Chapter 9 Combat Training
Lachlan pulls up outside a narrow street I've known since I was twelve and doesn't ask why I need to stop here. He just puts the car in park.
"Thank you," I say.
He nods once, eyes forward.
I get out, and I stand there until the car rounds the corner and the sound of it fades.
The street hasn't changed much. Same uneven pavement, same potted plants crowding the doorstep of the third house on the left. I knock.
The door opens and Bran looks at me for a full second before he speaks. He's older than I remember — more white in his hair, deeper lines around his eyes — but the expression that takes over his face is the same one it's always been.
"Rowan?"
"I got back last night." I hold out the bag I brought. "I came to see you."
He takes the bag without looking at it. His other hand finds my shoulder and pats it twice, firmly, and his eyes go red at the edges. Then he steps back and pulls the door wide.
"Out of the country that whole time, not a word." He's already moving toward the kitchen. "Have you eaten? My wife made porridge. Sit down."
I sit down. His wife sets a bowl in front of me without asking, the kind of hospitality that doesn't wait for an answer. I eat half of it slowly, and for the first time since I landed, the tension across my shoulders drops somewhere close to normal.
Bran settles across from me with his own bowl and watches me eat with the satisfaction of someone who's been waiting to do exactly this.
He was Isabella's healer first. That's how I met him. She'd been brought to him for her various complaints, her sensitivities, the long catalog of things her body wouldn't tolerate.
I'd come along once and he'd taken one look at my face and pulled me aside. Food poisoning, he said. Progressing. Another day and it would have been serious.
The cause, of course, was never identified. But he saved my life.
Isabella found a different healer six months later, someone whose remedies tasted better, apparently.
I kept coming back.
At first once or twice a year. Then monthly, once I'd worked out what Callum's stomach needed and asked Bran for a formula. I picked up that prescription for twelve months straight.
I glance at the shelf behind him. There used to be a jar kept ready — his formula, mixed in advance, because I came often enough to make that practical.
Bran follows my eyes. He makes a sound low in his throat. "After you left, nobody came for that prescription. Not once." He sets the bowl down. "Serves him right."
The red at his rims is still there. He's angrier on my behalf than anyone who shares my blood has ever been.
I look at the table for a moment. My eyes sting, and I let them.
Then I think of what I saw in Lachlan's car.
I'd glanced at the console between the seats without meaning to, and registered the edge of a box tucked into the side pocket. The color and shape of something I know well.
I set my spoon down. "Bran. Can I take some stomach medicine while I'm here?"
The sound is immediate and enormous.
Bang. His bowl hits the table with both hands behind it, porridge sloshing to the rim.
His wife appears from the kitchen doorway. "Good lord — you old fool, what are you doing, you'll frighten the girl—"
"Frighten her!" Bran's mustache is practically vibrating. "She should be frightened! That little — that boy married her sister, and she's still coming to pick up his medicine?"
I touch the side of my nose. This is a fair assumption. My history in this kitchen, monthly visits, the prescription, the twelve months of it. I can't blame him for where his mind went.
"It's not for him," I say.
Bran stops. His mustache settles.
His eyes cut sideways to me with an expression I can only describe as aggressively curious.
I press my lips together for a moment.
"It's for Lachlan."
He stands up so fast his chair scrapes back. "Lachlan — you and Lachlan are—"
"Not yet. Preliminary discussions. A possible marriage alliance."
"Not yet." He waves this away with one hand and brings the other down on the table again, lighter this time. "Forget preliminary. I told you years ago that boy was good. Decide it and be done with it, stop dragging your feet—"
I watch him. "You've met him?"
Bran sits back down.
"He used to come here," he says. "After you and Callum got formally engaged. Regularly, for a while. Always bruised somewhere — arm, ribs, once a cut above his eye that needed closing."
He picks up his bowl again, casual, like he's discussing the weather. "Said it was combat training with Callum."
I go still.
"Every time Callum got near that Isabella," Bran continues, "Lachlan would arrange a session. Every single time. The boy has good control — I could see it. He knew exactly how hard he was hitting."
"Callum was your fated mate." A pause. "Lachlan knew that. Hurt him badly enough, and you'd feel it. So he held back."
I'm looking at him. I don't say anything.
He shakes his head. "When you fight like that, you leave yourself open."
The kitchen is very quiet.
The pieces land one at a time, each one clicking into a shape I should have seen years ago.
Callum, home for days after each session. Callum's version of events — Lachlan fights dirty, watch out for him, he started it.
Me, keeping my distance from him at every gathering, because Callum had told me to.
Bran watches my face and doesn't push. He's said what needed saying.
After a moment he gets up, disappears into the back room, and comes out with a wrapped parcel. He sets it on the table in front of me and rests his hand on it for a moment.
"He told me not to say anything," he says. "No proof, he said." His hand stays on the parcel. "Turns out this medicine should have changed hands a long time ago."
***
The house is quiet when I get back.
Moira has a standing afternoon appointment. My father and Callum are both at their respective offices. I push through the front door with the parcel under my arm and I'm already thinking about the stairs.
Isabella is on the sofa.
She's been waiting. The posture makes it obvious. Too composed, too still, facing the door. Her eyes drop to the parcel the moment she sees it and her face shifts.
She's on her feet before I've taken two steps.
She comes across the room fast, hand reaching, and I step back. One clean movement. Her hand closes on nothing.
I don't wait for the opening she's preparing. "It's not for Callum."
She goes rigid. Then her expression reassembles into something uglier than the suspicion.
"You wouldn't dare," she says.
She drops back onto the sofa and drapes herself against the cushions in a way that's meant to look relaxed and doesn't.
"Stay away from your Callum. Unless you want people knowing you're the kind of bitch who can't keep her eyes off her own sister's mate."
Her voice has an edge under the sweetness that only comes out when there's no one else in the room. That's the face. I've been seeing it since I was ten.
It's a very ugly face.
I'm already walking toward the stairs. I don't turn around.
"You don't need to worry," I say, and my voice comes out light, almost conversational. "You're married. I'm not interested in what's already been used."
Behind me: a sharp crack. Something ceramic meeting the floor at velocity.
My foot doesn't pause on the step.
I've heard that sound before too.