Chapter 15

Shawn stood in the storeroom of the Yates Den, fingertips grazing a dust-coated wooden chest. Ever since Quinn's pregnancy, the den's affairs had slipped into disarray, and today he had taken it upon himself to sift through the accumulated belongings.

"Shawn, this chest holds items from when you were attacked three years ago," the old steward said, lifting the lid. "The bloodied clothes were burned, but these remain…"

Shawn's eyes fixed on a dull red smear at the very bottom. He shifted the scattered junk aside and drew out a frayed handkerchief. In one corner a jasmine had been stitched with uneven strokes; the petals were browned by long-dried blood, yet a single gold thread at the stamen still caught a faint glint.

"What's this?" His eyes widened.

Quinn was horrid at needlework; she wouldn't touch a thread.

But jasmine…how well Leah knew her flower.

Things came rushing in on him, hurrying, chasing him.

"Investigate," said Shawn, clutching the handkerchief. "Where was Leah the night I was attacked three years ago?"

Ten days later Shawn stood before an old wreck of a house on the outskirts of Belmor Town. "Shawn, we have found her," one of the guards said.

"Tessa the maid, Leah's old maid. Quinn had sold her down the river, but Madam Yates bought her freedom in secret and brought her to this place."

The front door swung creaking open and the she-wolf, who was spinning thread, dropped her spindle as Shawn appeared.

She turned pale before Shawn.

"Oh, Cameron, for mercy's sake!" She sank to her knees.

"I didn't know a thing." Shawn tossed the bloody handkerchief from him.

"Whose is this?"

Tessa fixed her gaze on the jasmine, tears sliding down her cheeks.

"It was Leah's. That night she staggered through the snow with you in her arms, her fingers split and bleeding from the frost, yet she refused to let anyone else draw the poison out or bind the wound—she did it all herself, insisting it had to be her."

"Tell me everything!" Shawn yanked her up, eyes wild with fury.

"It was the eighth of the winter moon," Tessa said, voice shaking.

"Leah was coming back from beyond the pack's borders when she saw you lying in a pool of blood. She ripped her handkerchief to staunch the wound, sucked the arrow's venom out with her mouth, and never left your side for three days until the fever finally broke. Then she collapsed…"

Shawn staggered as if struck by lightning. The jasmine scent he'd caught that night, the cold fingers he'd felt in his half-conscious haze weren't dreams.

"Quinn changed into blood-soaked clothes and waited beside your bed while Leah lay unconscious," Tessa wept. "When you opened your eyes, you took Quinn for the one who had rescued you. Leah learned the truth, yet she only said—said that, since your heart was already given to someone else, she would never use what she had done to bind you."

Shawn staggered back, knocking the whirling wheel over with a crash.

He was all wrong to choose the wrong she-wolf.

The blood rushed up in his throat, and he spat a mouthful of blood on the floor.

“Saddle the horses,” he muttered, wiping his mouth, eyes burning with a terrible resolution. “To the borderland.”

At the general's, Shawn knelt before the gates a whole day and night, snow and wind howling about him. His knees were long since numbed.

“Leah!”

His voice was hoarse and broken, his hands gripping the bloody handkerchief.

“I am wrong. I mistook her for you, injured you! Come back with me. I will make it right!” The gates remained closed and silent and unyielding as the storm.