What Are You?

My room was off the back of the kitchen, small and plain, with a narrow bed and a window that looked out over the forest. It was nicer than my room at home. That should have made me feel better.

It didn’t.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling, replaying the voices from the study.

They didn’t have to give her up. They wanted to.

I’d known it. Of course I’d known it. My mother had practically said it to my face. But there was a difference between knowing something and hearing a stranger read it off a bank statement.

And then the other part. The part I couldn’t make sense of.

Why did your wolf wake you three times last night, brother? Because mine did too.

At four in the morning, I gave up and texted Orion.

Me: I’m okay. They feed me. The cook is terrifying.

He answered in less than a minute, like he hadn’t been sleeping either.

Orion: Terrifying how?

Me: She made me eat two bowls of stew.

Orion: Marry her.

I laughed out loud in the dark. It was the first time in two days.

By six I was in the kitchen in my starched white blouse and pale blue skirt, chopping vegetables while Greta pulled bread out of the ovens.

Carrots. Onions. Peppers. The rhythm helped. Knife down, slide, knife down. My hands were still raw from scrubbing yesterday, and the onion juice stung like crazy, but I didn’t stop.

That was the one thing Nightreach had taught me. You don’t stop. You don’t let anyone see it hurts.

The kitchen door swung open.

Greta glanced up, and her hands went still on the bread pan.

I looked up too.

Dax Aurexian stood in the doorway.

He was dressed for the day in a black shirt with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows, tattoos dark against his forearms. His hair was still damp, like he’d just come out of the shower, and he hadn’t bothered to shave. He looked around the kitchen like he’d never seen it before.

Then his eyes found me and stayed there.

“Alpha,” Greta said slowly. “Can I get you something?”

“Coffee.”

Greta’s eyebrows climbed. She looked at him. Then at me. Then she set down the bread pan and went to the pot without another word.

Dax didn’t sit. He leaned against the counter across from me, arms folded, and watched.

I went back to chopping. Knife down, slide. Knife down.

I could feel him looking. It was like standing too close to a fire. You don’t have to touch it to know exactly where it is.

“You’re holding it wrong,” he said.

I didn’t look up. “The knife?”

“You’ll take a finger off.”

“I’ve been chopping vegetables since I was eight.”

“Badly, apparently.”

I set the knife down and looked at him. “Did you come in here to critique my knife skills, Alpha?”

Greta made a sound that might have been a cough.

Something moved at the corner of Dax’s mouth. Not a smile. Not quite. But close enough that it changed his whole face.

Then his gaze dropped to my hands, and the almost-smile disappeared.

My knuckles were red and cracked from yesterday’s scrubbing. One had split and bled a little overnight. I’d forgotten.

I curled my fingers in against my palm.

He’d already seen.

Greta set a mug of black coffee on the counter in front of him. Dax didn’t touch it. He kept looking at my hands. Then he pushed off the counter and walked around the island toward me.

My breath caught.

He stopped beside me. Close. Close enough that the warmth of him pressed against my arm through my sleeve, and I smelled pine and woodsmoke and something underneath that made my stomach drop.

He didn’t touch me.

He reached past me, slowly, his arm brushing just short of my shoulder, and set something down on the cutting board beside the onions.

A small tin. Unmarked. Plain.

“For your hands,” he said, his voice low, rough.

I stared at the tin. Then up at him.

That was a mistake.

He was right there. Dark green eyes, gold at the center, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t read. His jaw was tight. A muscle jumped in it.

Neither of us moved.

The kitchen was full of noise. The ovens ticked. Water boiled. Somewhere in the house a door slammed. And none of it reached me. It felt like the whole world had narrowed to the six inches between us.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

Just for a second.

Then he stepped back so fast it was like I’d burned him.

“Don’t hold the knife like that,” he said roughly. “I mean it.”

He turned and walked out. He left his coffee.

The kitchen door swung shut behind him.

I stood there, my heart pounding, staring at the little tin on the cutting board.

Greta came around the island. She picked up the tin, unscrewed the lid, and sniffed. Her eyebrows went up again. 

“I’ve run this kitchen for eleven years,” Greta said slowly, looking at the door. “And that boy has never once set foot in it.”

She put the tin back in my hand and closed my fingers around it.

“Not once,” she said.

I spent the rest of the day trying very hard not to think about Dax Aurexian.

I failed.

By nightfall I’d scrubbed the main staircase, polished the silver twice, and rubbed the salve into my knuckles four times. They’d stopped stinging completely. I was annoyed about that too.

It was almost midnight when I finally carried the last basket of linens up to the third floor. The east wing was dark and quiet. I moved fast and silent, the way I’d learned to at home, where being noticed only ever meant trouble.

I was halfway down the hall when a door opened behind me.

I didn’t hear footsteps. I didn’t hear anything.

But suddenly the air changed. Heavier. Colder. Every hair on my arms stood up.

I turned.

Fenris Aurexian stood in the hallway.

No suit tonight. Just a dark shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled. Somehow that made him more frightening. Like I’d caught the blade without its sheath.

“Alpha.” I lowered my eyes the way Greta had told me. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Stay.”

He walked toward me. Slowly. Each step measured. I backed up until my shoulders hit the wall and the linen basket pressed against my chest like a shield.

He stopped in front of me. Close. Too close. He was taller than I’d realized, and the hallway lamp threw his face into hard lines and shadow.

“One day,” he said quietly. “You’ve been in my house for one day.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

“In that one day, my brothers haven’t slept. My wolf hasn’t slept.” His voice was ice. “He paces. He won’t settle. He hasn’t done that since we were children.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing.

Fenris leaned in, one hand braced on the wall beside my head, and those cold gray eyes searched my face like he was trying to pull the truth out of me by force.

“So I’ll ask you once,” he said. “And you’ll tell me the truth.”

His eyes flared gold.

“What are you?”

And before I could answer, before I could even breathe, something inside me rose up to meet him.

Something that had been asleep my whole life.

It looked out through my eyes at the Alpha in front of me, and it was not afraid.

Fenris went utterly still.

His hand dropped from the wall. His face drained of color.

“Your eyes,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what he saw.

But Fenris Aurexian took a step back from me.