Chapter 3
SELENE
No one has touched me in… who knows how long now?
I wanted to run at first, but Harry’s touch is so gentle despite his size, his blue eyes so soft with his shaggy brows tilted in sympathy, that I stay put.
The feeling of his warm skin against mine is intoxicating, overwhelming.
I’ve been starving, I think, and I didn’t even realize it.
“Selene.” His voice startles me. “Did he hurt you? Your father?”
The question surprises me. “Never. He wouldn’t. He locked me up to… protect me.”
Confusion settles over Harry’s face. I shouldn’t have said that. Now it leads to the secret, the secret I can’t tell him.
“What did he think he was protecting you from?” he asks. “There’s no reason to do what he did to you.”
“There are bad people out there,” I protest, drawing back from his touch. “Thieves. Bandits.”
Harry sits back, searching my face. “You believe this?”
“Of course.” I had to. I had to believe it to survive in there, to get through each endless, tedious, empty day. I had to believe there was a reason for my suffering, so it wouldn’t all be a waste. “It’s an ugly world. I was safer in there.”
“Is that why you were running?”
I nod. Once I left the house behind, I had nowhere to go. I simply knew I had to put as much distance between it and me as possible, so Father couldn’t find me. So he couldn’t lock me up again.
“Wait.” Harry squints. “The woodcarver who lives out west, close to where I found you. Is that where you were living?”
“Yes, Father sells what he carves in town.”
It looks like this makes Harry angry.
“I can’t believe someone would do that. Abuse their own child that way.” He gets up off the bed and stalks out of the room, and I’m confused by his sudden exit. But he told me not to be on my feet, so I remain where I am.
“Harry?”
“I’m going out.” His feet stomp toward the front door. “To find this father of yours and drag him off to jail.”
“No!” I disobey him and get off the bed, squinting when the open wounds on my feet squash against the bandages. “You can’t!”
Harry comes back into the room, alarmed when he sees I’ve gotten up.
“Lie back down.”
“You can’t take my father to jail.” I don’t realize I’m in tears until my voice breaks. “Please. He didn’t do anything wrong—”
“Yes, he did.” Harry glares down at me, a new and surprising vehemence in his tone. “What he did to you was wrong. It was evil. No one should ever do to their child what he did to you. Starving you. Hiding you from the sun. Keeping you from living a life you deserved to live.”
His words wash over me, sure and confident. He knows what he’s saying is the truth, and he’s willing me to know it, too. To believe it.
I shake my head purely out of reflex, unable to think that about my own father. That he could have been evil. That he could have done something bad by locking me away.
I always thought the world was bad and he was the only good thing in it.
“Listen to me,” Harry says, his tone softening. “I am going to do this now—but you can come with me, if you want. You can say goodbye.”
Goodbye?
That’s right. If Father goes to jail, he will never come out. It will be the end if I allow Harry to turn him in.
Though this big man is kind, I can tell he is also steadfast. He believes in wrongs and rights, goods and evils, and will act upon those beliefs with force. I don’t know if I can get in his way once he sets his mind to something.
“Then I’ll come along,” I say, sitting up on the bed. “If I can.”
“We’ll take my horse. I can bring you to her, and then you don’t have to walk.”
Once again, he picks me up like I’m half my weight, and I don’t even worry that he’ll drop me as he carries me out the back door of the small house to a barn with a pen. In that pen stands a brown horse with white socks on its feet, munching the grass.
“Time to saddle up, Sadie,” he tells the horse, and plops me down on some stacked hay. Then he sets to retrieving the horse and tacking her up, but the whole time all I can think about is my father going to jail.
And I’m going to have to see him again. I’m the one who wanted to come along, but now I’m second-guessing myself. Do I want to look him in the eyes after what Harry said? That what he did to me was a terrible thing?
I still can’t wrap my mind around that truth. I still don’t believe it.
Once the horse is ready, Harry returns to me and helps me up onto the saddle. He sits behind me, so I get the more comfortable seat, and the heat of his broad chest surrounds me. He reaches around with one long arm to hold the reins, then clicks his tongue and we start moving.
Harry’s quiet as we ride through the trees, taking the main road toward my father’s house.
What if, somehow, Father is stronger than Harry? What if he surprises him, coming out with a broken bottle, and kills Harry? I would end up back in the room again with my feet all bandaged up this way.
I wriggle in the seat, nervous.
“You alright?” Harry asks, placing his other hand on my hip. “I can take you back if you would rather not see this.”
But I need to. I know I need to witness whatever will happen here. And Harry’s safe. He’s young and strong, and he has his gun, which he knows how to use.
I swallow and shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Harry doesn’t pry more as we descend deeper into the woods along the road that I remember once led to our house. I ran that road as a child, and I’ve forgotten what it looks like in the light of day.
The house, too, is foreign to me as we approach it.
Harry bids me to stay on the horse and dismounts, removing his musket from its scabbard.
I want to go with him, to make sure nothing happens to him, but I know I need to stay.
So I watch as Harry knocks on the door, but no one answers.
He knocks again, then waits, then tries the knob.
The door opens, and I tense on top of Sadie as Harry steps into the darkness of the house.
Then he’s gone. I shiver, even though I’m wearing his coat on top of my clothes, because that image of Father killing Harry with the broken bottle is lodged in my mind.
Some minutes pass, and I hear the clomping of boots. When he steps out of the house, Harry’s eyes home in on me, and he takes off his hat.
“Selene, I’m sorry.”
Sorry? What would he be sorry for?
“What did you find?”
He lowers his head. “Your father is dead.”
