*Chapter 7** **Smoke in the Kitchen**

*

Kael took one more step toward the house.

I dropped down from the barrel so fast that my knees hit the stone floor. Pain shot up my legs, but I did not make a sound. I pressed my back against the cold wall under the grate and held my bleeding hand against my chest.

*He heard me. He heard me. Goddess help me, he heard me.*

Outside, Dorian was still screaming. It was a broken sound now, more like crying. People were shouting. Someone yelled for a healer. But under all that noise I could hear something else.

Footsteps. Heavy, slow footsteps, crossing the square toward the house.

"Alpha?" That was Rowan's voice. "Alpha, what is it?"

Kael didn't answer him. The footsteps kept coming.

Then I heard heels. Fast heels, clicking on the stones, almost running.

"Alpha Kael!" Vivienne's voice was high and bright, the voice she used for important guests. "Alpha, please. Is something wrong? Can I help you?"

"Something is in that house."

"In my house?" She laughed a little. It sounded wrong, too tight. "Only the kitchen, Alpha. Only servants and pots and rats. We have terrible rats this year. I'm so ashamed. They're as big as cats."

"Move."

"Alpha, please, a man of your rank should not walk through a dirty kitchen…"

"I said move."

There was a short silence. Then the heels stepped aside.

I heard the back door of the kitchen swing open. It hit the wall with a bang.

He was inside.

He was right above me. I could hear his boots on the wooden floor of the kitchen. Slow. Careful. Step. Step. Step. He was walking the way he had walked down the line of girls, like a man looking for one lost coin.

The smell came down through the cracks in the cellar door. Cedar smoke and rain on hot stone. It filled the dark around me, and my body answered it the way it always did. Heat climbed up my spine. My breath came fast and short. Under my hair, my neck had stopped burning, but now it was pulsing again, faster and faster.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

*Stop it,* I begged. *Please, stop it. He will hear you. He can hear everything.*

I pushed my fist against my mouth. I closed my eyes. I tried to make myself small, as small as a mouse, as small as nothing.

The boots stopped.

They were right over the cellar door. I knew because a little dust fell down from the wood onto my hair. He was standing on the very spot. If he moved the flour sack, if he pulled up the door…

I heard him breathe in. Long and slow, through his nose.

My heart stopped.

And then I heard another sound. A crash, and a hiss, and a woman's voice saying, "Oh! Oh, no, no, no!"

My mother.

I didn't know where she had come from. Maybe she had been in the pantry. Maybe she had run in behind him. But I knew her voice the way I knew my own heartbeat.

The hissing got louder, and a moment later a terrible smell came down through the cracks. Bitter and sharp and burning. It got into my nose and my throat and made my eyes water.

Dried sage. Black pepper. And something else, something that smelled like burning hair.

My mother had thrown a whole basket of dried herbs into the cooking fire.

Above me, Kael started to cough. A hard, rough cough. I heard him step back.

"I'm so sorry, Alpha!" my mother cried. "I'm so sorry! I tripped. My old legs. Oh, the smoke! Let me open the window!"

I heard her run across the kitchen. I heard the window bang open. But the smoke kept coming. It rolled down through the cracks into the cellar like grey water. I pulled the neck of my dress up over my nose and tried not to cough. My eyes were streaming.

Up above, Kael was still coughing.

I understood then what my mother had done. Wolves have the best noses in the world. That is their power. A wolf can smell a rabbit from a mile away. He can smell fear on your skin. He can smell a lie in your sweat.

But a wolf in a room full of pepper smoke can smell nothing at all.

"Who are you?" Kael said. His voice was rough from the smoke.

"Only a servant, Alpha. I work in the kitchen. I'm sorry. I'm so clumsy. Please forgive me."

There was a long silence.

I waited for him to push her aside. I waited for him to tear up the floor. I waited for the end of my life.

But he didn't move.

"Look at me," he said.

I heard my mother's feet shift on the floor.

"Your face," Kael said slowly. "You look like someone."

My blood went cold.

*He means me,* I thought. *He's never seen my face, but he means me.* But that was crazy. He had never seen me. Not in the forest. Not in the square. He couldn't know my face.

So who did my mother look like?

"I have a very ordinary face, Alpha," my mother said softly. "Many people say so."

"No," he said. "You don't."

Another long silence. The smoke kept pouring down. I could hear the fire still hissing and spitting.

"Alpha!" Rowan's voice came from the back door. He was coughing too. "Alpha, come out of there. You won't smell anything through this. And the Ashfall boy is in a bad way. His father is here now, and he's shouting about blood debts. We need you in the square."

Kael didn't answer at first. I could almost feel him standing there, fighting with himself. He wanted to stay. He was sure something was wrong.

Then the boots turned. Step. Step. Step. Away from the cellar door. Out of the kitchen. The back door swung shut behind him.

I let out my breath.

It came out of me like a sob. I bent over with my face in my knees and shook. The smoke was still thick in the cellar, and I coughed and coughed into my dress until my chest hurt. But I was alive. I was alive, and he was gone.

A minute later the flour sack scraped. The cellar door lifted just an inch. My mother's eyes looked down at me through the crack, red from the smoke.

