Chapter 113 Found family

Chapter 113 Found family
EVANDER POV

The knock comes at ten in the morning.
Zephyra is sitting at the vanity in our room, looking at her reflection with focus.  
This is the third time I've caught her doing this — watching herself in mirrors, even windows, in the dark surface of her tea.

I never asked why, but I believe she's checking for the change she can feel but can't yet see.
"Come in," she calls.  
The door opens, and the woman who enters is carrying a tray of food and wearing the expression of someone who has rehearsed this moment many times and is now discovering that rehearsal was insufficient.

"Mother Meg?" Zephyra tries out questionably, testing the reality she believes can't be.

I know her from the reports Leo compiled — one of the household staff from Zade's estate. Older, a wolf-born. One of several dozen people my people quietly extracted from that place while Zephyra and I were in Paris. 

I brought her, with two others, specifically because I thought Zephyra needed a familiar face from that dark time. Someone who had seen her at her lowest and still chose to stay.

Most of the others have gone to the pack house. Several have returned to whatever family they had left.

"Your Highness," Meg says with her head bowed.

Zephyra turns from the mirror, and whatever she feels when she sees the woman's face is immediate and total.  
She is out of the chair and across the room before the tray has been set down.

"Goodness," she says, and it is not an exclamation. She breathes it out. Then another shorter female comes from behind Meg.

"Your Majesty." My wife looks forward at the sound.

"Zara? Zara?!" Zephyra screams. I feel her joy through the bond and Cat leaps up.

"What are you doing here?"

"High Priestess," they say, and then say nothing else, because both are crying too hard.

Zephyra takes the tray from Meg’s shaking hands, sets it on the nearest surface, and wraps her arms around both women with the completely unself-conscious tenderness she uses for injured things, grieving things, and things that have been carrying more than they should. 

Meg cries with deep, shuddering relief.

"How did you get here?" Zephyra asks when the crying has slowed.

"Alpha Evander, your husband... he brought some of us from Zade. The ones with nowhere to go," Meg says, then steadies herself. 

"Your sister-in-law, Lady Naville, she asked me if I would be your personal aide. I said yes before she finished the question," Zara adds.

"You shouldn't have to..."

"I wanted to," Meg says firmly. 

It is the first firm thing she's said since entering the room. She pulls back slightly and looks at Zephyra like someone reasserting herself. 

"You're the High Priestess. Chosen by the Goddess herself. I need to treat you with proper respect."

"We need to treat you with respect," Zara says assuredly.  
She's the kind that will be very opinionated and cuts straight to the point.

Zephyra's expression lightens.  
"You can be respectful and still be you," she says. "Don't become formal with me. Not when it's just us."

She walks them over to the couch by the bed. I've done a curtain demarcation that separates our bed from the door, from eyesight.

I listen to all three women reminisce and I leave the window seat and head to our bed.

"But you still can't be maids. The maids here bathe me, which I still refuse when I can. Then prepare meals, and other stuff." She shakes her head and brings up a phone.  
"I'll call Naville to find you a better job..." Zara holds her wrist and Meg follows.

I watch through the curtain line. I should leave but I need to listen and watch how they handle this. Who they are and what they expect.