My Mate

Chapter 8 — The Shed

—Kael's POV—

I did not sleep for two nights.

I stood at the tree line where Bramble Hollow ends and the Wilds begin and watched her house. Her light went out. Her light came on. Varric doubled the white ash line around their cottage. Mirelle never left the garden.

My pack thought I had lost my mind. Joren found me on the second morning still in the same spot, still in my father's mantle, eyes red from not sleeping.

"Kael, you have to eat," he said. "You have not eaten since Blood Moon."

"I ate," I said. It was a lie. I had not.

"She is human, Kael. She is not going to come. Her father will lock her inside after what you did."

"She will come," I said.

Because she had held my mantle dry against her chest while she was soaking wet and shivering. Because she had whispered you are not what they said you were.

She came.

On the second night, right when the moon was highest, I smelled honey and wildflowers coming through the cornfield behind Bramble Hollow. Not through the main road where Varric was patrolling. Through the back, where the apothecary shed sits.

The old apothecary shed is half in the human world, half in the Wilds. The humans abandoned it ten years ago after a wolf attack. We never tore it down because the moonflowers grow thick around it. No hunter goes there, because they say it is cursed.

I was already inside waiting.

She slipped through the broken door, cloak pulled tight, lantern unlit again. Her hair was still damp from washing. She had a small basket in her hands.

When she saw me sitting on the old stone table, she stopped and let out a breath like she had been holding it for two days.

"You came," I said.

We just looked at each other for a second. I was trying to memorize her face again, to make up for two nights of not seeing it up close.

Then she saw my shoulder. The rogue's claws had left four lines, shallow but still open because silver had been in its claws. It had not healed. Wolf wounds from rogues heal slow.

"You are still bleeding," she whispered.

She came straight to me, basket banging against her leg, and knelt up on the table beside me to see it better. No fear. Even though I was in only my mantle again, bare chested, claws out a little because I had not slept.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not when you are here," I said. It was becoming our line.

She opened her basket. Inside was a jar of salve, white and smelling like moonflowers, and clean cloth strips, and a small bottle of something clear.

"I stole it from my mother's shelf," she whispered, like a confession. "Moonflower salve. She uses it for hunter wounds. I thought... maybe it would work for wolf wounds too."

My mother used to make the same salve for my father. Before the Order killed him.

Aurora scooped some with her fingers and gently, so gently, spread it over the four lines on my shoulder. Her fingers were cold, then warm from the salve.

I hissed without meaning to. Not because it hurt. Because her touch on my bare skin, after two nights of missing her, made my whole wolf shudder.

"Sorry, sorry," she whispered, blowing on it like you would for a child.

"You do not have to be sorry for touching your mate, Luna."

She blushed. She still blushed every time I called her Luna.

"Kael, can I ask you something?" she said while she wrapped the cloth around my shoulder, her face close to mine, focused on her work.

"Anything."

"Why do my parents burn white ash? What does it do to wolves?"

My jaw tightened. This was it. This was the question that would lead to everything.

"White ash tells a wolf that a hunter does not want truce. It burns our noses, makes us unable to smell our mate. It is a warning that says I will kill you if you come closer."

She was quiet, tying the cloth with small careful fingers.

"They burn it around my window every night," she said softly. "I thought it was to keep me safe from rogues."

"It is to keep you safe from me," I said.

She finished tying the bandage and sat back on her heels, looking at me.

"On Blood Moon night, when you knelt for Varric... why did you do that? You are an Alpha. Alphas don't kneel."

I looked at her hands in her lap. Small, human, with salve under her nails from touching me.

"My father knelt once," I said. "At the truce meeting ten years ago. He knelt to show your Order that he came in peace. No weapons. He thought if he showed them he was not a monster, they would listen."

"What happened?"

"They killed him while he was on his knees."

Aurora's hand flew to her mouth.

"Kael..."

"I knelt to Varric because I would rather kneel in mud than have you watch me kill your father," I said. "Even though my wolf wanted to. Even though he is the male who..."

I stopped. I almost said it. He is the male who killed my father.

Not yet. She was not ready yet.

"Who what?" she whispered.

"Who keeps you locked up," I finished. It was not a lie. Just not the whole truth.

She looked down at my shoulder, at her bandage on my skin.

"My parents say wolves steal human girls on Blood Moon," she said quietly. "That you take them into the forest and they are never seen again."

"Do you feel stolen, Aurora?"

She looked up at me, brown eyes bright in the dark shed.

"No," she said. "I feel found."

That broke the last bit of control I had left from not sleeping.

I cupped her face with both hands and pressed my forehead to hers, just like I had in the forest when she touched my wolf nose. She smelled like moonflower salve and honey now.

"Aurora, I have to mark you soon," I whispered against her forehead. "Not to change you. Just a small bite, here," I brushed her neck right under her ear where her pulse was beating fast. "So my pack knows you are mine and they will not touch you. So hunters smell me on you and know you are protected."

She shivered, but did not pull away.

"Will it hurt?"

"A little. Then it will feel like... like coming home."

She was quiet for a long time, breathing against my mouth.

"Two more nights," she whispered. "My parents are going to the Capital for the Order meeting. They will be gone for one night. Come to my cottage then. Not the shed. My room."

My wolf howled inside me so loud I thought she would hear it.

"Aurora, if I come to your room while they are gone, I will not want to leave."

"Then don't," she said.

From outside the shed, from Bramble Hollow, a dog started barking. Loud, frantic. Someone had let the hunting hounds out.

Aurora's eyes went wide. "They let the hounds out when they think a wolf has crossed the ash line."

I picked up her basket and pushed it into her hands. "Go. Now. Through the corn, same way you came. Do not run, walk."

"What about you?"

"I will lead them away from you."

She grabbed my hand, squeezed it once hard, then slipped out the broken back door of the shed into the corn.

I waited until I could not smell honey anymore, only white ash and hounds, then I stepped out the front door into the moonlight where they could see me, and I ran straight into the Wilds, letting them chase me and not her.