Chapter Thirteen
Violet
We're waiting at pack headquarters, and I have made a list.
It's a short list. Things To Do When My Father Arrives. Item one: stay calm. Item two: do not cry. Item three: if items one and two fail, locate the nearest goat.
There is no goat in the meeting room. I checked.
Dax stands beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine every time I shift my weight, which is constantly, because my whole body is humming and my wolf is doing laps under my skin.
Jesse and Lane are here. Cole and Alexis.
Marion, who keeps looking at me with the sort of warmth that makes my throat go tight.
The council. Half the Rowan clan, all of them built out of the same intimidating granite as Dax, all of them pretending very hard that they are here for official reasons and not to watch the show.
Then the door opens and my father stalks in, and the whole room straightens.
Emissary of the National Council of Shifters. The man who decides pack wars and territory lines and which Alphas live. The man who has never, in twenty-five years, let me cross a street without an escort.
He looks at Dax for a cold, hard second. "I will talk to you later about this nonsense," he says, and the temperature drops about forty degrees.
My stomach folds itself into an origami crane of dread.
And then my stepmother shoves past him.
"You can't arrest the hiker!" Drusilla announces, breathless, her braid coming loose, two spots of color high on her cheeks. "He didn’t do it. There were never any assassination attempts. It was me.”
I suck in a breath of shock. I don’t even understand what she’s saying.
"I faked the assassination attempts," she says. "All of them. I did it so you'd finally let Violet leave the pack lands."
You could hear a moth land.
My father's face flushes dull, angry red. "Someone shot an arrow at you. In the forest. It missed you by inches."
"I shot the arrow into the tree myself." Drusilla folds her arms.
"The silver in the oatmeal—"
"I put it there. After making absolutely certain that its scent was strong enough that Violet would smell it before she touched it."
"The perfume—"
"I did it. She was never in any danger. I made sure of that, every time.”
Of course, the Truth Mage never spoke to my stepmother. Why would he have? She would never have been a suspect, especially when we thought the assassin was trying to take her out too.
I should be horrified. I am, a little. But mostly I am looking at this woman who raised me, who told me my chewy crispy pancakes were delicious and now that I think about it, maybe was just sparing my feelings—and I am realizing she set the whole world on fire to give me a door.
"Why?" My father's voice has gone rough.
Drusilla turns to him, and all the bravado drains out of her, and what's left underneath is just tired.
"Because she's miserable, Jasper. Because she's twenty-five and she'd never once stood on ground you didn't own.
Because you were never, ever going to let her grow up, and I love her too much to watch her shrink to fit inside your fear. "
"She's not miserable!" My father spits out the words angrily.
"She absolutely is," Dax says.
“I kind of am,” I say quietly.
“No, you’re not.” My father glares at me and I almost apologize and agree with him, but instead I borrow courage and strength from my mate.
“You do not know how I feel,” I inform him, with a quaver in my voice. “And you do not get to tell me how I feel.”
"She questions herself constantly," Dax goes on, and his voice is very level, which is how I've come to recognize that he is not level at all. "She apologizes for existing. She does not believe she is good at anything—"
"Well, she isn't," my father snaps.
And there it is. Out loud. In a room full of people. My eyes fill, hot and instant, tears spilling onto my cheeks.
The growl that comes out of Dax is unnatural and terrifying. Fur ripples down his forearms, his claws slide out, and for one second the man I love is mostly not a man.
"What," he says, very softly, "did you just say about my mate."
My father glares at him. Dax glares back.
“Look at her! You made her cry!” Drusilla shouts. “Are you going to try to pretend those are tears of joy?”
"I mean, she doesn't have to be good at anything," my father says, his voice a little less sure now. "She's my daughter. I love her. My job is to keep her safe. That's all that matters."
"She is my fated mate." Dax's claws retract, one finger at a time, by what looks like sheer force of will. "I love her. And it is now my job to keep her safe."
"She trips over her own feet," my father says. "She drops things. She could hurt herself."
His voice trails off into uncertainty.
