Chapter 20 #2
Something cracked in my chest. Something that had been holding itself together with stubbornness and denial and the absolute refusal to fall apart until I had the luxury of falling apart alone.
“Daniel—”
“I mean it.” His eyes held mine. “You don't have to earn your place here. You have it. You've had it since you stood over Anna's body and didn't run. Since you looked at a world full of monsters and decided to fight instead of hide.”
I didn't have words for that. So I just nodded. And when his hand finally dropped from my arm, I felt the absence like a phantom limb.
“Go,” Daniel said. “Do something normal for a few hours. I'll send someone to check on you later.”
“I don't need a babysitter.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Call it a concerned boyfriend, then. Wolves are allowed to have those.”
The drive to the old house took fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of silence and the hum of the truck engine and my thoughts spinning in circles that never quite reached a conclusion. By the time I pulled into the driveway, some of the tension in my shoulders had eased. Not much. But enough.
The house looked better than it had six months ago.
New windows, new door, fresh paint covering the places where blood had soaked into wood.
But standing in front of it still felt like standing in front of a grave.
Like something lived inside that remembered what had happened here and was waiting to see if I was brave enough to come inside.
I grabbed my tool bag from the bed of the truck and headed for the front door.
The interior smelled like sawdust and paint. Fresh. Clean. The smell of work being done, of damage being repaired, of something broken being slowly put back together.
But underneath that, if I breathed deep enough, I could still smell her.
Anna's perfume. Faint now, fading more every day, but still there. Lingering in the fabric of the house like a ghost that wasn't ready to leave.
I stood in the living room for a long moment. Just breathing. Letting the memories wash over me without trying to push them away.
This was where we'd planned to grow old. This was where we'd imagined grandchildren running through the halls, holiday dinners that lasted until midnight, lazy Sunday mornings with coffee and crossword puzzles. This was supposed to be our forever home.
Now it was just me. Putting up drywall. Trying to rebuild something that could never be what it was supposed to be.
I was wrist-deep in trim installation when I heard the truck pull up outside.
Footsteps on the porch. Two sets. One heavy and purposeful, one lighter and more hesitant.
The door opened, and Jonah stuck his head inside. His usual grin was back in place, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
“Knock knock. Babysitter brigade has arrived.”
“I told Daniel I didn't need—”
“Yeah, but Daniel doesn't listen, and neither do I. It's a family trait.” Jonah stepped inside, followed by a young woman I recognized from the pack house. Sienna. The youngest wolf, all nervous energy and desperate eagerness to prove herself. “Besides, I come bearing gifts.”
He held up a six-pack of beer and a bag that smelled like burgers from the diner on Main Street.
“Bribery,” I said. “Nice.”
“I prefer 'strategic friendship cultivation.' Sounds classier.” Jonah set the food on the counter, started unpacking. “You've been at this for, what, six hours? You haven't eaten. Probably haven't had water either. Very contractor cliché of you.”
“I've been busy.”
“You've been avoiding.” Jonah's voice was gentle, but there was truth in it.
The kind of truth that hurt because it couldn't be argued with.
“Which, hey, valid coping mechanism. But you're also about to faceplant into that trim board, and I'd rather not explain to Daniel that his favorite human passed out from dehydration.”
“I'm not his favorite anything.”
Jonah snorted. “Sure you're not. That's why he looked ready to rip Luke's throat out when he questioned your presence at the meeting.”
I didn't have a response to that. So I set down my tools and accepted the burger Jonah held out.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. Sienna had drifted toward the back of the house, giving us space while pretending to examine the renovation work. Wolves and their instinct for pack dynamics. Always knowing when someone needed room to breathe.
“I'm sorry,” Jonah said finally. “About Luke.”
“You don't have to apologize for him.”
“Yeah, I kind of do.” Jonah's jaw tightened. “He's my brother. Older brother. And he's... protective. Of the pack, of the way things have always been done. He doesn't trust easily, and he doesn't adjust to change well.”
I looked at him. Really looked. Saw the family resemblance now that I was paying attention. The same dark hair, the same sharp cheekbones, though Jonah's face was softer. Younger. More open to the world instead of guarded against it.
“That must be complicated,” I said. “Having a brother in the pack hierarchy like that.”
“It's something.” Jonah laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. “Growing up, Luke was always the responsible one. The one who followed rules, earned his position, made our parents proud. I was the screwup. The one who couldn't take anything seriously.”
“You seem pretty serious to me.”
“I've gotten better at faking it.” The smile flickered, then faded. “Luke thinks I ride on his reputation. That I coast on being his brother instead of earning my place. And maybe he's not wrong. Maybe I've been the comic relief so long I forgot how to be anything else.”
“That's not what I've seen.” I set down my burger, met his eyes. “When the rogues came. You didn't hesitate. You threw yourself into that fight like you'd been training for it your whole life.”
“That's instinct.”
“Is it? Because instinct would tell you to run. Instinct would tell you to protect yourself. What you did was choice. You chose to fight. Chose to protect people you cared about.” I paused. “That's not coasting. That's not riding anyone's reputation. That's who you are.”
Jonah was quiet for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression. Softened.
“Evan said you were good at this,” he said finally. “The dad talk thing. He said it's like you can see through all the bullshit straight to the stuff people are actually scared of.”
“Practice. Nate spent years pretending he was fine when he wasn't. You learn to read between the lines.”
“Must have been hard. Raising him alone after—” Jonah stopped. “Sorry. I didn't mean to—”
“It's okay.” And strangely, it was. The words came easier than they used to.
“Anna and I raised him together for as long as we could.
And when she got sick, when things got hard, we did what every parent does.
We lied to our kid and told him everything was going to be fine, and then we held each other in the dark and cried when he couldn't hear us.”
Jonah's eyes were bright. Young. Full of an empathy that hadn't been worn down by years of disappointment.
“She sounds amazing,” he said quietly.
“She was.” I smiled, and it only hurt a little. “She would have loved all this, you know. The wolves, the magic, the whole impossible situation. She always said I needed more adventure in my life. That I was too practical. Too grounded.”
“What would she think of Daniel?”
The question caught me off guard. I opened my mouth to deflect, to change the subject, to do any of the dozen things I'd been doing for months whenever someone got too close to that particular wound.
Instead, I heard myself say: “She'd think he was exactly what I needed. And she'd give me hell for being too stubborn to admit it.”
Jonah's grin came back. Warmer this time. Real.
“I knew I liked you, Harrington.” He stood, stretched, grabbed his tool belt from the pile by the door. “Now. What needs doing? I've got wolf strength and zero skills, but I take direction well.”
“The kitchen cabinets need to come out. They're damaged beyond repair.”
“Demo work. My specialty.” He cracked his knuckles. “Sienna! Get in here. We're destroying things for emotional catharsis.”
She appeared from the back hallway, eyes bright with the kind of enthusiasm that came from being young and wanting desperately to be useful. “Really?”
“Really.” Jonah threw an arm around her shoulders. “First rule of renovation: sometimes you have to tear something down before you can build it back up. Isn't that right, Michael?”
I looked at the kitchen. At the cabinets Anna had picked out before she died. At the countertops she'd spent weeks researching, the backsplash she'd shown me in magazine clippings with notes written in her careful handwriting.
Tear it down. Build it back up.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “That's exactly right.”
We worked until the light started to fade. Jonah and Sienna ripping out cabinets with supernatural strength while I directed traffic and tried not to think about all the plans that had died with those walls.
It helped. Having them there. Having the noise and the company and the easy rhythm of work being done by people who wanted to help.