Chapter 32 *

Chapter 32 *
Emery’s POV
I sat there for a second and tried to figure out what I was feeling, because it had definitely changed from nothing, but I couldn't quite land on what it had changed to. Margaret sat back down. Harold, who had barely moved through the whole thing, put his book on the side table. Eleanor settled herself into her chair and just — breathed.
Three years I'd told myself that the Remingtons were nice to me because I was Keaton's wife. That their warmth was courtesy, their dinners and their check-ins and the way Margaret always made sure I knew who to call — all of it just the extension of good manners, nothing I'd earned, nothing that was actually mine.
Sitting here now, watching Margaret's hands in her lap, watching Harold look at the middle distance with red eyes he wasn't going to let spill over — I didn't think that anymore.
I didn't know what to do with that.
"It went through," Margaret said. "The rejection."
Not a question. I nodded anyway.
She breathed out. Her shoulders dropped about half an inch.
Beside her, Eleanor pressed two fingers to her mouth, and for the first time since she'd walked into that room swinging her cane, something in her face cracked.
Margaret looked at me for a long moment. Then she stood up and crossed the room, and she sat down next to me on the couch, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her, and she took my hands in both of hers.
Her hands were warm. That's such a small thing. I don't know why it hit me the way it did.
"I owe you more than I'm going to be able to give you," she said. Her voice had gone rough. "He's my son and I love him and I'm ashamed of what he did. Those are both true at the same time and I know the second one doesn't help you." She stopped. Swallowed. "But I want you to hear me, Emery. Every dinner. Every ceremony you showed up for. Every elder you learned how to handle on your own because nobody thought to teach you. I saw all of it." Her grip on my hands tightened slightly. "An Alpha who forgets what he owes his mate isn't fit to hold the title. I don't know when he forgot. I don't know if I could have stopped it." She shook her head. "But it was never true for you. You didn't forget."
She reached up and tucked a piece of hair back from my face.
My mother's been gone since I was seven. It's the kind of absence that you fill in, over time — you learn to function around the shape of it, you get pretty good at not noticing it. But sometimes something gets through anyway. Some small gesture, something warm and uncomplicated.
I was trying very hard not to fall apart in Margaret Remington's living room.
"When you leave here," she said, "you call me. Okay? Doesn't matter where you are, doesn't matter what pack, doesn't matter what time. You call. I pick up." She held my eyes. "Or you call Eleanor. We'll be there."
I opened my mouth.
"Don't thank me," she said. "Just remember it."
I closed my mouth.
She followed me to the door.
I tried to give back the cuff.
It was old silver, the Remington sigil worn almost smooth at the center, a moonstone set in it that caught the light when she slid it onto my wrist. I'd seen it on her arm a hundred times without ever asking what it meant.
"I had a plan for this," she said. Her voice was controlled now, the roughness smoothed back over. The effort of it was visible if you were paying attention. "I was going to give it to you when you told me you were pregnant. I had this whole thing." She shook her head, just slightly. "I'd like you to have it anyway."
Harold was standing a few feet back. Jaw set. Eyes very bright.
Eleanor hadn't moved from her chair across the room, but her lashes were trembling.
I looked down at the moonstone. It was warm from Margaret's skin.
I bowed to all three of them. Low. Proper. The kind of bow you give when words stop being enough.
Margaret turned away.
She faced the wall by the door, back to me, and I could hear her trying not to make a sound. She wasn't quite succeeding. In three years I had never once seen this woman cry. Not in front of anyone. Not for anything.
I walked out.
The cold hit me. The path. The iron mailbox at the end of the drive with its latch still bent, still unfixed, the same small thing Harold had always meant to get to.
I was almost at the gate.
"Emery."
I stopped.
"I will always be your mother." Her voice carried clean and clear. Like she needed me to actually hear it. "You call me. I will protect you."