# Chapter 8: Hot Chocolate

I shut the door so fast and so quietly that I didn't even breathe.

Then I stood with my back against Kael's bedroom door, my heart pounding like a drum, and I listened.

Footsteps went slowly down the stairs. A door opened somewhere far below. Then it closed.

Silence.

I slid down onto the floor and pressed my hand over my mouth.

*Hello again, little one.*

Again.

He said *again*. Like he'd smelled my blood before. Like he'd been waiting for it.

I thought about Mom's white face at dinner when he talked about the Moonborn, and her broken water glass. *Stay away from Garrett's library. Never let anyone take your blood.*

She knew. Whatever this was, my mother knew.

And now Garrett Thorne had a bandage soaked in my blood in his jacket pocket.

---

When Kael came back with a tray of food, I was sitting on the edge of his bed again, like I had never moved.

"Grilled cheese," he said, putting the tray down beside me. "And tomato soup. It's all I know how to make."

"The Alpha cooks?"

"The Alpha makes grilled cheese," he said. "Don't tell anyone. It'll ruin my reputation."

I tried to laugh. It came out wrong.

He looked at me closely. "What's wrong?"

*Tell him,* a voice in my head said. *Tell him what his father just did.*

But then I looked past him at the photo on his bedside table. His mother, smiling, holding a little boy on her lap. And I remembered his voice when he said, *He's all I have left.*

How do you tell someone that the only parent he has left might be a monster? With what proof? A bandage? A strange smile in a dark hallway?

He would think I was crazy, or worse, a liar.

"Nothing," I said. "My ankle just hurts."

He didn't look like he believed me. But he didn't push.

"Eat," he said. "Then go rest. And Sienna, about the deal…"

"Don't you dare say it's over."

"I wasn't going to." He sat down in the chair by his desk. "The days still count. But for the next two days, you train up here." He tapped his head. "Pack history. Border maps. Guard rules. You'll read every book I give you, and I'll test you."

"That's not training. That's homework."

"A Guard who doesn't know the land is a dead Guard."

I looked at him. Then I picked up my grilled cheese and took a big bite.

"Fine," I said with my mouth full. "But this sandwich is a little burnt."

For the second time in my life, I saw Kael Thorne almost smile.

---

That night, I couldn't sleep. Again.

I lay in my big bed in my big room and listened to the house. The old wood creaked. The wind moaned. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw Garrett smelling my blood with his eyes closed, like a man smelling a good meal.

At midnight, I gave up.

My ankle was wrapped tight, and it was a little better after a day of rest and ice. I put on my fuzzy socks and my big old hoodie, and I hopped slowly out of my room, down the long dark hallway, and down three floors of stairs to the kitchen.

I just wanted a glass of milk, and a few minutes of feeling normal.

The kitchen was huge and dark and silver in the moonlight. I didn't turn on the big light. I just hopped over to the fridge and opened it.

"Can't sleep?"

I screamed. A small scream, but a scream. I almost dropped the milk.

Kael was sitting at the big wooden kitchen table in the dark. He was wearing gray sweatpants and an old black T-shirt, and his hair was messy. He had a cup in his hands.

"Are you *trying* to kill me?" I hissed, holding my chest.

"Sorry." He didn't look sorry. He looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"What are you doing sitting in the dark like a vampire?"

"Thinking." He looked at the milk in my hand. "You know what's better than cold milk?"

"What?"

He got up, took the milk from me, and walked over to the stove.

"Sit," he said.

I sat. I watched him pour milk into a little pot and turn on the fire. He found a bar of dark chocolate in the cupboard and broke pieces into the milk. He stirred it slowly with a wooden spoon. Then he added a tiny pinch of something.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Cinnamon."

"Who taught you how to make hot chocolate?"

He was quiet for a moment. He kept stirring.

"My mom," he said softly. "When I couldn't sleep as a kid, she'd bring me down here in the middle of the night. She'd make this, and she'd sing to me while it cooked."

"What did she sing?"

"Old songs. Silly ones. She had a terrible voice." The corner of his mouth went up. "Really terrible. The dogs used to howl."

