Chapter 2

Kelsey was at breakfast the next morning too.

She said it had been too late the night before, and Damian was worried about her driving the mountain road alone, so he had put her in a guest room.

"You don't mind, ma'am?"

She sat down directly across from me on purpose.

I kept the blindfold on and picked up my coffee.

"You've already spent the night. Why bother asking?"

She gave a small laugh.

Damian frowned. "Mara, she didn't mean anything by it."

"Neither did I."

Under the table, Kelsey stretched out her foot and brushed Damian's shin.

He glanced at her at once.

There was no real anger in the warning.

I suddenly realized that now that I could see, so many things that had never made sense before finally had answers.

Why she always sat so close to him when she came to report on work.

Why Damian sometimes showered before coming into our room.

Why he occasionally carried a sweet scent that was not mine.

After I went blind my sense of smell got sharper.

Damian explained it was a new air freshener at the office.

I believed him.

Halfway through breakfast, Kelsey took a small glass bottle out of her pocket and turned it over in her palm.

I recognized the label.

Mate scent blocker.

Wolves have an exceptionally sharp sense of smell. If a married wolf gets intimate with someone else, it is almost impossible to hide the scent completely. Blockers were originally used for medical isolation and tracking missions, but later became the easiest way to conceal an affair.

Kelsey deliberately set the bottle down near my hand.

Damian's expression shifted.

"Kelsey."

But she said with a smile, "What? My throat's dry."

Then she said to me, "Ma'am, could you pass me that throat spray? It's just to your right."

She was testing me.

I reached out and felt around, knocked over the sugar bowl on purpose, and did not find the bottle until last.

"This one?"

"That's it."

Malicious triumph gleamed in her eyes as she took it.

Damian had been watching me the whole time.

Only once he was sure nothing was off did he visibly relax.

It made me want to laugh.

So he knew how ugly this was.

He just believed that as long as I couldn't see it, it wasn't happening in front of me.

After breakfast I went to the bathroom.

A pregnancy test lay buried at the bottom of the wastebasket.

Two red lines.

I stared at it for a long time.

Kelsey had slept in a guest room.

And she had thrown the test into our master bathroom.

This was not carelessness.

She wanted me to catch the scent and feel the shape without ever being able to confirm it.

If I had still been blind, I would probably have doubted myself, and been too unsure to confront anyone.

This time, I simply put it back where it was.

In the afternoon Damian walked with me.

As always, he told me in advance where the steps and loose stones were.

"Three steps ahead, on your right."

I followed where he led.

"Mara."

"Yes?"

"Have you been feeling down lately?"

I could see the concern on his face.

It was real.

That was the most frightening part.

It wasn't that he didn't love me at all.

He simply believed that loving me and betraying me could exist at the same time.

"No."

"You haven't been as close to me these last few days."

I nearly asked how greedy a person had to be to have a child with another woman and still expect his wife to go on depending on him.

But I asked nothing.

That night I contacted my teacher at Moonspring.

"Corinne."

The line was quiet for a few seconds.

"Mara?"

I had been away from Moonspring five years.

That reclusive healing pack in a snowy mountain valley opened its pass just once a year, around the eclipse, allowing members who lived elsewhere to return home.

There were ten days left this year.

"I want to come home."

Corinne did not ask why.

She only said, "The gate will open for you."

Holding my phone, I felt for the first time that ten days could be short.