Chapter 38: A Night in the Mill

Dale stayed at Maeve's that night because there was nowhere else to put him, and Maeve made him sleep on the kitchen floor with a blanket and his boots off, and she put the bread knife on the shelf above the stove where he could see it.

I did not sleep in the cottage. I went back to the mill with Elias, and June came with us as far as the co-op road and then went home to the house because she said she was not going to sleep on moss when there was a bed two hundred yards away.

The mill was cold. Elias built a fire in the corner of the floor where the boards were stone and there was an old iron grate that somebody had used for the same purpose a long time ago, and I sat on the blanket with his coat around my shoulders and watched the flames come up.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“I have slept on a loading dock and a cellar floor and a moss bank and a bench. I am not tired.”

“You are tired. You have been tired for two weeks.”

“I am not tired,” I said. “I am angry and I am cold and I am sitting in a mill with a fire in the corner and the man who killed my brother is asleep on Maeve's kitchen floor, and I am supposed to be planning a trip to Boise.” I put my hands out to the fire. “I do not know how to be tired.”

He sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him. The mark on my shoulder was warm where he touched it.

“Tell me something that is not about any of it,” he said.

I looked at him.

“That is my line.”

“I know. I am borrowing it.” He looked at the fire. “Tell me something about you that has nothing to do with the curse or the Council or your brother. Something small.”

I thought about it.

“I do not like coffee,” I said.

“You drink coffee every morning.”

“I drink it because Harold makes it and if I do not drink it he thinks I am sick. I do not like it. I like tea. Maeve's tea, the bitter kind with the pine in it. I have liked it since I was a girl.” I pulled my knees up. “When I was small my mother used to make it in the winter and put honey in it and we would sit on the porch and watch the snow. Owen would not drink it. He said it tasted like a tree.”

Elias smiled.

“What else?”

“I cannot sing.”

“Nobody can sing.”

“No, I mean I really cannot sing. I open my mouth and a sound comes out that makes dogs leave the room. June has a voice like a bird. Owen had a voice like a bird. I have a voice like a gate.” I looked at him. “What about you?”

“I can sing,” he said. “I used to sing on the fishing boat. The men would ask me to sing when the weather was bad because it made them feel better.” He was quiet for a moment. “I have not sung since April. I do not know if I still can.”

“Sing for me.”

“No.”

“Sing for me.”

He looked at me. Then he opened his mouth and sang, low and quiet, a song I did not know about a boat and a river and a woman waiting on a bank. His voice was not a big voice. It was a warm one, and it filled the mill, and when he stopped the fire was the only sound in the room.

“You can still sing,” I said.

“It seems I can.”

I put my head on his shoulder.

“I have never wanted a mate,” I said.

He did not move.

“I want to tell you that,” I said. “Because we are going to Boise in three weeks and we are going to stand in front of the Alphas and they are going to ask me if I chose you freely and I am going to say yes, and it is true, and it is not the whole truth.” I looked at the fire. “When I was fourteen I shifted for the first time and my mother told me about the bond and she said that one day I would meet a wolf and the moon would choose him for me and I would know. And I said, what if I do not want him. And she said, you will want him. The moon does not make mistakes. And I said, what if I do not. And she did not have an answer.”

“And then?”

“And then I grew up and I watched the mated pairs in this pack. I watched Mrs. Pike and her husband and I watched the Corrigans and I watched Harlan and his wife before she died, and every one of them was a thing that had happened to them. Not a thing they chose.” I turned my head. “I did not want a thing that happened to me. I wanted to choose.”

Elias was quiet for a long time.

“And now?” he said.

“And now there is a mark on my shoulder and a rope between us and a wolf in my chest who rolls over every time you walk into the room.” I sat up. “And I am not going to pretend that I chose that. I did not choose the bond. The moon chose it. But I chose you. I chose to take your hand in the co-op yard and I chose to hide you in the back room and I chose to take the wire off the fence and I chose to go up to that clearing with you in the dark. The moon did not do any of that. I did.” I looked at him. “So when the Alphas ask me if I chose you freely, I am going to say yes. Because I did. Not the bond. You.”

He looked at me. His amber eyes in the firelight were steady and bright.

“I have been alone for a long time,” he said. “I have been on my own since I was twenty-two and I have not had a person. I have had a room and a job and a door that closes and I have not had a person.” He put his hand on my face. “And then I came to this territory and a woman found me in a field and put her knife away and gave me her brother's coat, and I have not been alone since.”

I kissed him.

The fire burned down and the wind came through the door and the mill creaked above us, and we lay on the blanket with his coat over us and the mark on my shoulder warm between us.

“Three weeks,” he said.

“Three weeks.”

“And then?”

“And then we go to Boise and we make the claim and we break the curse and we come home.” I looked at the dark ceiling. “And I am going to plant wheat in the east field and I am going to walk the north fence every night and I am going to sleep in a bed with a door that closes.”

“That is a good list.”

“It is a short list.”

“It is the best list I have heard in four months,” Elias said.

I woke before dawn with the fire out and the cold in my bones and the mark on my shoulder burning.

It was not warm. It was burning. It was hot and tight and it hurt in a way it had not hurt before, and I sat up with my hand pressed against it and my heart going.

“Elias,” I said.

He was awake. He was standing at the door of the mill with his back to me and his head up.

“Someone is coming,” he said.

“Who?”

“I do not know. Two of them. On foot. From the mill road.”

I got up and pulled my boots on and got Owen's knife out of my jacket, and I stood beside him at the door and looked out.

The snow was white in the gray light and there were two figures coming up the road, and they were not running and they were not hiding. They were walking slow. One of them was tall and had a hat, and the other one was small and had a basket.

“It is Harlan,” I said. “And Mrs. Pike.”

They came up to the mill door and stopped. Harlan's gray beard was white with frost and his hat was pulled down and his face was old and tired.

“Wren,” he said. “I have come to ask you a question and I am going to ask it in front of a witness and you are going to tell me the truth.” He looked at Elias and did not look away. “I have been at the pack house all night with Dale. He told me everything. About your brother and the coat and the knife and the Council and the claim.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I have been an Alpha in this territory for twenty-two years and I have signed things I knew were wrong because I was afraid of the Council. I am not going to be afraid anymore. So I am asking you, Wren. What do you need from me?”