Chapter 19
Reilly
Gareth Hills arrived with gifts and too many men.
I counted from the ridge before they hit the yard. Twelve wolves in Hillsford colors. Two wagons. Gareth in a clean coat. Alexander had not come. That was not kindness. That was a son sent to smell the cut and the cabin and me.
Idony said, “Put Tillson in the hall.”
“No.”
“If you hide him, Gareth will walk the village until he finds the cabin. If you stand him in the hall as contract lead, this is a watch. Ugly. Still a watch.”
Marshall agreed with her. I hated both of them and sent a runner to the cabin.
Owen came up the path in a clean shirt that did not hide how he moved around the stitches. Melanie stopped at the yard and did not enter. Edward took the wall. Pell smiled like a man who had been waiting for a Hillsford coat to make his point for him.
Gareth kissed my cheek because he could. His nose lingered. I felt it. He smelled the bond. He smelled sex that washing had not erased. He smelled Owen in the doorway behind me.
“Reilly,” he said. “You look tired.”
“You look like you brought a patrol to dinner.”
“Friends.” He smiled at Marshall. “After two scouts went missing in a storm, my father thought you might want extra eyes on your cut.”
“My cut is watched.”
Gareth’s gaze found Owen and stayed there. “So I hear.”
We sat. Gareth at my right. Idony at my left.
Owen at the far end because I would not put him at my elbow and I would not put him out of the room.
Gifts came off the wagon: sugar, smoked meat, a length of cloth that cost more than our levy shortfall.
The table looked like a wedding whether I set a date or not.
Under the table I was already wet.
Not for Gareth. The bond had slammed the second Owen walked into the hall. Heat. Stitches. My mouth on him last night. The truth about Ford. I sat in a clean dress I almost never wore and felt myself soak through underwear while Gareth poured wine we did not have last month.
He talked about the moon.
“Fourteen days was ambitious,” he said. “I’ll grant you that. A date before the next full is still reasonable. My father is prepared to be generous about the levy if Landers Ridge is a Hillsford hall in name as well as in fact.”
“This is a Landers hall.”
“Of course.” He cut meat. “A hall should look like one. No confusion on the west line. No rogue quartered under the ridge. No Luna who smells like she has been on her knees for a man she rejected in a yard.”
Pell’s fork paused. Edward went still. Marshall looked at Owen, then at the doors, then at Gareth’s twelve, counting exits and weapons the way a beta did when a dinner was not a dinner.
I did not flinch.
“You came a long way to insult my table,” I said.
“I came to clarify it.” Gareth wiped his mouth.
He spoke loud enough for the elders and quiet enough that it could still pass for manners.
“A Luna who opens her legs for a rejected Tillson is not fit to hold a hall. That is not an insult. That is a standard. My father has one. Your lower houses have one. Your brother should have one.”
Edward took a step off the wall. I lifted two fingers without looking and he stopped.
Under the table my cunt clenched on nothing. Furious. Soaked. Gareth’s words and Owen’s smell and the fact that it was true enough to land. I had been on my knees on those cabin boards. I had come on Owen’s cock while he told me about a fire. I sat straight and ate a bite I did not taste.
Owen’s voice from the far end, flat. “You came to talk a contract, talk a contract. You came to repeat your father’s report, I already know the report.”
Gareth smiled at him. “Owen Tillson. Still alive. How convenient for the story.”
“Gareth,” I said.
“Reilly.” He put his hand on the back of my chair, not on me.
“I can smell him on you from here. Broken bond. Fresh sex. You rejected him in front of witnesses and then you quartered him in the room you used him in. That is not arithmetic. That is a woman who wants a knot and a title at the same time. Hillsford will not marry a hall that is already being fucked by its hired watch.”
Marshall’s chair legs scraped. I did not stand. If I stood I was going to either put a knife in Gareth or walk out with my dress stuck to my thighs.
