The Alpha's Honest Mate

If I did not open the Alpha's throat before the bell, my sister would hang at dawn. Two years in Dunmoor keep had taught me which stairs creaked and which guards slept with their boots off. The corridor to his chamber was cold enough to hurt my teeth, and the knife in my sleeve was warm from my skin. Under his door, the fire laid a thin gold line across the stone. I pushed the door open without knocking. It swung free, and that should have stopped me. The fire had burned down to a red seam, and the bed was a dark shape against the wall. Kael was awake. He sat against the headboard with the blankets around his waist and his sword still on the chair. Firelight moved over the scar that ran from his jaw to his collarbone, and his eyes caught the light like a wolf's. He looked at the knife in my hand, then at my face, and his mouth curved. "You took your time," he said, and he did not reach for the sword. My grip tightened on the handle. "How long have you been awake?" "Long enough to hear you stop at the third stair." He shifted, and the blankets slid. "You always stop at the third stair. I used to think it was fear. Now I think you are counting the guards." I said nothing. Two years of carrying his meals and washing his shirts, and he had noticed the stair. I believed I was invisible. "The door was open," I said. "I opened it." He nodded at the chair. "Sit down, Maeve." The sound of my name in his mouth was worse than the sword. I stayed by the door. "Go on, then," he said, and he spread his hands on the blankets, palms up. "You have until the bell." Lark had been nine when I left Ashfall. She had held my face in both hands and made me promise to come back, and I had promised, and for eight years I had not seen her. Merrick had sent me a lock of her hair in a folded square of cloth. The hair was pale and fine, and I knew it was hers because I had brushed it every night for nine years. I crossed the room. Kael did not move. The knife was a kitchen blade, short and plain, and it looked smaller in the firelight than it had in my sleeve. I put the point under his jaw, where the scar ended, and felt his pulse beat against the steel. "Your hand is shaking," he said. "It is cold," I said, and my teeth were not the only thing shaking. "It is fear." He looked up at me, and his eyes were steady. "You are thinking about someone." I pressed the blade in. A bead of blood ran down his throat, and his hand closed over my wrist. He moved faster than a man who had been asleep should. His grip turned my hand, and the blade opened his palm and mine at once. His blood ran into the cut on my hand, hot as water from a kettle, and the knife fell. The mark came up through the blood. It started at the cut and spread across my wrist, a silver crescent bright as frost on a window. On his wrist, the same mark opened at the same moment. The fire cracked. The room went white at the edges, and his eyes turned gold, and a low sound came out of his chest that was not a man's voice. Then his hand tightened on my wrist, and the sound stopped. "No," I said, and the word came out thin. "The Moon has a poor sense of humor," Kael said. I tried to pull away. The mark burned, and my knees went weak, and I caught the bedpost with my free hand. His chest was bare and warm, and I was close enough to smell woodsmoke in his hair. The bond pulled between us, a line drawn tight from his ribs to mine, and I knew what it was. "Say you do not want to kill me," he said. "I do not want to kill you," I said. Blood filled my mouth. It came up hot and thick, and I coughed it onto the floor. The mark flared again, and the words I had tried to say turned to ash on my tongue. "Try again," he said, and his voice was soft. "I came to kill you," I said, and the blood on my tongue tasted like copper. The blood stopped and the mark cooled, and Kael watched my face, and something moved behind his eyes that I could not name. "Who sent you?" he asked, and his thumb pressed the mark. I clamped my teeth shut. The mark flared, and pain went up my arm like a wire. I could not speak a lie, but I could keep silent. I held on to the silence with both hands. Kael waited while the fire popped, and somewhere below a door opened and closed. "Who sent you?" he said again. "Merrick," I said, and the word came out of me like a tooth. "Your Alpha?" he said, and his voice had gone quiet. "My mother's brother," I said, and the mark cooled under his thumb. "Why?" he asked, and I felt the bond pull the answer up my throat. "He has my sister. If I do not bring him your heart by dawn, he will hang her." Kael's face did not change, but his hand tightened on my wrist. He looked at the mark, then at the blood on the floor. "Your uncle is a liar," he said. "He has her," I said, and my voice broke on her name. "No." The word was flat and certain. "She is here." "You are lying," I said, and I tried to pull my wrist away. "I cannot." He held up his wrist. The silver crescent caught the fire. "The Moon does not let a true mate lie. You know what this is." I knew. Every wolf in Ashfall knew the old story: a true bond came once in a hundred years, and the pair could not lie to each other. Some called it a gift. Some called it a curse. It had no business happening to a girl who could not shift and an Alpha who had never looked at her twice. "She is in my kitchen," Kael said. "She has been there for six weeks. She came to me with a story about a girl who was sent to kill me." The room tilted. I put my hand on the bed to steady myself. "I wanted to see if she was right," he said. "I wanted to see which of my wolves opened my door for you." The door opened. Lark stood in the doorway with a candle in her hand and her hair loose around her shoulders. She was taller than I remembered, and thinner, and alive. She looked at the knife on the floor, at the blood on my hand, at the mark on my wrist, and her mouth opened. "Maeve?" The bell rang.