Chapter 9

Chapter 9

ELENA

Kade woke me before the sun came up.

He didn't knock. He just opened the door, dropped a pile of clothes on the end of my bed, and said, "Get dressed. We start now."

I pulled the blanket over my head. "Start what?"

"Learning how not to die."

I lay there under the blanket for a long moment. Then I thought of Vera's green eyes and her cold smile, and I got up.

The clothes were plain. Brown trousers, a loose gray shirt, soft leather boots. They fit me well. Too well. I wondered who had measured me while I was asleep, and then decided I didn't want to know.

He was waiting for me in a small yard behind the pack house. It was hidden by a tall stone wall on three sides, with old training posts in the dirt and a rack of wooden practice blades by the gate. The grass was wet with dew. The sky was just starting to turn pink.

"Why here?" I asked. "Why not the big yard?"

"Because I don't want the whole pack watching you fall on your face."

"How kind."

"It's not kindness." He picked up a wooden blade and threw it to me. I didn't catch it. It hit my chest and fell into the grass. He sighed. "Vera has friends. Anything they see here, she'll know by lunch."

I picked up the blade. It was heavier than it looked.

"She's a wolf," I said. "She's bigger than me. Stronger. Faster. How am I supposed to win?"

"You're not."

I stared at him.

"You can't beat her strength," Kade said. "So don't try. You're going to beat her with patience. She thinks you're weak. She'll get bored. She'll get careless. She'll want to play with you in front of the whole pack. That's when you strike."

"And if she doesn't get careless?"

He didn't answer that.

We trained until the sun was high. He showed me how to stand, how to hold the blade, how to move my feet so I didn't fall over. He came at me slowly at first, then faster. I fell a lot. I fell so much that my knees were green with grass and my back ached all over.

Every time I fell, he held out his hand to help me up.

Every time, I ignored it and got up on my own.

Around midday, something changed. He swung at me, and I didn't think. I just ducked and stepped to the side and hit him hard across the ribs with the flat of my blade.

He stopped. He looked down at his side, then at me.

I felt the sting in my own ribs a second later. I winced and laughed at the same time.

"That hurt us both," I said.

"Worth it," he said. And he smiled.

It was the first time I had ever seen him smile. It changed his whole face. It made him look younger. Softer. Like someone I might have liked, a long time ago, in a different life.

I looked away quickly.

We kept going. In the afternoon, he taught me how to get out of a hold. He grabbed me from behind, his arm around my waist, and told me to break free.

I twisted. I stomped on his foot. I jabbed my elbow back. Nothing worked. He just held on, patient and steady, his chest warm against my back.

"Again," he said, very close to my ear.

My mark started to burn. Not with pain. With heat. It spread up my arm and into my chest, and suddenly I could hear his heart beating fast behind me. As fast as mine.

I stopped fighting.

I turned around inside his arms. I didn't mean to. My body just did it. And then I was looking up at him, and he was looking down at me, and his face was so close I could see the flecks of brown in his gold eyes.

Neither of us moved.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

For one terrible second, I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted it so badly my whole body ached with it.

Then I thought of twenty-three graves in the field behind the church.

I shoved him away, hard. He let me.

"Don't," I said. My voice was shaking. "Don't ever do that again."

"I didn't do anything, Elena."

"It's the bond," I said. "It's not real. It's just the bond."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded once.

"Water," he said, and walked over to the bucket by the wall.

I stood in the middle of the yard with my heart pounding and my face on fire. I hated him. I hated the bond. And I hated myself most of all.

That evening, we sat on the low stone wall while the sun went down. My whole body hurt. My hands were covered in blisters. Kade handed me a piece of bread and cheese, and for once, I took it.

We ate in silence. Then I asked the question I had been holding all day.

"Tell me how you knew my mother."

He didn't look at me. He looked out at the trees.

"And don't say not yet," I said. "I might be dead in two days. If you're going to tell me, tell me now."

He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he spoke.

"When I was twelve, my father took me on my first hunt. We got separated. I found a bear trap instead." He rolled up his left trouser leg. There was an old white scar wrapped around his calf like a snake. "I was too young to shift and heal it. I dragged myself for two days. I ended up at the edge of your village, half dead."

I stopped chewing.

"A woman found me," he said. "She was out picking herbs. She knew what I was. She could smell the wolf on me, the way humans in the valley always can. She should have run. She should have called the men with their pitchforks." He shook his head slowly. "She didn't. She carried me to her house. She hid me in her cellar for a week and fed me and cleaned my leg until I could walk."

The cellar.

The same cellar she had pushed me into. The same cellar where he found me.

"Her name was Martha," he said softly. "She made me promise not to tell anyone. Not my father. Not her husband. Not her little girl, who was playing in the next room and singing the whole time."