Free Web NovelChapter 43: Chapter 43 The Boy From Before
_Author’s POV_
Vicky had been watching Pierre for the better part of two hours before she said anything.
She was good at watching, it was one of her more useful qualities, the ability to observe without appearing to observe, to track the details of a situation while looking like she was doing something else entirely. She had been ostensibly reading her book since the snake incident, but the book had not been turned to a new page in forty minutes and her eyes had not been on the text for most of that time.
She was watching Pierre watch Rowena.
Not obviously. Pierre was too composed for obviousness. But there was a quality to his attention when Rowena was in his line of sight, a slight orientation, the way a compass settles toward north, just consistent and present regardless of what else was happening around him. When Rowena spoke, Pierre heard it. When she moved, Pierre’s awareness tracked it. When she laughed at something Greg said, the corner of Pierre’s mouth lifted a half-second after, not because the joke had landed for him but because her laugh had.
Vicky closed her book.
She found Kasper at the edge of the clearing where he was doing something practical with the camp equipment that probably didn’t need doing. She positioned herself beside him and said, without preamble: “Pierre loves Ro.”
Kasper continued what he was doing. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not,” Vicky said. “I’ve been watching him for two hours.”
“He’s a good friend of the family who came on an outing,” Kasper said. “He’s attentive because he’s a considerate person.”
“Kasper,” Vicky called out. “He followed her into the forest without being asked and took a snake bite for her.”
“That was reflexive,” Kasper downplayed it. “Any decent person would have....”
“And then he sat there while she treated it with an expression on his face like she’d handed him something he’d been waiting for.” Vicky crossed her arms. “I’ve been married for twelve years. I know what a man looks like when he’s in love.”
Kasper was quiet for a moment.
“It doesn’t matter how he feels,” he said finally. “The position difference alone, Pierre is a well-established Alpha with a pack that has deep regional roots. Rowena has just come out of a dissolved marriage and is technically in the process of reclaiming her family standing. His family would ....” He stopped.
“His family would what?” Vicky asked.
“Complicate it,” Kasper said.
Greg materialized from behind the camp truck where he had apparently been listening for some time, which he would not have admitted to if caught but was not caught because Kasper and Vicky were facing the wrong direction.
“It’s true,” Greg said.
They both turned.
“That he loves her,” Greg clarified. “It’s true. Has been for years.” He came around to stand with them. “He told me once, a long time ago. Not directly, Pierre doesn’t do things directly when he’s protecting something. But clearly enough.” He glanced toward the camp where Pierre was sitting with his leg extended, talking to Miriam. “The social standing thing is real. His mother.....well. You’ve heard about Aria.”
“The unlucky narrative,” Vicky said.
“That,” Greg confirmed. “She’s held that position for a long time. Pierre has managed it by staying at a distance. But.....” He looked at the camp. At Pierre. At Rowena, who had come to sit near Pierre with a cup of tea she had made without being asked and set beside him without comment. “I think the distance strategy is ending.”
Kasper looked at the two of them, at Pierre and Rowena in the camp chairs with the light coming through the trees, and said nothing for a long moment.
Then he looked at Vicky. “How obvious is it?”
“Very,” she said. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
“To Rowena?”
Vicky considered that. “I don’t think she’s looked yet. She’s been busy not looking.”
“She’ll look,” Greg said. “Eventually.” He tilted his head. “The question is what she sees when she does.”
The picnic spread out over the late afternoon in the way of good days, unhurried, accumulating, and each part of it better than the part before.
Pierre’s foraged collection had become, under Miriam’s direction, a genuinely impressive meal. The mushrooms were cooked over the camp stove with wild garlic and thyme. The watercress and wood sorrel went into a simple salad with the ramps.
Rowena’s rabbits were cooking slowly over the fire Greg had built, which had, after a structurally questionable start, become an excellent fire by early afternoon.
The sloe berries were destined for something Kasper was making in a jar that he refused to explain but that Greg eyed with significant respect.
They ate when the food was ready and stayed eating long after the plates were empty because the afternoon was too good to move away from.
It was Miriam’s youngest who started it, asked Rowena if she’d ever found anything interesting in this forest when she was small, with the genuine curiosity of a child who considers an adult’s childhood to be a kind of myth worth excavating.
Rowena thought for a moment. Then she said: “I found a boy once.”
The children immediately wanted to know more about the boy.
“He was in the lower section of the forest,” Rowena said. “Near the stream. I was about ten, I think. He’d fallen, trying to cross the water on the stones and gone in badly. His leg was cut on something and he was stuck.” She wrapped both hands around her cup. “I pulled him out and sat with him while he got his breath back.”
“How old was he?” Miriam’s oldest asked.
“About twelve, I think. Maybe thirteen.” Rowena paused. “He was from a different pack, I didn’t know him. He was embarrassed about falling. Very serious about it.” A slight smile. “He kept saying he was fine when he was clearly not fine.”
“What did you do?” the youngest asked.
“I had medicine in my pack,” Rowena said. “My father always made me carry it. There was a specific compound for cuts, a family preparation, one my grandmother made. I cleaned the wound and wrapped it.” She looked at the stream visible through the trees. “I made him sit until the color came back to his face and then I walked him back to the boundary where his pack’s land started.” She paused. “He thanked me very formally. Like he was reciting something he’d been taught.” She smiled properly. “I thought he was funny.”
The clearing was quiet for a moment.
Greg looked at Pierre.
Pierre was sitting very still with his cup halfway to his mouth and an expression that was doing a significant amount of work to appear normal.
His calf, the bitten one, had a scar on it that he had carried for 18 years. A long thin line from a sharp rock at the bottom of a stream. He had told people who asked that it was from a training injury, which was both technically true and entirely misleading.
He had been twelve years old. He had been embarrassed about falling. He had been very serious about saying he was fine.
And a girl with dark eyes and a pack of her father’s medicines had sat with him on the stream bank until the world stopped tilting.
He set his cup down very carefully.
He had thought, occasionally, about the girl.
He had never connected her to Rowena because he had met Rowena as an adult at a summit and she had not mentioned it and he had not thought to ask.
“Did you ever see him again?” Vicky asked.
“No,” Rowena said. “I didn’t know his name. I assumed he went home and forgot about it.” She looked at the stream. “I hope he was alright. His leg was cut fairly deeply.”
Pierre looked at the fire.
“I’m sure he was fine,” Greg said, in a voice that was slightly too controlled to be entirely natural.
Kasper looked at Greg. Greg looked at Kasper. Another significant quantity of wordless communication.
Pierre picked up his cup and drank his tea and said nothing.
He would tell her. Eventually. When the time was right, in the way he did things, directly, without pressure, giving her every opportunity to respond however she needed to.
But not today.
