Chapter Thirteen
Dara talks for twenty-two minutes.
I do not interrupt once.
Caden sits beside me on the edge of the bed with his shoulder against mine and I watch his face process every word she says and I watch it move through controlled and past controlled and into the particular stillness of a man deciding what he is capable of.
She is nineteen. Aldric's younger son Marcus had her with a woman who left the pack before Dara could walk. She has lived inside Aldric's household her entire life. Not loved. Not harmed. Useful. That is the word she uses three times in twenty-two minutes. Useful. The way you describe furniture.
She has been watching him for two years and keeping records because she understood early that information was the only currency she would ever have.
She knows whe
