Chapter 28
Wolf Moon, Last Quarter Half-Moon
It’s almost a week later when we gather at Winter’s house for a battle postmortem, which seems to be the go-to place after potentially apocalyptic run-ins with death bitches. Crater Lake is full. The lava tubes are blocked once more.
Almost like it never happened. Unless you were there.
“Winter and I scoured Briar’s cottage,” Savi says. “There’s a whole dark fae rune situation under that throw rug.”
“I knew that rug was weird,” I mutter, slumping in my favorite chair. Over by the boarded-up window, Ty smiles. He smiles a lot more these days, but then, so do I.
“I found the necklace my brother gave me,” Winter says. “Tossed in the corner of the cottage.”
I realize I remember that—and that I forgot to tell them about it, what with one thing and another, a battle and a claiming and all the rest. I recount everything that happened to me in that crater when they weren’t with me.
“She was wearing that necklace for a while,” I tell them when I’m done.
“That’s why we couldn’t scent any power in her.
She was deliberately hiding it.” I think about how her scent was always confusing.
Maybe that should have been a clue when the scents of the sacrifices were equally confusing, but I can’t turn back time.
I frown at Winter. “When did you lose that necklace?”
“Around Halloween.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“I keep trying to tell myself that she sort of accidentally fell into her role in all this,” I say, turning it over in my head. “But I don’t think she did. I think it was all planned. Up to and including the fact that she was nowhere to be seen over Halloween. She played us.”
“One of her priests told me as much,” Savi says then.
Everything about her is moneyed and smooth, like her short period of dishevelment was a figment of my imagination—but I don’t think it was.
“Vin?a apparently suspected that we would bind ourselves in exactly that way. She was banking on it. I handed her the ammunition she needed to get us exactly where she wanted us—and she placed Briar here to make sure it happened.”
“And it didn’t work out that well for her, did it,” Winter says. She shrugs. “Fuck Vin?a. Fuck Briar, too.”
I don’t consider myself particularly sentimental, but I’m finding it hard to dismiss Briar completely. Likely because I’m the one who killed her in the end, and it doesn’t matter that Vin?a would have done it anyway. Taking a life isn’t something a person with a soul should just . . . move on from.
I tuck her away inside me and keep it to myself.
“We found this, too,” Winter says, digging something big and gold from her pocket. She flips it through the air in my direction and I catch it.
I know exactly what it is. An old-school biker ring with 1% emblazoned on it, useful in fistfights and to announce a person’s outlaw status to the world. I also know who this one belonged to, and not only because I can scent him on it.
“I guess Briar was Vin?a’s faithful minion who showed Connor the truth,” I say, as I suspected in the crater. I toss the ring to Ty.
He scowls at it, then grunts. “That dumb fuck. Wouldn’t be the first man I know to confuse pussy for truth.”
I feel the last remaining puzzle pieces coming together. How many times did Winter and I hypothesize that maybe Briar’s shiftiness was her sneaking away to see some boyfriend? Turns out, she was.
Some religions call this day in January the Epiphany. Maybe for good reason.
Savi does her food thing. The five of us eat. We laugh. The last time we did something like this, after the Halloween battle, it was a far more somber occasion. Winter’s grandmother had died. Everyone was shell-shocked.
This is better. This feels like that new world Ty and I saw before us under the full Wolf Moon.
“I’m going to move in with Ariel for the foreseeable future,” Winter announces when we’re all stuffed and happy. She grins. “We can pretend it’s for my safety. It’s not.”
Across the living room, Ariel allows his lips to form one of his infrequent smiles. “It’s not not about your safety.”
Winter’s grin widens, but she continues. “But I can’t stand to think of Gran’s house empty. Or getting rid of it when Augie might want to come back here someday.” She lifts her brows at Savi. “Are you sure you really want to do this?”
“You’re moving in?” I study her. “I’m not sure Jacksonville is a minion sort of place.”
“I don’t think that living in such dramatic isolation is necessarily good for me,” Savi says. She slides a look at me. “And I don’t need minions, Maddox. They need me. It will be good for them to soldier on alone.”
I don’t really know what to say to that, so I ignore it. “You’re just going to live here? All by yourself?”
“I see it as more of a halfway house,” Savi says.
Winter nods. “That night at the crater, while you were busy getting married, or whatever you call it—”
“I am mated and claimed, actually,” I say. “And a queen, lest you forget. Peasants that you are.”
Savi actually smiles. Winter laughs, then continues.
