THE SCENT ON HIS SHIRT

Chapter 14:

Three maids stopped talking when I walked into the east corridor.

One of them dropped a stack of towels. Nobody picked them up.

“Good morning,” I said.

They bowed so fast it looked painful.

I didn't need anyone to explain. Somebody had talked, and by sunrise the story had grown legs.

A girl on the stairs whispered naked. Another one said wolf. Both of them stared at my cloak when they said it.

I should have left the cloak in my room. I knew that. But my room was freezing, my shoulder still hurt, and the wool was thick and warm and smelled like cedar. I told myself I was only carrying it back to him.

Valen wasn't in his study. A guard told me he'd gone out to the tree line himself, and that I could wait in the great hall, where Lady Seraphina of House Thorne was being welcomed.

“Who?”

“The Alpha Prime's guest, my lady. She came at dawn.”

I should have stayed in the corridor. I walked in instead.

The hall was packed. Elders at the long tables, cups half raised, every face turned towards the woman in the middle of the floor. She was tall, with copper hair pinned high and green silk that cost more than my whole wardrobe. Her jasmine perfume reached me ten steps away and made my nose burn.

Her eyes dropped to my shoulders and stayed there.

“That's a lovely cloak,” she said. Her voice was sweet like syrup left out in the sun. “Black wool, silver clasp. I've only seen one like it. On the Alpha Prime.”

Chairs creaked. Heads turned.

“He lent it to me last night,” I said. “I'm giving it back.”

“Last night.” She smiled. “How kind of him.”

Three elders looked at the cloak, then at Seraphina, like they were doing sums.

She came closer, glass in hand, like she wanted to touch my sleeve. Her wrist tipped.

Red wine hit my chest and soaked straight through the wool. It was cold on my skin. It ran down my ribs.

“Oh no,” said Seraphina. Her face looked sorry. Her eyes did not. “My hand slipped.”

Her hand had not slipped. I watched it tip. She watched me watch.

Inside my head, my wolf said one word.

Bite.

No.

The whole hall waited. Every eye crawled over the stain, then up to my face, looking for the crack. They'd all heard about the old Sylvie. She'd once thrown a jug at a maid for less. Somebody at the back actually leaned forward in his seat.

“Let me replace it,” Seraphina said. “I brought a cloak from my own house, with the silver thorn on the shoulder. Much finer than this. You can wear ours and give the Alpha his back.”

So that was the plan. Take his cloak off me and put hers on, in front of everyone.

My cheeks were burning. My fingers had balled into fists under the wool. I made them open.

“No, thank you.” I smiled. It hurt my face. “It's only wine. Wool washes.”

“But it's ruined.”

“Then it's ruined. It isn't mine, so I'll tell him myself.”

The man at the back sat down again, disappointed.

The doors banged open.

Cold air rolled across the floor, with the smell of pine and wet earth. Valen stood in the doorway with mud on his boots and his hair messed up by the wind. He looked at the hall. At Seraphina. At me.

Then his head tilted and his nostrils flared.

I knew exactly what he smelled. Wine, jasmine, and under both of them, his own scent on his own cloak, on my shoulders.

My wolf shoved against my ribs, loud and pleased. Traitor.

His jaw went hard.

He crossed the floor. Nobody breathed. He stopped so close I felt his heat through the wet wool, and he picked up the stained corner with two fingers, looked at it, and dropped it. His knuckles brushed my collarbone. I forgot how to swallow.

“Who did this?”

Nobody answered. Seraphina studied her glass. I studied the floor, then decided I was sick of studying the floor.

“An accident,” Seraphina said fast. “I was only offering Lady Sylvie a cloak of mine. And I hoped, Alpha, that you might offer yours to me properly one day. A man's cloak on a woman's shoulders is a promise. Or so my mother always said.”

She was good. She'd wrapped an insult inside a proposal and handed it to him in front of the whole pack.

Valen turned to her. His face didn't change at all.

“I don't give my belongings to women I intend to marry.”

Silence.

Somewhere a spoon hit the floor. My ears rang. The wine on my chest had gone cold and I could feel my heartbeat pounding in it.

I didn't follow it. Was that about her? About me? Then the elders at the high table started whispering, and I caught pieces of it. He's refused Thorne. In front of everyone. The alliance is finished.

Seraphina's smile stayed exactly where it was. That's how I knew it had landed.

“Go and change,” Valen told me, not loudly. “Then find me.”

He walked out again. The doors swung shut behind him.

---

The water in the washroom was ice cold and the wine had gone sticky between my fingers. I was scrubbing my collarbone with a rag when the door opened and the jasmine came in first.

“Don't,” I said. “If you're here to apologise, save it.”

“I never apologise.” Seraphina leaned against the doorframe. Without the audience, her smile had gone. She looked tired. “I'm here to tell you something for free.”

“You poured wine on me. You don't get to give me advice.”

“I poured wine to see what you'd do.” She shrugged. “The old Sylvie would have broken my nose.”

“Maybe I'm saving it.”

“I came here for a husband with a big enough army,” she said. “You came in his cloak. We both want something from him.”

“I don't want anything from him.”

“Then you're the only one in this pack.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Even my wolf had no comment, which was a first.

“An Alpha's attention is a lovely thing,” she said. “Right up until it turns into a cage.”

The rag stopped in my hand.

“He'll like how you smell. He'll decide what you eat, where you sleep, who gets to look at you. And you'll thank him for it, because it will feel like being safe.”

I wrung the rag out and watched the pink water run down the drain. When I looked up, I really looked at her for the first time. Her hands were shaking. She pushed them into her skirt.

“Is that experience talking?”

She laughed, one short breath through her nose. Then she stepped forward, and with two fingers she pulled down the collar of her green silk.

A pale scar curved along the side of her neck. Teeth marks, old and healed wrong.

“Yes,” said Seraphina. “And he's riding for this pack right now. He'll be at the gates by dark.”