2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
Jessica
They don’t remove the restraints immediately.
The medic from the van checks my pulse and shines a light into my eyes. I try to jerk my face away, but I’m too slow.
“Take it off,” he says.
“What! Are you crazy, she–,” one of the guards says.
“She’s had four darts, she can barely stand, and I need to get to her side. Put two men outside the door.”
Nobody looks happy about it, but they listen.
Two men keep hold of my wrists while a third removes the restraints around my ankles. When they finally release my arms, they drop to my sides and start shaking. One of the guards grabs my elbow when my knees buckle, then lets go so quickly he nearly shoves me over.
The medic pulls away what’s left of the dressing and tapes fresh gauze over my side without asking. Someone sets a glass of water on the table. Another man says “ma’am” without looking at me.
Then they leave. The door closes and the lock turns.
The bedroom has a low ceiling and a tiled stove that makes the air almost too warm. Rugs cover most of the stone floor, and family photographs crowd one wall in mismatched frames. The furniture doesn’t match either, but everything looks clean.
Someone has left food on the table and folded clothes over a chair. The sizes are close, as if several people searched their closets for anything I might be able to wear. A ribbon is tied around a jacket, holding a handwritten note.
We are so glad you are here.
The door is solid oak, and the handle doesn’t move. When I put my ear against it, I hear muffled voices from the hall. The windows look too small to climb out and have newer looking iron bars over them.
Anything I could use as a weapon is gone. There’s no poker beside the stove. The washstand is empty. The wardrobe holds nothing but blankets and a paper bag of lavender.
I leave the water where it is. My wolf is still buried under whatever they gave me, but she’s beginning to stir. I’m not risking another dose until I know what’s in that glass.
The stone floor is cold. I lower myself to the bed and let it sink in that I am locked in here. I was so close to the gate, I really wish that little boy’s mom had kept a hold on him better. I sigh, hang my head and reach for my bonds.
I want them here. Not only because they could tear this place apart, although God knows I wouldn’t stop them. After a day of strangers grabbing, carrying, and restraining me, I want the men I chose.
The lock turns and I wipe my eyes.
I brace one hand against the bed and turn toward the door.
It opens onto a corridor crowded with people.
They stand along both walls, leaving a clear path down the middle.
Some stare at me. Others look away as soon as I notice them.
An older woman near the back has both hands pressed over her mouth.
An older man enters first. The angry man from the van follows him and closes the door. He takes up a position beside it, his back against the wall and his eyes on the floor.
The older man wears a dark wool coat that has gone shiny at the cuffs and boots that have been freshly polished. He isn’t carrying a weapon. His gaze moves over the blood on my clothes, the torn skin around my wrists, and the fresh gauze at my side. His throat works before he looks at my face.
Then he bows.
Not a polite dip of his head. He bends all the way from the waist and stays there long enough to make me uncomfortable.
“Welcome home. My name is Frances. My family has served yours for centuries.” He straightens. “House Luftemilen.”
In the Council records, it’s only ever called Fourth House. No family name. No people. Nothing that might make it sound as if someone survived.
“Luftemilen,” I repeat.
“That’s the name they removed from the records. It’s the House whose blood you carry.”
“Nobody has ever said it to me before.”
“Outside this valley, saying it could get someone imprisoned. Inside these walls, it was never forgotten.”
I use the bedpost to pull myself upright. The room tips to one side, and I wait for it to settle before I let go.
“My name is Jessica. And this isn’t my home.”
Frances glances at the untouched water, then at the note on the sweater.
“You are home,” he says. “I know you don’t believe that yet.”
“The locked door says otherwise.”
“Until you understand the danger waiting for you outside this valley, I can’t let you leave.”
I stare at him.
“Are you fucking serious?”
Frances doesn’t move.
"You dragged me off a road, shot my security detail, put four darts in me, and locked me in this room. What exactly did you think would happen when I woke up? That I’d read your little note and thank you?”
“No.”
“You claim your family serves mine. People who serve my family don’t shoot me. They don’t hurt my friends. They don’t tie me up and decide I’m too stupid to know whether I’m safe.”
“We didn’t think you were stupid.”
“You decided my answer didn’t matter. What else would you call it?”