"I drop things and trip over things when you're watching," I tell my father, "because you're always watching, and you're always waiting for me to do it wrong, and it terrifies me. You decided a long time ago what I was, and I've spent my whole life trying not to disappoint you at it."
My father makes an impatient gesture, the one I've watched my whole life, the one that means that's enough now. " It doesn't matter anyway. I lost your mother. I am not losing you. You're coming home."
I blink away hot, furious tears. "Do you expect me to never have a mate?"
"If you want a mate, I'll find you one." Another gesture. "A good one. We'll bring him to live on our lands, where I can keep an eye on—"
The thought of belonging to anyone who isn't Dax closes my throat like a fist. I make a sound. A small, strangled, awful sound.
"She's choking," my father bellows, eyes bulging with panic.. "Medic! Where is your medic? Somebody call a—"
"NO." It tears out of me, louder than I have ever been in my life, loud enough that two members of the Rowan clan reach for weapons. "Father. Shut up."
The silence that follows is the most complete silence I have ever stood inside.
I have never told anyone to shut up. It’s not on any list. It feels incredible.
"I love Dax," I say into that silence. "I need him. He needs me. We are fated mates, and now that I've met him I will never want anyone else, not if you searched every pack on the continent and lined them up in order of childbearing hips.”
“What?” he looks at me in confusion.
“I ache when he's not next to me. I feel complete when he is.
I feel safe. And I feel-" my voice cracks, and I let it, because some things you don't get to say without your voice cracking "—understood.
And approved of. Do you know what that's like?
To be looked at by someone who isn't waiting for you to fail? "
My father stares at me.
And then, slowly, the granite comes apart.
"Yes," he says. "I do." He looks down at his own hands.
"I had it with your mother. And I have not been whole since the day she died giving me you.
" He says it without accusation. "I built a wall around the last piece of her I had left.
I told myself it was love. I see now it was just fear wearing love's coat. "
I cross the room to him. I am aware of every step, and I do not trip on a single one.
"I'm sorry you lost my mother," I say. "I am. But you are going to apologize to Drusilla for ever making her feel less than my mother. Right now. She has been a mother to me. She gave you my brothers. She made us a home. And she committed who knows how many felonies just to give me a chance at happiness.”
For a long moment my father doesn't move.
Then he turns to his wife, this fierce, exhausted woman who shot an arrow into a tree for me, and the emissary of the National Council of Shifters—the man who decides the fates of packs—says, in a very quiet voice, "Drusilla. I'm sorry. You were right. You’ve given me and our family a beautiful life. You are not less than Violet’s mother.
Different, but not less. I couldn’t have asked for a better mate. ”
It takes a while to sort out the rest.
Rory Delaney is released with a box of granola bars, a map, and a Rowan-clan escort to the property line, where he scurries off to find himself somewhere with fewer wolves.
And my father—my father stands in the middle of pack headquarters with his arm around his mate, and looks at Dax, and squares his shoulders for one last round.
"I'll want a Truth Mage to confirm the bond," he says.
"I have already offered to pay for one," Dax says. "The Rowan clan considers it a matter of honor."
"And I'll want to know your intentions."
"I intend to mate her, protect her, and spend the rest of my life ensuring she is never again spoken to the way you spoke to her today," Dax says.
My father studies him for a long, long moment.
"She's accident-prone," he tries, weakly, one last time.
"She faced down a bear last week," Dax says. "On her own. I watched. I did not intervene, because she did not need me to. She terrified it into the next county. Your daughter is not fragile, Emissary. She has simply never once been allowed to find out."
My father is quiet.
Finally he clears his throat. "I'd like to see the town she keeps talking about," he says gruffly. "Cedar Run. I hear the downtown is something."
"It is," I tell him. "There’s all kinds of beautiful old buildings, and shops, and a farmer’s market every weekend.”
"Then perhaps," my father says, "you could show me."
Me. Showing him somewhere.
I make a list, very fast, in my head. Things I Get To Do Now. It is going to be a long list. I'm going to need a bigger notebook.
I take Dax's hand. His fingers fold around mine, careful, the way he's careful with everything he's decided is his to keep.
"I'd love to," I say. "But first, I'm going to need you to meet a goat."