“The watch is written,” I said. “The rite was spoken. The date is not set. You can take your sugar and your extra eyes back across the river tonight.”
“I don’t think I will.” Gareth drank. “My men will stay on the guest line. I’ll stay in your hall. Tomorrow we walk the cut together. If I find a cabin that smells like a claiming, we will revisit the levy in terms my father will like.”
Idony said, “You are a guest.”
“I am the difference between seed grain and a winter,” Gareth said, still looking at me. “She knows it. That’s why she said the rite. That’s why she still smells like she regrets the words and not the cock.”
Owen stood up.
The stitches showed in how he did it. Gareth’s men shifted.
Marshall’s hand went to the back of his belt.
I kept my eyes on Gareth and my hands on the table and the pulse between my legs went stupid and loud.
Shame and want in the same beat. I wanted Owen to sit down.
I wanted him to drag me off the chair in front of Gareth and prove the sentence.
I wanted Gareth dead. All of it at once.
“Sit down,” I said to Owen.
He sat. Slow. His eyes were on Gareth’s throat.
Dinner finished because Idony made it finish. Talk about weather. Talk about the south pasture. Pell asked Gareth about Hillsford stores like Gareth had not just called me a whore with better grammar. Edward stared at Owen. I did not look at Edward.
When the plates went, Gareth stood and offered his arm like we were walking a garden.
“I’ll see you to your rooms,” he said.
“You will not.”
He leaned in as if to kiss my cheek again and spoke against my ear. “If you go down the path tonight I will have a man on it. If you bring Tillson to your bed I will write my father that Landers Ridge has no Luna, only a problem. Sleep alone. It will be practice.”
He left with four of his twelve. The rest took the guest line in the lower yard.
The hall emptied badly. Pell looked satisfied. Idony looked old. Marshall waited until the Hillsford coats were out.
“You should have thrown him out,” Edward said.
“With what men.” I sounded like Marshall. I hated it. “He brought twelve. We have a company that is not ours and a hall that is hungry. I am not starting that fight over a sentence at dinner.”
Marshall looked at Owen. “Go to the cabin. Do not come back up tonight. His men will watch the path.”
Owen’s mouth was a line. He looked at me. The bond pulled, filthy and simple. I was so wet I felt it on my thigh when I stood. He knew. Gareth had known. Everyone with a nose in that room had known.
“Reilly,” Owen said.
“Go.”
He went. I felt every step down the path. I felt Gareth’s man take a post in the trees. I felt my own body still sitting at the table with no table under it.
Idony touched my sleeve. “Do not go down.”
“I heard him.”
“Hearing him and keeping your belt closed are different.” She glanced at my throat. “He will use Ford, the scouts, the cabin, and you. If you give him tonight, he does not even have to lie.”
I went to my rooms. I barred the door. I stood with my back on it and shoved my hand under the dress and into the underwear and I was drenched, swollen, shaking.
I rubbed my clit standing up with Gareth’s voice in my head and Owen’s smell still in the hall air and I came in a short, furious jerk that did not help.
I kept my hand there and did it again, two fingers in, thumb on the clit, biting my wrist so Edward would not hear me from the corridor.
I came a second time saying Owen’s name into my teeth, angry at him for sitting when I told him to sit, angry at him for standing at all, angry at myself for being wet through a dinner that had been a hanging.
I washed. I did not go down the path.
I lay on the bed and felt Owen in the cabin, stitches and rage and a hard-on the dinner had not killed.
I felt him not come to the door. Gareth’s man was in the trees.
Marshall would be counting. I put my hand between my legs again because the bond would not shut up and I made myself come a third time, dry-eyed, dress still on, and it still felt like Gareth had a hand on the back of the chair.
Fourteen days, he had said once. Now he was in my hall.
I stared at the ceiling and kept my boots off the floor so I would not put them on.
The date was not set.
The rite still stood.
I still smelled like the thing he had named at my own table, and he had not even needed to lie.