Chapter 17 His Father’s Order #2
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I must have slept again, because the next time I opened my eyes, the darkness outside the window had thinned to the gray that comes just before dawn.
An October dawn on Superior meant it was past seven.
My shoulder had tightened overnight into a hot, stiff mass that protested when I shifted on the mattress.
But the bleeding had stopped, and when I carefully peeled back the edge of the bandage, the wound beneath had started knitting, angry pink at the edges with dark bruising around it.
Wolf healing. Another week and it would be a scar.
Light footsteps sounded in the hallway. Then the door opened, and Nora walked in.
She wore someone else’s flannel, too big for her, sleeves rolled to her forearms. Her hair was pulled back in the work knot she always wore, and her clean hands were red from the cold.
She didn’t say good morning. She crossed to the bed, pulled the chair closer, and sat down. Her eyes went to my shoulder, practiced and assessing.
“Let me see it,” she said.
I turned so she could reach the bandage.
Her fingers were careful, professional, pulling the tape back without yanking.
She studied the wound for several seconds, then replaced the dressing with fresh gauze from the kit on the dresser.
Her hands were warm on my skin, and through the bond I felt her focus narrow entirely to the dressing.
“It’s closing clean,” she said. “You’ll need to keep the arm still for at least two more days.”
“Nora.”
“Don’t.” She pulled the last strip of tape tight. “Whatever speech you’ve been rehearsing, I don’t want it.”
I met her eyes. “I called my father last night. He admitted sending them. He called it necessary pressure, like he was talking about a business negotiation, not seven wolves trying to drag you into a truck.”
Nora’s expression didn’t change. “And you’re surprised.”
“I assumed he’d stop at threats. I was wrong.”
“You were wrong about a lot of things.” She sat back in the chair.
“Your father sent those men because you gave him the authority. You rejected me in front of both packs. You chose Delia. Conrad recognized the union. And then you told everyone that the problem was me refusing to cooperate. So when I didn’t cooperate, your father escalated.
That’s how authority works, Rafe. You should know. You were raised to use it.”
She was right.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you? Because yesterday morning you showed up asking me to accept you back like the bond was a warranty you could redeem, then asked me to fix what you broke. Last night you called your father and told him to stop. That needed doing, but it doesn’t erase the fact that he had the power to do this because you put it in his hands. ”
“I’m not asking you to erase anything.”
“Good. Because I can’t.”
She stood up and moved toward the door. The bond between us pulled, thin and raw, and I felt her weariness more than her anger now.
She’d been awake all night. Guarding. Planning.
Holding herself together in a house full of wolves who’d bled for her and a rejected mate who’d bled too, for reasons she hadn’t asked him to have.
“I want you to leave,” she said from the doorway. “As soon as you can travel.”
“I know you do.”
“But?”
“Conrad said he’d send more. Lyle said the same thing before he drove off. If I’m on the road alone, that’s one less body between them and you.”
Nora turned back. Her eyes were tired and hard and searching, looking for the angle, the manipulation, the hidden play. She’d been taught by my rejection and her father’s silence and Delia’s tears to look for the worst in every offer.
“Staying won’t earn me anything,” I said. “The threat isn’t gone, and you shouldn’t have to face it without knowing what’s coming. I know Conrad. I know how he thinks. That’s worth something, even if I’m not.”
She looked at me. Through the bond, I felt her weighing the practical value of what I knew. There was no forgiveness or trust in it.
“Until the threat is understood,” she said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all.”
Nora left without another word. Her footsteps went down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door into the cold gray morning. I heard her boots on gravel, then nothing.
I sat in the bed in a stranger’s house, my place in Copper Point threatened by the father I’d spent my life trying to become, and I listened to the woman I’d rejected walk away from me for the second time.
The bond carried her anger and her exhaustion and underneath both, so faint I might have imagined it, something that felt like grief.
The grief was for the version of her life where none of this had happened. The life where she’d walked toward me at the ceremony and I’d taken her hand and meant it.
I’d killed that life. And my father had sent wolves to make sure it stayed dead.
Outside, Superior hit the rocks in a slow rhythm. Dawn came in gray and pink above the tree line. Somewhere in the house, a kettle began to whistle, and Jules Duquette’s voice said something I couldn’t hear, and someone laughed.
Nora’s anger dimmed to a steady, low burn. Working anger. She was already moving on to the next problem.
In Nora’s world, I was an old problem, set aside until there was time and reason to deal with me.
I closed my eyes, cradled my injured shoulder, and waited for the light.