The bag is still by the door, and I have been staring at it so long that the gray light has gone white.
If I stay in this office any longer I will start crying or start cleaning, and I do not want to give this place either one.
So I pick the bag up and walk out into the yard.
The air smells like rust and river water, and that used to be the smell of home.
*We could keep walking,* my wolf says. *Out the gate. Don't look back.*
Then a laugh comes out of the paint shed, low and easy, from someone who does not care who hears.
The door is open a hand's width, and I know better than to look. I look anyway.
Hessa is bent over the workbench with her jeans around her knees, red hair spilling across the wood.
Drystan is behind her, one hand in her hair and his belt on the floor.
His jacket is still on, and the sound his hips make against her goes straight into my stomach like ice water.
Drystan: That's it. Take it.
Hessa: Harder. Don't you dare be gentle with me.
She moans loud enough to ring off the roof, and my boot knocks a paint can over.
The can rolls across the concrete like a bell in a church, and everything stops.
She lifts her head and looks right at me, and there is not one drop of sorry on her face.
Hessa: Well. Look who came back to sniff her old hole.
She pulls her jeans up slow, like she wants me to see how little any of this costs her.
Hessa: He told me you were gone. He didn't say you'd be standing there like a kicked dog.
Drystan: Hessa. Out.
She taps my shoulder on her way past. One little tap, like you would touch something muddy.
Hessa: Keep him. You're welcome to what's left.
The door shuts, and the shed smells like paint and sex and him.
He zips up without hurrying and puts his belt through the loops, one, two, three.
Then he comes at me, and I back up until the shelving stops me.
Drystan: You going somewhere, Maela?
His hand closes on my jaw, and the back of my head knocks the shelf.
A metal edge digs into my back, and he holds me there like he has all day.
Drystan: You don't get to leave. Not while you still owe me.
Maela: I don't owe you anything.
Drystan: Don't you?
His thumb drags across my mouth, slow, like he is wiping something off it.
Drystan: A pup, Maela. You owe me a pup.
Drystan: My son. I had a name picked out and everything.
The shed goes so quiet I can hear water dripping somewhere behind the wall.
Something in my chest that had just started to scar up tears open again.
Maela: I lost him. Do you think there is one day I don't know that? He was inside me.
Drystan: And you couldn't keep him. Useless bitch. Not one thing you ever did right.
Drystan: So here is what happens tonight. At the table. In front of every wolf in this town.
Drystan: You say there is no bond. You say you felt nothing and made the whole thing up.
Drystan: You deny it out loud, and then I let you walk away.
So that is all he wants. Not me. Not one word about the pup.
He wants Hessa and his good name, and he wants the whole filthy mess on my tongue.
I almost say yes. That is what shame does. Yes is the easiest word in the world.
Then I look down at his fingers on my arm. There are four red marks there that will be purple by dinner.
*We are not saying yes,* my wolf says. *Not for him. Never for him again.*
She is right, and it hurts how right she is.
Maela: No.
Drystan: What did you just say to me?
Maela: I said no. I won't lie for you.
Maela: If that bond breaks, it breaks in my voice. On my terms. Not because you told me to open my mouth.
Drystan: You little bitch.
He shoves me, and my shoulder takes the shelf, and something glass falls and breaks.
Drystan: Say one wrong word tonight and I'll come for you.
Drystan: Not a slap this time. I'll make sure you don't get back up.
And it is not a bluff. I have seen what his hands do once he has decided something.
Two years ago that threat would have folded me in half. I would have said anything he wanted.
But I have already been under this man, and I got up out of it alone, in the dark, with nobody's hand to hold.
Maela: Then every wolf here hears it from me. Just not the way you want it.
He lets go. I don't know why. Maybe it is because I do not drop my eyes.
Halfway across the yard I have to put my hand on the tow truck to stay standing.
I am shaking. I am crying. I am scared of what he does next.
And under all of it, something new and hot is running through me.
I said no. My own mouth said it, and my wolf stood up with me while I did.
*Mine,* my wolf says. *Ours. Nobody else's.*
So why is the first face I go looking for Ryland's?