The Lycan's Wife, The Alpha's Wish

Mathias's refusal had barely left his mouth when I stepped around him and reached for the narrow door beside the hearth.

His hand landed on the wood above my head. "We are not finished."

"You made a decision for both of us. That sounds finished to me."

The robe held closed beneath my fist, but his scent-cedar, iron, and amber-still rose from my skin. Constance's body reacted to his nearness with a traitorous warmth that made anger easier than embarrassment. I ducked under his arm, shoved through the door, and turned the iron key before he could follow.

The door jumped once under his palm.

"Constance."

"Go protect Millicent. You seem committed to the work."

For several seconds, his breathing remained audible through the oak. Then his steps crossed the bedchamber. The outer door opened. A woman's startled voice met his clipped order to prepare his wife for breakfast, and the door shut hard enough to tremble through the bathing room walls.

I kept my hand on the key until the silence felt real.

The bathing room was larger than my apartment kitchen. Blue tiles covered the floor; steam drifted from a copper tub sunk beside the wall. Someone had filled it before dawn and left folded cloths, soap, combs, and a silver tray of glass jars on a marble table. There was no faucet or shower, and certainly no phone. I had gained a palace and lost indoor plumbing in the same supernatural transaction.

A mirror stretched above the washstand. Constance waited inside it with Mathias's rumpled robe wrapped around her and his scent all over her body.

I opened the robe and let it fall.

Looking became harder once I was alone. In the bedroom, nakedness had been a border I needed to defend. Here it exposed the theft in full: narrow shoulders, high breasts, a soft stomach, black hair brushing a waist I had never touched before. This was not a costume. Constance's skin warmed when I rubbed my arms. Her lungs moved because I breathed. Her pulse beat under my fingers when I pressed them to her throat.

"I'm sorry," I said to the glass.

The woman there offered no answer.

I climbed into the tub. Warm water closed over my calves and thighs, carrying lavender from crushed leaves floating near the drain. It should have soothed me. Instead, Mathias's scent lifted in the steam. It lingered at my neck, beneath my breast, along the hip his hand must have rested against while we slept. I took a cloth and scrubbed until the skin flushed.

The water clouded around me. Pale powder streaked from my upper arm.

I stopped.

More powder came away when I wiped the same place again, revealing a bruise beneath it. Yellow faded into violet across the inside of Constance's arm. Four darker ovals curved around the flesh, too even to be accidental. I stood in the tub and searched the rest of her body. Powder concealed another mark near her ribs and a broad discoloration high on one hip. None looked fresh, but someone had covered them carefully enough to survive a night in bed.

The book had described Constance as fragile. It had never mentioned that she was bruised.

I touched the mark on her hip. A dull ache answered. Not memory, exactly. The body knew where it had been hurt even if it refused to show me by whom.

"Did he do this?"

The question sounded worse in her voice.

I looked toward the locked door. Mathias had caught my wrist. He had blocked my exit. He had also stopped when I told him not to touch me. That proved he possessed restraint, not innocence. Millicent had threatened Constance. Servants had access to powder and baths. The novel had given me motives without evidence, because apparently fiction enjoyed watching women make fatal assumptions.

I climbed out, leaving wet footprints across the tile, and leaned toward the mirror. The bruises were almost invisible from a few feet away. A dusting of pearl powder waited in one of the silver jars. I rubbed a little between my fingers, then washed it off.

Something dark moved beneath the skin below my navel.

I jerked back. The mark shifted again, gliding toward my left hip. It gathered into a thin crescent no larger than my thumbnail, silver at the edges and blue-black at its center. When I pressed it, the crescent slipped sideways under my fingertip.

"Absolutely not."

The mark pulsed once. Cold traveled inward, deep enough to reach a place the bath's heat could not touch. For an instant I felt water far colder than the tub and an immense, empty darkness beneath it. Then the sensation vanished. The crescent settled above my hipbone as if it had always belonged there.

A knock struck the door.

I snatched up the robe. "Who is it?"

"Judeth, my lady."

The name belonged to Constance's attendant, though the novel had given her little beyond loyal hands and a talent for crying at useful moments. I tied the robe, unlocked the door, and opened it only far enough to see her.

Judeth held a dark blue morning dress over one arm. She was young, freckled, and already dressed for work, with brown hair pinned under a linen cap. Her gaze moved from my wet hair to the discarded cloth, then found the bruise on my arm. Fear changed her face before she lowered her eyes.

"Who covered these?" I asked.

Her grip tightened on the dress. "You asked me to."

"Why?"

"You said Lord Mathias must not see."

"Did you see who hurt me?"

Judeth glanced toward the bedchamber. "My lady, he will hear us."

"He's gone."

That frightened her more. She stepped inside and closed the door with care. Rosemary and wool smoke clung to her clothes. "You never lock him out. You never send him away. You don't look at me as if we've only just met."

I had wanted information. Instead, I had made myself the threat in the room.

"I woke confused," I said. It was true enough to survive repetition. "Tell me about the bruises."

"You wouldn't tell me." Her attention caught on my hand, still braced across the robe at my stomach. "Does the mark pain you again?"

She had said again. Before I could ask what she meant, a bell rang beyond the bedchamber, low and resonant.

Judeth went pale. "Breakfast began a quarter hour ago. Lady Millicent is already downstairs."

The breakfast scene. I remembered it now: Constance arrived late after crying in private, found Millicent wearing her gold and seated at Mathias's right hand, then apologized for disturbing them. The chapter had treated her humiliation as proof that the mate bond could not be resisted.

I reached for the blue dress. "Help me put this on."

Judeth did not release it. "My lady?"

"Millicent expects Constance to walk into that room ashamed." I met the borrowed gray eyes in the glass. "She can be disappointed."

Judeth stared at me as a white bloom spread beneath the mirror's surface. The bath behind us had begun to cool, yet the fog thickened inside the glass and left a clear oval at the height of my face.

From the other side, a woman's fingertip pressed against the glass.

It dragged four letters through the mist.

HELP