Chapter 45 #2
“You ruined everything,” Lorraine screamed at Finneas. “My family is gone because of you. My brother is humiliated because of you. My mother is devastated because of you. I hope you and your human whore are happy because you destroyed us.”
Two guards grabbed her. She fought harder than Margaret did, kicking, clawing, screaming obscenities that echoed off the trees. One of the guards took a heel to the shin and swore under his breath.
“You’ll regret this,” she screamed as they pulled her toward the trees. “Both of you. I’ll make sure of it. This pack deserves better than a King who chose his cock over his crown.”
The words faded as they hauled her into the treeline. The clearing went quiet. Ugly quiet. The whole pack processing what they’d just witnessed.
Finneas hadn’t moved. Hadn’t responded to a single word from either of them. His face was stone, his eyes forward. The King, absorbing it, letting his pack see that neither his mother’s fury nor Lorraine’s hysteria could shake him.
But his fist at his side was trembling.
I watched the faces in the crowd. Some grim, some satisfied, some uncomfortable. This was the cost of challenging a King and losing. Two families erased from the only community they’d ever known. One of them his own.
Conrad pulled George to his feet. He was the only Ashtor who didn’t scream. He looked at Finneas across the clearing with a face I couldn’t read, put his arm around his son, and walked toward the trees. Regina followed. Quiet, contained, the last shred of dignity the Ashtor name had left.
Finneas stood in the center with me beside him. His hand found mine, fingers locking through. I squeezed. He squeezed back. His grip was too tight but I didn’t say anything.
We walked back to the estate. The pack parted for us and I kept my eyes forward, my hand in his, feeling people bow their heads as we passed.
Not all of them. But enough. Wolves and humans stepping aside, dipping their chins.
I was walking through it in a grass-stained blue dress with my belly huge, my eyes still wet.
I’d just watched two wolves fight for a crown, the crowd was bowing, and I was a Luna.
I still didn’t fully know what that meant. I was figuring it out.
Luca fell into step behind us. A quiet presence at our backs.
I leaned in close enough that only Finneas could hear. “If you ever scare me like that again, I will kill you myself. And I don’t need claws to do it.”
He laughed. The real one, open, warm. The laugh I’d been pulling out of him since a porch and a dog and a book with a terrible Scottish accent. He pressed his mouth against the top of my head and kept walking.
The estate came into view. The animal wing, the garden, the front door. Buddy was barking from inside, upset about being left behind, and the sound was so normal, so absurdly domestic after what we’d just been through, that I laughed too.
The afternoon sun was warm on my face. Finneas’s hand was warm around mine. Alex kicked once, hard, like punctuation.
We were going home.
Inside, the door closed behind us, and Finneas let go of my hand and walked to the kitchen window. He stood there with his back to me, both hands on the counter, his head down.
I gave him a minute. Then I went to him.
I couldn’t wrap my arms around him from behind anymore because the belly made that geometrically impossible, so I pressed myself against his side and put my hand on his back. His muscles were rigid under my palm.
“You did the right thing,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“Finneas.”
“I know.” His voice was rough. “I know I did.”
“But knowing it was right doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
He turned his head. His eyes were red. He hadn’t cried in front of the pack, hadn’t let his voice crack once through the sentencing, hadn’t shown a single thing that wasn’t the King.
But we were home now. The door was closed.
And the man underneath the crown was looking at me with his eyes wet and his jaw shaking.
“She’s my mother,” he said. “She did terrible things and she’s still my mother.”
“I know.”
“I keep thinking about this one time. I was maybe seven, eight. I had a nightmare about my father’s wolf and I was screaming and none of the staff could calm me down.
She came to my room. Didn’t say anything, didn’t hug me, didn’t tell me it was okay.
Just sat on the edge of the bed and stayed until I fell back asleep.
” His voice cracked. “That’s the best memory I have of my mother.
Her sitting on my bed in silence. That’s it.
And I still can’t stop thinking about it. ”
I pulled his head down to my shoulder. He went, heavy, his forehead pressed against my neck, his breathing ragged.
I held him the way he’d held me in the hospital, the way he’d held me on the bedroom floor after the pack introduction.
One hand on the back of his head, the other on his back, holding him together while he let himself fall apart in the only place where he could.
“You’re allowed to grieve her,” I said into his hair. “Even after everything. You’re allowed to miss who she used to be.”
He didn’t say anything. His shoulders shook once, hard, and I held on tighter.
We stood in the kitchen until the light shifted.
Buddy came and pressed against our legs.
Alex kicked between us. The afternoon sun warmed the counter where Finneas made coffee every morning.
I held the King while he cried for his mother and I thought: this is what it means to be his partner.
Not the crown, not the title. This. The kitchen. The grief. The holding on.