Chapter 22
Ina
Ina leaned against her kendo stick, palms resting on the worn leather grip as she dragged air back into her lungs.
Sweat licked the back of her neck; a loose strand of hair clung to her face until she blew it away with an irritated huff.
The stick was scarred and darkened from decades of training—it wasn’t just a decorative relic, but a tool that had earned its place in her hands.
Her grip adjusted without thought, fingers settling where Aunt Sylvie had always corrected her. Again, she could almost hear her: “If you hesitate little cub, you’re already dead.”
Ina swallowed and pushed the memory down.
Sylvie had trained her to fight like it mattered.
Daddy stood back and watched, silent approval in his eyes.
Enough to ease the ache in her shins when Sylvie played dirty to catch her off guard.
Mummy never joined them. She’d been content to hold the pack together, to heal their injuries and to keep their home standing while others bled for it.
Ina respected that, but it wasn’t for her.
Heavy footsteps thundered across the kitchen floor above, followed by the slam of the back door.
Ina flinched despite herself, jaw tightening. Malachi always slammed the bloody door. Her irritation came sharp, then softened just as fast. She exhaled through her nose, letting the tension bleed away.
He was heading out to meet his friends, despite her protests. He’d promised to meet them at Lucky Crumbs—a lie thin enough to see daylight through. He’d be going to the wall by the sea where he always met them.
Ina let it pass. The beach would be busy at this hour: early morning swimmers, dog walkers, and tourists squinting at the horizon with no idea what lurked under the water.
The Selkie were getting bolder—but they weren’t stupid.
She picked her battles carefully. Lord knows there were enough of them waiting.
She straightened her back, rolling out the tension that had crept in during training.
“Fatigue is where mistakes breed.”
Sylvie’s voice landed clean and sharp, as it always had.
Ina adjusted her stance without thinking, weight shifting evenly through her feet.
She’d learned to fight before she learned to soften.
There had been no space for gentler lessons—not with Sylvie driving her harder every day, not with Daddy stealing glances while he scribbled in his journal.
She lived for that quiet nod. For the moment he’d go back to his writing, trusting that she could hold the line if she had to. The memory tightened her chest. She let it. Then she let it go.
Malachi would likely tell Jeff he wasn’t leaving Latharna at the end of the summer.
Libby Kilbane had let their secret slip months ago—Jeff’s mother was as loud and careless as he was.
Ina had done something uncharacteristically strained and stayed out of it, letting things unfold naturally.
A risky decision in hindsight. If the Selkie hadn’t attacked, Malachi might have left without ever knowing the truth about his family and the Otherworld.
The thought caught in her ribs, sharp and unwelcome. She turned back to her weapons before the irritation could harden into something uglier.
Libby would’ve shrugged it off. Cousins by blood, strangers since childhood. After Daddy, Sylvie, and Uncle Balfor disappeared, Sylvie’s husband Jack had taken baby Libby from Latharna without a word, without ever looking back. He never came back or made contact with Mummy.
Libby came back years later when Jeff was little. She never openly acknowledged the connection. Even when Rhys was killed by the Selkie, Libby chose normality while Ina chose vigilance.
Ina’s mouth tightened. There were people who lived in ignorance—and then there were people who chose it. The latter were worse. Knowledge wasted was a liability, dulling instinct and blunting edges.
She slid the kendo stick back onto the rack with care. Like most of the weapons in the Hideaway, it had passed down through generations. She reached for the crossbow next, turning it slowly, checking the wood and tension of the string.
A bolt slipped loose and rolled to her feet. She stopped it with her boot, bent and loaded it in one smooth motion. The movement was automatic—muscle memory drilled into her by years of repetition and correction.
Ina drew a steady breath, pivoted on the ball of her foot, eyes already closing as she fired.
The bolt buried itself deep in the scarecrow’s head behind her. She didn’t smile; there was no need. The Wolfendens didn’t miss.
She pictured a shoal of Selkie breaking the surface and felt nothing, but a tightening focus settle through her limbs.
Numbers didn’t scare her. Hesitation did.
She had no room for doubt, no patience or consideration for outcomes she didn’t intend to survive.
Failure simply wasn’t part of the calculation.
Grunting, she yanked the bolt free. The scarecrow’s neck tore further, sagging loose and lopsided. She wiped her hands on her trousers, and returned the crossbow to its place.
Ina stood in the middle of the room and listened.
The Hideaway was soundproof—voices and noise couldn’t reach it—but vibrations always did. Footsteps on the wooden floor above. The familiar slam of the back door.
Her jaw tightened. She looked up at the ceiling, waiting longer than she needed to.
Silence.
She crossed to the far corner and pressed her foot down on a wooden plank.
The floorboard creaked—hollow. Ina didn’t move straight away.
Her heel still planted as if the sound itself had started something loose inside her.
She hesitated, pulse ticking louder than it should have.
No footsteps or doors. Still her stomach tightened at the unwelcome pull of anticipation edged with fear.
Crouching, she leaned her weight onto her haunches and ran her hands along the floor until her fingers found the seam. Her nails slipped underneath it, chipping the polish. The panel lifted with a soft scrape and a puff of dust billowed into her face.
Ina coughed, eyes watering, and waved the plume away.
The smell hit next—old wood and leather.
She froze. Not from fear of being caught, from the sense that she had crossed a line.
That lifting what lay hidden meant breaking an unspoken rule she’d enforced for decades.
She tilted her head, listening again, every muscle taut.
She drew in a breath, reached into the hollow space, and pulled out a book.
Daddy’s journal.
Her fingers tightened around the spine, as if it might vanish if she loosened her grip.
She hadn’t seen it since she was a child, but she’d always known where it was, safely hidden, undisturbed for decades.
She could never bring herself to read it, because opening it meant admitting Daddy wasn’t coming back.
And if she admitted that, everything else followed.
Mummy dying of a broken heart. Sylvie’s disappearance.
The weight of being the only one left standing who couldn’t shift.
Ina breathed in slowly. Dust caught in her nose and she sneezed, swiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
She wiped the cover clean. The faded gold Wolfenden sigil emerged beneath her touch—the lines softened now, the gold leaf worn thin. The same wolf Archie had chosen for The Wolf’s Den, without ever knowing why it felt right. Her finger traced the shape, and her vision blurred.
Daddy used to write while she sparred with Sylvie, pen scratching as the blows landed, corrections barked mid-swing. This book would hold everything he knew about Latharna and everything he never said aloud.
Ina opened it. The looping handwriting swam instantly. Her chest tightened, breath catching sharp and high. She shut the journal—hard—before the sting behind her eyes could turn into something worse.
She lowered the book back into its hiding spot and slid the floorboard into place, pressing it down until it settled back into position. There was no seam, no sign it had ever been disturbed. Her hands lingered a moment longer than necessary, as if sealing more than wood.
One day she would read it. One day she’d tell Archie it existed.
But that would mean letting go of hope. Hope clung to her like armour.
She didn’t know how to stand without it.
Without it, there was nothing but defeat, and she’d have to face everything else she’d locked away—Sylvie, Mummy, the cost of surviving when others hadn’t…
Ina straightened slowly, rolling her shoulders back until her spine aligned and her breath steadied. Her familiar posture returned, the one that left no room for collapse. There was work to do.