Chapter 14: You Don't Get to Ask

Rhys stood in the doorway until Cerys pointed at the chair.

“You can come in,” she said. “Five minutes. Elis is staying nearby.”

“I know. He told me.”

He shut the door without letting it latch. She had asked Elis to remain close enough to hear her if she needed him.

He took the chair this time. Cerys was glad he hadn't made her ask him to sit, though she wished she'd felt something less familiar when he settled beside her bed.

“I wanted to see how you were,” he said.

“I wrote a note for hydroponics yesterday. Two whole sentences.”

“You must have hated stopping.”

“I did,” Cerys said.

He nearly smiled. Rhys had spent years teasing her about writing three pages where one would do.

Cerys had given him five minutes. If she filled them with work, she could leave believing he'd come because he missed her, not because he had another explanation for why he couldn't be with her.

“Is that all you wanted to ask?”

His face tightened. “I was hoping you'd let me see you.”

“I'm here.”

“I know.”

He looked at the page beside her pillow. She'd kept her coworker's corrections, the ones she'd agreed not to argue about. Rhys reached toward it, then stopped. She had never needed to tell him that her work mattered. He used to listen when she came home cross about a tray of plants and knew better than to call the argument small.

“Did they manage without you?” he asked.

“They made a decision I wouldn't have made. It was the right one.”

That got a brief smile out of him. It made the room feel like it had before he was Alpha, before she had to decide whether a conversation with him was worth the effort it cost her.

She shifted against the pillow. Her shirt caught beneath her injured shoulder, and she tugged the fabric free with her good hand.

Rhys stopped smiling.

His eyes had gone to the base of her neck. The loose collar had slipped far enough to expose the bite. The worst swelling had gone down, and the wound had begun to scar along its uneven edges, high between her neck and shoulder. It was the first time he'd seen it without a dressing in the way.

Cerys moved her hand toward her collar. She stopped when he said her name.

“Who did that?”

For a moment she thought he meant Elis. Then she saw where he was looking.

“No one knows.”

“Has anyone tried to find out?”

“How would they?” Cerys asked.

He rubbed his palms against his knees. “I thought you might remember something.”

“From Wolf Night?”

He didn't answer.

She remembered crawling toward the silo after dawn. The bite had hurt when she touched it. She remembered blood on her hand and the fear that she might not reach the door. Whatever had happened before she woke was still missing.

“Elis told you that,” she said.

“I know what he told me.”

“Then what are you asking?”

Rhys looked at the scar again. This time she saw him do it, and she understood why his voice had changed. He wasn't looking at the pain the bite had caused her. He was looking at where it sat.

“It's too close,” he said.

“To what?”

He glanced at her face. She had known him since they were children; she knew when he wanted her to finish a sentence for him.

“It's not a mark,” she said. “Elis was clear about that.”

“I heard him.”

“Then believe him.”

“I do.” Rhys leaned forward. “But someone put their teeth there.”

Cerys stared at him. A wolf had bitten her during a night she couldn't remember. That was everything she knew. Rhys was making it sound as though she'd let someone come close to her and kept a secret about it afterward.

“You saw what I looked like when I came home,” she said. “Do you think I chose any of those wounds?”

“No. God, no.” He stood so quickly the chair scraped against the floor. “That's not what I meant.”

“Then stop asking me as if I've been keeping something from you,” someone said.

He looked stricken. She hated that she still knew the shape of his hurt, that part of her wanted to ease it before he had to say another word.

“I just need to know who did it,” he said.

“You don't get to ask me like I owe you an answer.”

Rhys came around the chair. He was close enough now that Cerys could see the small crease between his brows. He lifted his hand toward her neck, the movement so familiar that for an instant she nearly let him finish it. He had brushed her hair aside when they were together without either of them thinking about permission.

She caught his wrist with her right hand before his fingers reached her skin.

“Don't.”

He froze. His eyes dropped to where she held him.

Cerys released him. Her hand was shaking from the effort, but she kept it on top of the sheet, where he could see it.

“I wasn't going to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“I only wanted to look,” Rhys said.

“You've looked.”

He stepped back. His hand stayed half raised before he lowered it. The empty space between them hurt more than she wanted to admit. She could have told him he could sit again. She could have let him hold her good hand, given him the reassurance he'd come looking for, and spent the rest of the afternoon wondering why he had left her in the first place.

Instead she pulled the collar of her shirt higher.

“That bite happened to me,” she said. “I don't know who did it, and I can't give you a name. You don't get to come here and decide what it means because of where it is.”

“I wasn't deciding anything.”

“You came closer when I said it wasn't a mark. You were going to touch me after I told you I didn't know.”

Rhys looked down. His jaw worked once before he spoke.

“I used to be allowed to.”

“Yes,” she said. “You were.”

His face changed. She couldn't tell whether the words had hurt because they were true or because he'd expected her to soften them.

“I still care about you,” he said.

“I know you do. You don't have to prove it by asking me questions I can't answer.”

The gap in the door hadn't moved. Elis was still outside; she could ask him to end the visit if she needed to. Cerys looked at Rhys standing between the chair and her bed, and realized she didn't need anyone to speak for her.

“I'm done for today,” she said.

“You said five minutes.”

“I know what I said.”

He looked as if he might argue. Then he moved the chair back where he'd found it.

“Will you let me come another day?”

She could hear the old answer rising. Of course. Come whenever you want. She missed him enough that the words were almost comforting.

“Ask me another day,” she said. “I might say no.”

Rhys nodded. He paused beside the door, his hand resting against its edge, but he didn't ask her to change her mind. When he left, he pulled it gently shut behind him.

Cerys looked at the chair. She could call after him, ask him to come back and sit until she remembered what it had felt like when his worry belonged beside hers.

His footsteps faded. She didn't call his name.