fixed so it couldn't rattle. I stood with both palms flat on the door until the wood stopped holding his heat.

An hour before, he'd had me backed into that same doorframe with one hand spread over my stomach like he was planting a flag on it. "Whatever you're hiding," he'd said, mouth down where it crawled under my jaw, "you're never leaving my sight again." Then he kissed me. Then he walked out. Then he turned the key.

His mother's room smelled like cedar and nothing else. There was a pale rectangle on the wallpaper where her portrait used to hang — the shape a person leaves behind when nobody's allowed to say her name.

I put my knuckles on the window. Iron mesh, so fine you couldn't see it till your skin found the cold bite of it. Not a guest. Inventory. And the pack wanted me grateful for the gold trim.

Fine. I'd been in worse.

The bond mark woke me before dawn —