Chapter 27
Reilly
I did not repeat the rite.
I sat in the hall in the last dark before the east road and listened to Pell say wedding and Marshall say hours and Idony say chair, and I put the pin on the table.
“Marshall Huntington is steward,” I said. “He holds the hall. He holds the stores. He holds the council until this pack names something else. I am not signing a date. I am not signing a head. I am not selling one more person I am responsible for from this chair.”
Pell stood up. “You cannot.”
“I just did.”
Idony’s face did not move for a long time. Then she looked at Marshall. “You accept.”
Marshall looked at me like I had cut his hands. “Reilly.”
“Accept.”
He picked up the pin. He did not put it on. He held it. That was enough for the room.
Edward was still a guest. Gareth was still owed an answer at dawn. I had just made myself a woman with a coat and a brother and no title to hide behind. Not a speech about love. Not Owen’s name as the reason. The reason was the chair and what it did to people I was supposed to keep.
I walked out.
The yard was cold. Melanie was already at the gate with the map in her body. Owen was on the path. He saw my throat bare of the pin and he knew before I said it.
“Don’t make it a claim,” I said.
“I’m not.”
“I go to the east road as his sister. Not as Luna. Marshall holds the hall if this goes bad.”
Owen’s jaw worked. He nodded once. The company heard it. Joss looked away.
I should have gone straight to the road. I went to the cabin.
He followed. I barred the door. The lamp was a stub. I stood in the clothes I had abdicated in and I said, “Take me to bed like I am not Luna.”
He looked at me for a full breath.
Then he did.
No rush at the wall. He took my coat off.
He took my shirt off. He untied the binding and put his mouth on my breasts like we had time we did not have.
Slow. Sucking. His hand between my legs over the pants, then inside, two fingers, and I was already wet from the hall and the pin on the table.
He kissed me. I let him. I said please against his mouth and felt him go still, then harder.
Please.
First time. Not a secret. The company knew where we were. Marshall had the pin. I said it again when he put me on the bench and pulled my pants off and put his mouth on me. Please. He licked me until I came with my hands in his hair, and I said it while I came, ugly, honest.
He got up over me and I opened his pants and took him in my hand and said please again and he pushed into me slow.
Full. The swell of the knot at the mouth of me.
I said don’t to that and please to the rest. He fucked me like I had asked: not Luna, not a hall, a woman on a bench.
His forehead on mine. My legs around him.
The pinless throat under his mouth and he did not bite.
I had told him not until Edward was home.
He remembered. I felt his teeth open and close on my shoulder instead.
I came on him saying please into his neck.
He pulled out and I turned and took him in my mouth because I wanted him to go to the east road emptied of at least one kind of stupid.
He came on my tongue with a sound that was not the wall fight.
I swallowed. He pulled me up and held me. A blanket. His mouth in my hair.
“We still go at gray,” I said.
“I know.”
“If they put the trade at the door you do not step forward.”
“If they put the trade at the door you do not put the pin back on to save me.”
Neither of us promised. We dressed. I had no pin to fasten. The clothes were the same. I was not.
Melanie opened the door without knocking because the time was gone. She looked at the bench and at my throat.
“Steward’s holding,” she said. “Gareth’s going to call this a collapse. Let him. Road’s waiting.”
We went.
The east road at gray was just a road. Marshall had three of ours in the trees anyway, pin in his pocket, face like a man who had accepted a thing he hated. Joss and two wolves toward the barn. Melanie at my shoulder. Owen at the other. No Landers colors. No banner.
The guest house sat off a bend with a lamp in the front and a quieter dark at the side. I thought of Edward’s bread on a log. I thought of the pin on the table. I thought of please on a bench. The heat was still there. I walked with it.
Owen’s hand brushed mine once. Not a claim. A count.
We hit the side door at the same time.
Inside was a hall that was not a hall. Two Hillsford in the first room. Owen took one. I took the other. Quiet as we could. Not quiet enough. A shout toward the back. Melanie was already moving that way.
Edward was in a room with no lock that mattered and a bruise on his cheek and his hands tied in front of him like a guest. He saw me without a pin and made a sound I will not repeat. I cut the rope. Owen filled the door.
“Can you run,” I said.
“Yes.”
We ran.
The front woke up. Joss had the barn loud, which was the point.
Marshall’s wolves put a line on the road out.
I shoved Edward through the side and felt something hit my shoulder that was meant for Owen—blade or bolt, I did not sort it in the dark—and the bond flared white and stupid and I kept my feet.
Owen’s hand on my back. Edward’s sleeve in my fist.
We cleared the trees.
The guest house behind us was not finished. It did not have to be. We had the boy.
I did not go back for the pin.
Edward tried to talk on the path. I told him later. He looked at Owen and at my throat and at the blood on my coat and shut his mouth. Good.
Marshall met us at the inner bend. He saw Edward. He saw my shoulder. He saw the empty place where the pin had been.
“Hall,” he said.
“Your hall,” I said.
He flinched. He took Edward. He left me the path.
Owen stopped me in the trees before the yard. The heat was ridiculous. Blood and please and a brother breathing. I put my mouth on Owen’s mouth and I did not say the rite back. I said, “Not until he’s all the way home. Not the bite. Not the words.”
“I know.”
“Please,” I said again, quieter, and it was not for his cock that time. It was for the rest of the walk.
He nodded. We went into a yard that was not mine in the same way it had been an hour ago. Gareth was not there yet. He would be. The price had not been paid. The boy was just no longer in the guest house.
Idony stood on the step. She looked at my throat. She looked at Edward. She did not give me the pin.
I did not ask for it.
I took Edward to the kitchen and sat him down and put water in his hands and let him shake.
Owen stayed in the yard. The bond pulled.
I let it pull. I was not Luna. I was a woman with a wet heat in her body and a brother at a table and a man she had said please to on a bench, and the dawn was only half done.
The chair could wait.
The bite could wait.
I pressed my palm to Edward’s tied-mark on his wrist and I did not go back to the cabin. Not yet. Home meant the kitchen first. I had promised myself that much when I put the pin down.