Frances takes the anger without looking away. “We believed the Council was leading you into a trap.”
“Then you warn me. You call me. You show me whatever proof you have. You don’t become the fucking trap.”
“Would you have believed us?”
“That was my choice to make.”
He looks at the blood spreading through the gauze at my side. “Yes.”
“Don’t agree with me like that fixes anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then tell me exactly what you ordered.”
Frances pulls out the chair beside the table and sits. “My people were supposed to take you en route to the archive appointment and bring you here.”
“So you planned to kidnap me.”
“Yes.”
The answer hits harder because he doesn’t hide from it.
“And you prepared for me to fight.”
“We knew you might shift.”
“You showed up with a net and enough tranquilizer to drop a bear. Those darts weren’t an accident. You planned this.”
“We planned to restrain you without seriously injuring you.”
“You nearly stopped my heart.”
“That was never supposed to happen.”
“But it did. Because of your plan. Your people.”
Frances’s hands tighten on his knees. “Yes.”
“Stop saying you were protecting me. You don’t get to hurt me, lock me up, and call it protection because the word makes you feel better.”
“I wanted you behind these walls, surrounded by people who would protect you. I knew you might hate me for forcing you here. I hoped that once you saw what we preserved, you would at least understand why I did it.”
“Congratulations. You got the hate part right.”
His face tightens, but he doesn’t look away.
“The people who have had control of you have told you almost nothing about who you are.” He leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs.
“The Council was about to take you into a sealed collection and show you whatever its representatives decided you were allowed to see. Our records say our House was betrayed by people it trusted. We couldn’t assume that betrayal ended simply because two hundred and seventy-five years passed. ”
“So you decided the safe option was kidnapping me and locking me in a bedroom.”
“We decided we couldn’t leave you in their hands.”
“I wasn’t in anyone’s hands.”
His gaze drops briefly to the torn skin around my wrists.
“That isn’t how it looked from here.”
I almost laugh. “You should try the view from this side of the locked door.”
Frances sits back.
“We hired outside help. The retrieval did not go according to plan.”
The answer comes easily enough that it takes me a moment to understand it.
“You hired people.”
“We knew you would have an escort. We also knew what you could become and that your three bonded mates would come after you. The people in this valley couldn’t get you away from Luftis alone.”
“So you hired men with guns, nets, and tranquilizer darts.”
“They were given limits.”
“They shot my guard. She was my friend, you asshole!”
Frances’s jaw tightens. “That was not part of my order.”
“But they were on that road because of your order.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
“Four darts,” I say. “A net. All of my injuries. Were those within your limits?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know yet. They may have panicked when you shifted. They may have ignored the instructions they were given. Or they may have come to that road intending to do something besides the job we hired them for.”
“And you brought them straight here afterward.”
“My people brought you here. Not all the hired men came back with them.”
That catches.
“How many did?”
“Two.”
“And where are they now?”
“Secured.”
That could mean anything in a place where a locked bedroom apparently qualifies as home.
“Then answer something else. Weeks before you took me, somebody cut a footbridge in the Preserve, so that my class would take the other track. There were men waiting on the other track. The officer who had my detail before Cassel is still on crutches.”
“That was not us.”
“You just told me you hired strangers with guns and nets. You don’t know what those men did before you paid them.”
Frances is quiet for longer than he’s been about anything else this morning.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
“Would you have hired them if you’d known?”
“If somebody had already tried to take you, I would have waited, and I would have found out who, and what for, before I put my own people on a road.” He looks at his hands. “I’ll ask the two we have. I’ll tell you what they say.”
“Five people died,” I say.
Pain moves across his face before he can stop it.
“Four of the hired men and one of ours. I knew him from childhood. I sent him onto that road, and they came at you with a net and darts. Their deaths belong to the order I gave, not to you.”
“I’m sorry they’re dead.” I mean it, which only makes me angrier. “That doesn’t make me sorry I fought back.”
“I’m not asking you to be.”
Frances reaches inside his coat and removes a small bundle wrapped in faded cloth. He opens it on the table.
A heavy gold ring rests in the center. The band has worn smooth and thin along one edge, and a piece of dark amber is set into each shoulder. The face bears the same crest carved above the courtyard arch: a broad-headed wolf standing over four mountains.