"Are you hurt?" she whispered.

It was the same thing he had said to me in the forest. The same three words. I almost laughed, and almost cried, and did neither.

"No," I said. "Mama, how did you know?"

"I didn't. I came back to the kitchen to make sure you were not in your room. I heard him walking. And I saw your hand marks in the flour on top of this door." She shook her head. "Madam Vivienne is very clever, but she has never once cleaned a kitchen in her life."

"He said you look like someone."

Something flickered in her eyes. Fear, maybe. Or a memory.

"Stay down there until I come for you," she said. "Don't make a sound. Not one."

And she lowered the door again.

I stayed down there for the rest of the day.

I heard everything through the grate. I heard Dorian's father, the Alpha of Ashfall, shouting at my father that his son had been shamed in front of two packs. I heard Dorian being carried away, moaning. I heard the Hollowmere Alpha trying to calm everyone down with a shaky voice.

And I heard Kael make his choice.

"The girl comes with me," he said. "To Blackfang."

The square went silent.

"Until the next full moon," he went on, "she will live in my house under my protection. If her mark wakes, if the bond is real, she will be my mate. If it is not real…" He stopped for a moment. "Then we will speak again."

I heard Selene give a little cry, like she was overcome with joy. I heard Vivienne laugh, a real laugh this time, happy and proud. I heard my father say, "Thank you, Alpha. Thank you. The Moon Goddess has blessed my house."

Then the car doors slammed. The engines started, one by one. The Blackfang wolves howled together, a long, deep, terrible sound, and then they were gone down the east road.

And my sister was gone with them. Gone in my coat, wearing my story, to live in the house of the man who belonged to me.

I sat in the dark and cried until there were no tears left.

My mother came for me when the sun went down. She brought me up the ladder and sat me by the kitchen fire, and she washed the bite on my hand with warm water and wrapped it in a clean cloth. She did not ask me any questions. She just held my hand in her lap, and every few minutes she touched my hair.

"Mama," I said at last. "You were going to tell me something. This morning. At the window. You said, 'When you were born…'"

Her hand went still on my hair.

"Not tonight," she said quietly.

"But…"

"Not tonight, Mira. Please. These walls have ears."

Then the kitchen door crashed open.

My father stood in the doorway. His face was red, and his eyes were small and wet from too much wine. He had been celebrating all afternoon. I could smell it on him from across the room.

"There you are," he said.

My mother let go of my hand and stood up quickly, with her eyes on the floor.

"So you are not dying after all," my father said. He walked toward me. "Your stepmother said you were too sick to stand. Too sick to come out when the most powerful Alpha in the whole north stood in my square and asked for you by name."

"I'm sorry, Father," I whispered.

"Do you know how I looked? Do you know what he thought? That the Gamma of Hollowmere hides his daughters like a coward! That I cannot control my own house!" He was shouting now. "He looked at me like I was dirt, girl. Like I was dirt!"

"Father, please…"

He hit me.

It wasn't a slap like Vivienne's. It was the back of his big heavy hand, and it knocked me right off my stool onto the stone floor. My head hit the leg of the table. For a moment the whole room spun and went grey.

My mother made a small sound and took one step forward. My father turned and looked at her, and she stopped. She looked at the floor again. Her hands were shaking at her sides.

That was the worst part. Not the pain in my face. Watching my mother stand there, not allowed to help her own child.

"On the one day," my father said, breathing hard. "The one day this family finally rises, and you are hiding in bed like a sick cat. Selene will be a Luna. A Luna, do you understand? And you…" He looked down at me lying on the floor. "You are nothing. You have always been nothing."

I lay there and didn't say a word. What could I say? I had heard it my whole life.

Then someone knocked at the front door.

Not a soft knock. Three hard, loud knocks, like a fist made of iron.

My father frowned. He turned and walked out of the kitchen. I pushed myself up on my elbow. My mother came and knelt beside me and held my face in her hands, looking at the bruise already rising on my cheek.

From the front hall I heard the door open. I heard a man's voice, cold and short. Then the door closed again.

A long silence.

Then Vivienne's voice, sharp and confused. "What is it, Garrick? Who was that?"

"A Blackfang runner," my father said. His voice sounded strange. "With a letter. Sealed with the Alpha's own mark."

Paper tore. Another long silence. My mother's hands went still on my face.

Then my father began to read out loud, slowly, the way he always read when the words were important.

"To the Gamma of Hollowmere. The rogues who attacked my mate came onto your land, and your pack did nothing to stop them. For this, Hollowmere owes Blackfang a blood price. By order of your Alpha, that price falls on your house. Within seven days, you will send me a bride."

Vivienne laughed, high and happy. "Well, of course! Selene is already…"

"There's more," my father said.

He kept reading.

"The bride will not be Selene Hale. The girl who claims my mark will not be bought or sold. I want another daughter of your house."

The kitchen went completely silent. Even the fire seemed to stop crackling.

Then I heard my father's heavy footsteps coming back down the hall. Slowly. One step at a time.

He stopped in the kitchen doorway with the letter in his hand.

And for the first time in my whole life, my father looked at me like I was worth something.