Chapter 23 · Home

"Rowan." His palm hits the door before it latches, holding it open six inches. "We're not done."

"We were done the second you called me a mistake in front of forty witnesses." I shove my shoulder into the wood. He doesn't move an inch. Of course he doesn't. He's an Alpha standing in my doorway like he still owns the ground under it.

"You brought a medical file into council," he says. "You made me answer for it in front of the elders."

"I made you tell the truth. There's a difference." I let go of the door because fighting him for it is pointless, and he steps through like I invited him, which I did not.

My house still smells like the tea I never finished this morning, before the summons came, before I stood in a glass chapel and watched him say the word mistake into a microphone. Now he's standing in the middle of it, filling up the room the way he always does, and my chest does that stupid thing where the mark under my collar goes hot like someone pressed a coal to it.

"Say it again," I tell him. "Say it's fading.