I laughed. A real laugh this time.

He poured the hot chocolate into two big mugs and brought them to the table. He put one in front of me and sat down across from me.

I wrapped my cold hands around the mug. It was warm. It smelled like chocolate and cinnamon and something sweet. I took a sip.

It was the best thing I had ever tasted in my whole life.

"Oh my God," I said.

"Good?"

"This is illegal. This should be illegal."

He smiled. A real smile, the first full smile I'd ever seen from him, and it changed his whole face. He looked younger. He looked softer. He looked like a boy whose mom used to sing to him in a dark kitchen.

My heart did a slow, stupid flip.

We sat there for a while, just drinking and listening to the wind outside.

"What about your mom?" he asked. "What's she like?"

I thought about it.

"Quiet," I said. "Tired. She works so hard, Kael. Every day of my life, she's been working. In the winter, her hands crack open from the hot water and the soap. They bleed. She wraps them in old rags and keeps going." I looked down at my mug. "But she never cries. Not in front of me. And every night when I was little, no matter how tired she was, she'd sit on my bed and tell me the same thing."

"What?"

"*One day, we'll leave this place.*" I smiled sadly. "One day. I used to believe her."

"And now?"

"Now I'm going to make it happen."

He looked at me across the table. The moonlight was on his face, and his eyes were very soft.

"You will," he said quietly. "I know you will."

Something warm spread through my chest. It wasn't from the hot chocolate.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"You just did."

He gave me a look.

"Okay," I said. "Ask."

"Today, with Dr. Marsh, why didn't you want to give your blood?"

My hands went tight around my mug.

"I told you. I'm scared of needles."

"You stitched me up with a needle."

Oh. Right. I had forgotten about that.

"That's different," I said. "That was *my* needle. In *your* skin."

He looked at me for a long moment. I knew he didn't believe me.

But then he said something that surprised me.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"You don't want to tell me. That's okay. When you're ready, I'll be here." He turned his mug slowly on the table. "I just want you to know you can trust me, Sienna. With anything."

I wanted to. I really wanted to. I wanted to tell him about my mother's warning, and the locket with the scratched-out face, and his father in the dark hallway, smelling my blood.

The words were right there, on the tip of my tongue.

"Kael…"

"Wait." He put his mug down. "Let me say something first. Before I lose my nerve."

I waited. My heart was pounding.

He looked down at the table. Then he looked up at me.

"Since that night at the ranger station," he said slowly, "I haven't been able to think straight. I can't sleep, and I can't focus. I lead the pack meetings, and I don't hear a single word anyone says, because I'm thinking about you. Your hands. Your voice. The way you told me to shut up when I was bleeding."

"I didn't tell you to shut up."

"You told me I was bleeding everywhere and that's not how it works."

"That's basically the same thing."

He smiled again, quick and small. Then the smile went away, and his face was serious.

"I know it's crazy," he said. "I know you're about to be my stepsister. I know I'm supposed to marry someone else. I know all of it." His hand moved across the table, slowly, until his fingers were almost touching mine. "But every time I look at you, something inside me says…"

He stopped.

I couldn't breathe.

"Says what?" I whispered.

His fingers touched mine, very softly. That warm lightning ran up my arm and into my chest, and I didn't pull away this time.

"Says *mine*," he whispered.

We were both leaning closer across the table. His face was coming closer to mine, and closer. I could smell the chocolate on his breath and the pine-tree soap on his skin, and my eyes were already closing.

Then the kitchen light snapped on.

It was so bright it hurt. We jumped apart like we'd been burned.

Margot was standing in the kitchen doorway.

Her long red hair was messy, like she'd just woken up. Her feet were bare. And she wasn't wearing a robe.

She was wearing a man's black dress shirt, way too big for her. It hung down to the middle of her thighs, and the top three buttons were open.

I knew that shirt. I had seen it yesterday, hanging in Kael's closet.

Margot looked at me. Then she looked at the two mugs on the table. Then she looked at Kael, and a slow, sweet smile spread across her face.

"There you are, baby," she said softly. "I woke up and you were gone."

She held out her hand to him.

"Come back to bed."