INICIAR SESIÓNFREYA'S POV"Him or us," the thin man said again, slower, as though I might not have understood the first time.Five faces in the doorway and one of them was Kade's. Every one of them was waiting.I stood in the middle of the hall and my hands had gone numb and the inside of my mouth tasted of pennies, and what I could think of, standing there, was a room I had been in eleven years from now, in a different life, with a registrar and a pen.Sign here, Luna.Nobody had asked me anything that day either. My mother was two months dead and my father was four weeks dead and Marissa had brought the papers in a folder with a ribbon on it and said it's all in hand, sweetheart, you've only to sign, and I had signed four pages I never read because I couldn't see them for crying, and the ribbon had gone in the fire.Four pages. A house. A name. A stone."Both," I said.The thin man blinked."That's not an answer.""It's the only one there is." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You've had e
FREYA'S POVMarissa had her coat half off and her hand still on the door and she was smiling, and the smile was for Kade and it was the smile of a woman who had come home to a house with the fires out."Ask her what?" she said.Kade didn't answer her. He was looking at me with his jaw set and his eyes doing the thing they did when he'd already decided and hated it."Freya," he said. "Ask her.""Mrs. Redwood," I said. "Did you know your husband was up at that house the week my nanny died?"Marissa's coat came off her shoulder and she hung it up, taking her time."Ellis told you," she said."He told me he was there. He told me about the step and the ring.""Then you know as much as I do." She turned and I got the odd sense that she wasn’t telling me the truth. "I found out tonight, same as you.""You found out tonight that your husband was there. You've known for sixteen years that something happened but you never asked."An emotion passed through her face. It was gone before I could pu
FREYA’S POV"I can finish a shift." Ronan broke the thick silence in the room."Can you?" Ashbourne lifted his head. "Tonight?"Ronan didn't answer."Tonight's the full moon," Ashbourne said. "It's up at nine. And there's a man in the north who'll have heard by now that a boy in this territory went gold in the eyes on a doorstep in front of a witness, and he'll have a man on the road before the week's out. So." He picked his hat up. "Do you shift, or do you half-shift and go down on your knees?""I don't know," he got to his feet."Then find out." Ashbourne stood too and put his hat on. "I've a room at the Fox and Hounds and I'll be back at half eight. Have him somewhere with a floor he can't break."He got to the door and stopped."One thing," he said, without turning round. "The pair of you have got the bond and it's real and it's woken up, and the whole territory will know it by Sunday. When a mate-bond goes public before a betrothal's settled, the betrothal becomes a piece of pape
FREYA'S POVWe took him into the small parlour and shut the door.My mother brought the tea herself and put it down hard enough to rattle and stood by the window with her arms folded and did not leave.Ashbourne sat in the chair nearest the fire and took his hat off and put it on the floor beside him, and looked round the room at the paintings and the clock and the good carpet, and then at Ronan, who had not sat down."Your mother was a Moonrock," he said without preamble.Ronan's chin came up. "My mother was a Redwood servant.""Your mother was a Moonrock." Ashbourne picked up his cup. "Her name was Ilse. She was nineteen and she was a second cousin to the last Moonrock Alpha. She was sent south the week the raids started, and she went into service under a false name, and she was already carrying when she went." He drank. "That's not a guess. That's a parish record and a hiring book and a woman in Whitby who's still alive and remembers a girl called Ilse with a Moonrock accent and a
FREYA'S POVHe kissed me back.For one second he didn't move at all, and then both his hands came up and took my face and his mouth came down on mine and it was nothing like the corridor. It was worse. It was slower and harder and his thumbs were pressed into my jaw and he made a sound against my mouth like a man setting down something heavy.The stone went hot against my throat, my chest and then the world tilted and I was somewhere else.The ward. The window with the bars on it and the grey light and the drip stand and the smell of antiseptic.He was in the chair. He had his elbows on his knees and his head down and he was holding my hand with both of his."I should have told you sooner," he said."Told me what?""That it was me. All of it. The flowers on the ward and the books and the—" His voice quited. "I've been coming every Thursday for four years, Freya. Four years.""You never said.""You never looked at me."He lifted his head and his eyes were gold and wet and he said, "I'm
FREYA'S POVThe fire cracked.Everybody looked at me.My mother. My father. Kade. Dr. Ewan. Corin Vance at the back with his hat in his hands."Told them what?" my mother said.I sat there with my hands in my lap and my mouth shut."Freya," Dr. Ewan said. "They've earned it. They've been in the water and in the trench and in the dark and they've asked for nothing but the truth. Give it to them."I looked at my mother."I died," I said.She didn't move."I died in a hospital ward when I was thirty-four years old," I said. "I had white hair and I couldn't shift and I had been sedated for three years and I had two children who were dead and a husband who had thrown me away and a woman who had taken my place and I died screaming for children nobody believed existed." I breathed, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. "And then I woke up in a pool at Lincoln Prep and I was seventeen years old and I had a second chance."I remember everything," I said. "I remember the marri