At first, I don’t think I heard him right. Surely Father can’t be dead. He was invincible, wasn’t he? He had been my keeper, after all. I only remained in that room because of him.
Except now he’s dead.
“Do you need to see?” asks Harry, approaching the horse. “He died in the kitchen. No blood. Must have been natural causes, perhaps a bad heart—”
I’m lost, adrift, confused as he talks about my father. My father, who is now dead.
“Yes,” I say, interrupting. “I think… I should see him.”
It will break my heart, but it might be what I need to believe that it’s true.
With a nod of understanding, Harry helps me down from the horse, then carries me inside the dark house.
I cling to him as we go down the hall, by the room with the broken door.
Harry doesn’t pause or linger there, going past it to the kitchen.
There, he stops at the threshold so I can see with my own eyes.
There’s my father lying on the floor, his eyes half-open and vacant, his arms askew. He looks so old. I never really saw his face when he slipped me my food, but now…
I don’t recognize him anymore. Looking at his body is like looking at someone else, someone who didn’t raise me from birth. This old dead man is a stranger to me.
When I tug on the lapel of Harry’s jacket, he turns around and leaves the house the way we came in. Then he puts me on the horse again, climbs up behind me, and directs us back toward town.
I’m in a daze the entire way, wondering what becomes of me now that I no longer have a family. There was no one else, none that I know of, besides Father. I was his only child, and now it’s just me. Alone in the world.
The constable is interested in what Harry has to say. Once the constable has asked me a number of questions, he goes out to check the house, too, and finds only a man who fell over dead one day in his kitchen. A man who kept his daughter locked in a room, where the door was broken from the inside.
The evidence is right in front of him: me, filthy and skinny, with a tangle of untended hair.
While the constable is occupied, we’re off to the doctor’s. We don’t have an appointment, so we have to wait for some time before we’re attended.
The nurse compliments Harry’s work performing emergency care on my feet, and I’m strangely proud. I’m not surprised that he knew what he was doing as well as he could with the tools available to him.
Soon, it’s evening. Back home, Harry hurriedly helps me draw a bath, because all I want is to finally rid myself of the dirt of that room.
To be truly free of it. While I’m cleaning the layers and layers of filth off myself, he rushes to make something to eat before he has to head off to work.
He virtuously avoids the washroom until I’m finished, then he offers me some of his own clothes—which are far, far too large—before he’s off to work.
Then I’m alone. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with that memory of Father on the floor, his strange face looking off into the distance.
I think that I’m sad, but I’m not sure who I’m mourning.
I wake up to the sound of the door opening and Harry trying to quietly shuffle in. He busies about, and I listen, half-awake, to the sounds of him eating and making tea and then finding his way to the cot.
It was kind of him to let me use his bed. I ought to take the cot for myself, seeing as I’m much smaller.
What now? Where do I go? What do I do next?
I sleep late, then hobble to the outhouse, trying to put as little pressure on my feet as possible. Harry is still asleep, as early as he came home. I eat some of the dried fruit he keeps in the kitchen and then go back to bed to read some more.
I can’t stay here, living off this man’s generosity.
But where else can I go? Where would I be safe?
Harry is certainly no alpha—he is kind and even-tempered, unlike everything Father ever told me about alphas.
He appears to be a beta, like most people.
I am fairly sure I don’t have to fear him, though he may throw me out once he learns the truth.
No. It’s been many years since I experienced a heat. Surely it left my body somehow when I was in that room. I paid my penance for being born an omega, and I must be free of it, as it’s been years since a heat came.
When Harry rises, he leans in the bedroom door to wave good morning.
Seeing him immediately brightens my mood.
I like his smiling face that can also turn so serious.
I enjoy his warm eyes and the way they crinkle at the edges when he smiles.
I think he is older than I am, but it’s hard to tell with his beard.
He makes tea and breakfast, though the sun is high up in the sky. Then he fills the tub so I can bathe, and when I get out, Harry helps me work the knots out of my hair and chops off whatever can’t be saved.
Then we discuss the book I’ve been trying to read, and he teaches me how to play cards on the bed.
“Harry?” I finally ask, knowing I need to broach this subject now.
“Hmm?” He raises his head. “It’s your turn.”
I put down the cards in my hand. “I know. But…” I swallow as I work up the courage. “But what happens next? I can’t stay here, surviving off your kindness. I appreciate you for taking me in, and now—”
Harry stares at me. “Now what? Do you want to leave?”
I raise my hands up. “N-no, not immediately, but when you are tired of me taking up space in your home.”
Those kind blue eyes narrow. “Tired of you? You are not ‘taking up space’ in my home.”
“I’m in your bed, and you are sleeping on a cot,” I point out.
“And I don’t mind it in the least.” Harry tentatively reaches out and scoops up my hand in his. The touch is so gentle that I let him do it. “You are welcome here. You are no inconvenience. I’m happy for you to stay as long as you wish, but I will not stop you from going if you would rather go.”
I don’t know where I would go.
“I have no money. No clothes. I am nothing but a burden.” My eyes fall to the bedspread and our stack of cards. “You don’t want that.”
My head jerks up as Harry leans closer to me. He reaches out and cups my chin in his fingers so I’m forced to look into his eyes.
“You are not a burden to me,” he says in a quieter voice. “I am happy to have you as long as you need.”
I don’t believe him, but I want to. I want to think that I have a place I can stay, a place I can belong where I am free.
“Thank you.” The words escape me in a hoarse whisper.
Harry simply nods and smiles, and I can’t help but smile back.