Chapter 7 midnight visitors

Odessa

I didn't sleep.

I lay on top of my covers in yesterday's jeans, staring at the ceiling, with the butterfly knife on my nightstand catching the moonlight. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard my father's voice. She said the moon would take you.

Twenty-three years of birthdays. Twenty-three years of my parents hugging me a little too long, watching me a little too closely, and I thought they were just overprotective.

My phone buzzed against the sheets. Unknown number.

Come outside.

I should have deleted it. I had been kidnapped less than twelve hours ago, so any normal person would have deleted it.

But I knew who it was. I knew it the way you know your own heartbeat.

I climbed out through the window like I was sixteen again, dropped onto the back lawn, and found him leaning against the old oak at the edge of our garden with his hands shoved in his pockets. No jacket. No guards. Just Evan, in a grey shirt, looking like he hadn't slept either.

"Your father will have my head if he finds me here," he said.

"My father will have to get in line."

He almost smiled. Then he saw my face, and it fell away.

"I couldn't stay in that house," he said. "Every time I closed my eyes, I saw your face when he said it."

"You think you're the only one?" My voice cracked. "I keep thinking about how it's going to feel. If I do it. Whether I'll know. Whether it hurts."

"Odessa."

"Whether I'll have time to say goodbye to Josh."

"Odessa."

He crossed the distance between us in two steps and took my face in both hands. His palms were warm and a little rough, and I stopped breathing.

"Listen to me," he said. "I am not going to let you do this."

"You'll be dead in thirty days."

"Then I'll be dead." His thumbs brushed under my eyes, catching tears I hadn't felt fall. "I am not trading your life for mine. Not for a night, not for a year, not for anything. I would rather die in a ditch than mark you and watch the moon take you from me."

I laughed, a wet, broken sound. "That's so stupid."

"Probably."

"You can't even lie to me. You know that, right? You can't tell me you'll be fine."

"I'm not saying I'll be fine." His forehead dropped against mine. His breath was shaking. "I'm saying I spent six years pretending you didn't exist because I thought it would keep you safe. If the price of you being alive is that I'm not, I've already made my peace with it."

"You're an idiot."

"So you've said."

"A selfish idiot." I grabbed his wrists. "You think I'm going to let you decide this for me? You think I want to live knowing you died because you didn't ask me?"

"I'm asking you not to."

"That isn't asking. That's begging."

"Then I'm begging."

We stood there in the dark, foreheads together, both of us shaking. For the first time in six years, I didn't want to run. I didn't want to scream at him. I just wanted to stand there until the sun came up and the world forgot we existed.

Then the oak branches rustled above us, and a voice said, "Oh, this is adorable."

Evan

I had Odessa behind me before I realized I'd moved.

My wolf was already surging up through my chest, teeth bared, but the woman standing at the edge of the garden didn't flinch. She just stood in the dark with her arms crossed, a long black coat pulled over her shoulders, her red hair braided over one shoulder.

I had known that braid for twenty years.

"Mia," I said.

"Hello, Evan." Her eyes flicked to Odessa, and her mouth curled. "Hello, Miss Kade. Nice to see you've survived."

"How did you get past the guards?" Odessa asked.

"I'm a Sorrel by betrothal, sweetheart. Half the border patrol still takes orders from me." Mia stepped closer. Her face was pale, and she looked exhausted in a way I'd never seen on her. "And I didn't come here to fight. I came because I've spent three days listening at doors, and I need to tell you something. Both of you."

"Whatever it is," I said, "it can wait until morning."

"It can't." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Because your father is lying to you, Evan."

The garden went very quiet.

I felt Odessa's hand slide into mine. She wasn't pulling me back. She was holding on.

"Careful," I said, very softly. "That's my Alpha you're talking about."

"I know exactly who he is." Mia's eyes were wet. "My grandmother was the Moon Priestess's scribe. Did you know that? She wrote down every blessing, every reading, for forty years. She kept the scrolls in a locked chest under her bed, and when she died last winter, she left them to me."

My stomach dropped.

"You went through the scrolls."

"I went looking for the bond reading," she said. "When you told me you didn't love me, Evan, when I finally made you say it, I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what was so wrong with me that the Goddess would give you to someone else. So I went looking for Odessa Kade's birth reading."

"And?" Odessa's voice was a thread.

Mia pulled a folded piece of parchment from inside her coat. The edges were brown, the ink faded. She held it out, and her hand was shaking.

"It doesn't say what your father told you."

Odessa didn't move. Neither did I.

"The Priestess did say the moon would take something on the night the bond was sealed," Mia said quietly. "But she never said what. The part about your life was added later. Different ink. Different hand."

My blood went cold.

"Whose hand?" I asked.

Mia looked at me, and I saw the answer in her face before she said it.

"Alpha Grayson's."

Odessa's fingers tightened on mine until my knuckles ached.

"He forged it," Mia whispered. "Six years ago, right after the dinner. He went to your father, Odessa, and he gave him a reason to keep you two apart. Because if the bond was sealed back then, something would have happened. Something he was afraid of."

"What?" I demanded. "What was he afraid of?"

"I don't know." Mia shook her head. Tears were sliding down her face now. "But whatever it is, Evan, he'd rather you both believed Odessa would die than let you find out the truth."

Somewhere inside the house, a light flicked on.

Odessa turned to me, wide-eyed, her face white in the moonlight.

"Evan," she whispered. "Your father kidnapped me to save your life."

"I know."

"But he lied to my father to keep us apart six years ago."

"I know."

"So which one is the lie?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

And for the first time in my life, I didn't know whether I wanted my father to be a liar or a saint.