“We were talking about the fact that whatever the ulterior motives were at play here last fall, we all kind of needed a place to get back on our feet. Maybe Briar too, for better or worse. I spent three years of the Reveal doing it all myself, and it sucked. Now I’ve spent the past three months understanding how much bigger the world is than just my own misery.
And I have to think there are more magical creatures—”
“Magical women,” Savi interjects. “If we’re being honest.”
“I want this house to be a way station,” Winter says. “My grandmother would have loved it. After she got finished bemoaning the presence of strangers in her house, that is.”
We all smile at that.
“Ultimately, that’s what she did with her life.
She tried to help people, whether they wanted her help or not.
” Winter looks at our sorceress friend. “Savi can run this place without having to have everything steel plated and locked up tight, with an arsenal strapped to her at all times. Savi is the arsenal.”
“That you think so is the greatest weapon of all,” Savi says with a smile.
“And if you need another, I’m your wolf,” I say with a grin.
I realize then what seems different about Winter today. She’s not wearing her weapons. Maybe we’re all finding our way to who we really are. Maybe all these battles really were worth it if they led us here, to the places we needed to go.
When it’s time to leave, Ty and I walk hand in hand into the woods.
“I want to show you something,” he says.
I smile at him, still feeling that song—our song—within me. “Whatever you want to show me, I want to see.”
“Run with me,” he invites me.
We shift and take off, galloping higher into the hills above Jacksonville, then looping around to the road that stretches across the crest of Jacksonville Hill.
It straddles the road out of town that leads off into the Applegate Valley.
Ty leads me farther up into the deeply forested hill that rises behind Jacksonville, following what appears to be a little-used road all the way to the top.
When we’re nearly there, he shifts back and indicates I should do the same. Then he takes my hand in his, leads me out of the woods, and into a clearing where a grand house sits.
The grounds are covered in snow, but I can see the outlines of raised gardens and flower beds. There are terraces cut into the side of the mountain, some with patios, one with a pool. The view from here is practically the whole of the Rogue Valley—our valley—stretching down toward Ashland.
The house itself makes me think of pictures I’ve seen of places like France. It’s sprawling and beautiful. And obviously abandoned.
“Ty . . .” I shake my head at him. “What are we doing here?”
“I heard what your mother said,” he tells me, his dark gaze intent. “What wolf gets to look at the sky—or something like that.”
He takes my shoulders in his hands. I can see the indigo that rings his irises.
“I’ve made my peace with the den,” I tell him.
“You don’t have to make your peace with shit,” he says with a short laugh. “Every star in the sky, every cloud, every scrap of blue and moonlit night is yours.” He nods toward the house. “And so is this.”
I can’t take it in.
He keeps talking. “It’s maybe ten minutes from the den.
It’s strategically placed. I’m going to encourage all the lieutenants to find their own places away from the den, because I want wolves in houses all over Jacksonville.
I don’t want us hiding in a den. I don’t want us hiding anywhere.
” His hands tighten on my shoulders. His thumb grazes my crown tattoo.
“Just in case you think I don’t listen to you. ”
“I never said you didn’t listen,” I tell him, melting against him. “But this . . . Ty. This is dreaming big.”
“That’s who we are, baby,” he says. “Remember?”
Then he kisses me, deep and hard, before we go explore our new home.
And christen it, too. More than once.
And when we settle into our new home, despite the mutterings from the usual places, I know deep in my bones that this was the right choice. Wolves will think twice before bothering Ty—or me—with the small things. But if we’re needed, we’ll be right there.
Meanwhile, we get to breathe.
Over the next few months, more wolves—not only Ty’s lieutenants—claim places to live in the hills above Jacksonville, honoring both parts of who we are. As spring creeps in, it’s not unusual to hear howls from all over. I notice that the humans don’t flinch as much as they used to.
This pleases me too. Ty and I agree that the more connection we have with humankind, along with the rest of the Kind, the better.
I think about all the creatures who showed up at Crater Lake on New Year’s Eve.
All of us fought to hold on to the world the Reveal gave us.
It shouldn’t take fighting to keep it. It’s dancing in ruins at the Manor.
It’s playing pool with gorgons at Gold Rush.
It’s learning how to bake cookies with the human librarians who taught me how to read.
It’s one step—foot or paw, claw or tentacle—at a time, and a lot less eating each other.
This is how we build the world I want to give to my children someday. One conversation at a time, even if it’s awkward.
Until then, Ty and I get to sing the song that made us.
We get to take every breath as ours, sing it out into the world as we remake it, and make it shine like new.