Chapter 9:What She Asked

I walked back to my study and I was still thinking about it.

That was the problem. I could not stop thinking about it and I am not a man who gets stuck on things, I deal with problems and I move forward and I do not stand in corridors replaying conversations in my head like some boy who has never spoken to a woman before, and yet here I was, walking through my own keep, past guards who straightened as I passed and staircases I took without thinking, and the only thing in my head was her voice.

What happened to you.

I pushed my study door open and stood in the middle of the room.

People ask questions like weapons all the time, to find cracks and angles they can use later, I know that game well because I invented half of it, but she had not been doing any of that. She had looked at me with those direct unafraid eyes and she had just asked, 

I sat down and stared at the ceiling and tried to be logical because logic was something I was good at and feelings were something I had given up four years ago. She was human. She did not understand the bond or the curse or any of it and her asking that question was simply the natural response of someone observant who was not afraid to say what she noticed.

That was the logical explanation.

I did not entirely believe it.

The door opened and Daxton came in and something moved across his face that I did not like. Something almost like satisfaction.

"Well," he said, settling into the chair with the ease of a man enjoying himself too much.

"Do not," I said.

"I have not said anything."

"You were about to."

He smiled just slightly. "She really got to you."

"She refused a direct order," I said. "That is what happened."

"Right," he said pleasantly. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, watching me with those careful green eyes. "Evander. I have known you six years. I watched you lose Selene and rebuild this entire pack without flinching once. Not once did I see you rattle." He paused. "That girl rattled you in less than a week."

I said nothing.

"She is doing something to you," he continued, his voice still smooth but with something moving underneath it carefully, the way things move when they do not want to be noticed. "You released trespassers in front of the whole pack. You moved her to the third floor. You went to her room yourself instead of sending someone." He let that sit. "Any one of those things alone would raise questions. All three in one day is something else entirely."

He was not wrong. That was the most irritating thing about Daxton, he was rarely wrong about pack politics even when I did not want him to be right.

"She is going to become a problem you cannot manage," he said quietly. "Whatever pull you are feeling toward this girl, Evander, it will cost you. The pack is watching. The elders are watching. Lyra's father is already asking questions and the Crimson Moon Festival is three weeks away." He sat back. "A human girl in your study and your head is the last thing this pack needs right now."

I looked at the fire for a long moment.

"Schedule the dinner with Lyra's father," I said. "End of the week."

Daxton nodded slowly. "And the girl?"

"Is mine to handle," I said. "Stay out of it."

Something shifted behind his eyes, quick and gone.

"Of course," he said. And left.

I decided to go the next morning.

Not because I had forgiven him for anything, I had not, but because I had lain awake half the night thinking clearly about my situation and arrived at a very simple conclusion. I could not escape from a place I did not know. I could not learn this place from behind a closed door. The fastest way to understand Blackthorn Keep was to move through it, and that meant following his schedule and watching and listening and storing every detail until I had enough to work with.

I was not obeying him.

I was using him.

There was a difference and I held onto it firmly as I walked down the corridor to his study at eight exactly and knocked.

No answer.

I knocked again waited,tried the handle.

The door swung open to an empty room.

I stepped inside and then I heard water running behind the door on the far side and before I had fully understood what that meant the door opened and he walked out and I stopped breathing.

He was not dressed.

Just a towel around his waist, water still on his shoulders, dark hair damp and pushed back from his face, and I had seen attractive men before, Marcus was attractive, plenty of men were attractive, but there was something about Evander that requires a category I had not previously needed. Broad chest, defined in that way that came from actually using your body, a scar running diagonal across his left side that I found myself wanting to ask about, a stomach that made my thoughts go briefly and completely offline.

I knew I should look away.

I did not look away immediately.

Then I caught myself and dropped my eyes to the floor so fast my neck ached from it.

"I knocked," I said. "There was no answer so I came in, I did not know you were bathing 

And suddenly he was close, closer than he needed to be, close enough that I felt the warmth of him even with my eyes down.

"Lovely view," he said quietly. "Was it not."

My face burned. "I was called here, there was no answer, I was not

"Look at me."

I looked up.

He was right there, dark eyes and damp hair and that unreadable expression, and he was looking at me the way he sometimes looked at me in the courtyard, like I was something he was trying to solve, except now he was close enough that I could see the exact color of those eyes and my heart was doing things I absolutely refused to acknowledge.

Then he leaned forward slightly.

something behind his eyes shifted and his jaw tightened like he was pulling himself back from something he had been close to deciding, and then he straightened and walked into the dressing room without another word.

I stood there and breathed.

He came back out dressed, collar straight, every line of him back to that cold composed authority, and he looked at me like the last two minutes had not happened.

"You disobeyed me ," he said.

I said nothing.

"So here is what happens now. You will run my errands, attend to my needs, keep this study in order and present yourself whenever I require it. You will do this without argument. His voice was flat and certain and gave nothing. "If you cannot manage that then the room on the third floor becomes the cell again and we start from there."

I held his gaze. "Understood."

"Good." He moved to his desk and sat down and opened a document like I was not there again. "My correspondence needs sorting. Start with the stack on the left. Anything from the Ashstone family goes in a separate pile." He did not look up. "You are still standing there."

"I am aware," I said.

"Then get to work."

I walked to the desk and picked up the first letter and I did not look at him and he did not look at me .