Chapter 168 Please, Don't Go
ADRIANA
I walked back through the council wing and down the corridor and out into the afternoon air and stood there for a moment with my hands still shaking and the power still running its slow current through me.
Then I went to find Elijah.
He was in his office, and he knew something had happened before I said a word. He had always been able to read me with a speed and accuracy that I had spent the first months of knowing him trying to prevent and had subsequently stopped trying to prevent because it was useless and because being read clearly by someone who then responded with care rather than judgment turned out to be one of the better experiences available.
“Sit down,” I said. “I have two things to tell you and I need to say both of them.”
He said without hesitation or question.
“The first one,” I said, “is that I know about Carver and I went to see him.”
Something moved across his face. Guilt and also relief. Like he was glad the burden was taken off his shoulders.
“Adriana—”
“The second thing,” I cut him off, “is that I’ve been keeping something from you too. Something I should have told you days ago. It’s about Liam.”
He went completely still.
“Your mother felt it when she met them,” I said. “And I felt too. There is something in our son that I recognized. It felt like a bit of the Grandmaster’s power but smaller.” I sat down across from him because my legs were not entirely reliable. “I’ve been trying to understand it before I told you. That was wrong. I should have come to you immediately.”
The room was quiet.
Elijah looked at me for a long moment with an expression I could not fully parse, too many things present simultaneously.
“I already knew,” he said. “My mother told me. The day after the council meeting.” He paused. “I’ve been waiting for you to come to me with it.”
I stared at him.
“You knew,” I said.
“Yes.”
“For days.”
“Yes.”
We looked at each other across the desk and the full absurdity of it arrived in the room between us. We did the same thing, both of us convinced we were being careful, while unknowingly creating the very distance we were trying to protect each other from.
I started laughing first. It was not entirely a happy laugh but it was genuine.
After a moment, Elijah laughed too.
It was not a solution to anything. Liam still had something in him that needed addressing. Carver was still building his case. My powers were still unstable and my wolf was still distant and I was still running on inadequate sleep with twins who had not yet developed any concept of schedule.
But we were laughing together in his office in the afternoon light and we were both finally holding all of it rather than half of it, and that was something. That was, in fact, a great deal.
“We have to stop doing this,” I said when the laughter had run its course.
“Yes,” he agreed. “We do. Where do I start?”
“Tell me everything you know about Carver’s support on the council.”
Three days after my conversation with Carver, I was sitting on the low stone bench at the edge of the garden, when Leo appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
It was the first time in eleven days that I had sat outside without a specific purpose attached to the sitting. No training, no pack matter, no child in arms. Just the bench and the light and fifteen minutes I had located between the twins’ feed and the next thing on the list.
I felt him coming before I saw him, which was something new. The training was sharpening not just the power but everything around it, my senses clarifying in ways I was still cataloguing. He moved quietly for a seven year old.
He sat beside me without asking if he could, which I liked. Asking would have been polite and would have also changed the quality of whatever this was into something more formal than he intended.
“Hi darling,” I urged him to come closer and I wrapped him in a hug, breathing in his scent. It made me feel marginally better.
His smaller hands wrapped around me too, returning the hug and it was all I could do not to burst into tears. I loved the boy so much. My first son. I hated that we haven’t been spending as much time as we were before with everything else going on. I missed our mornings together and all the time we would spend together.
I made a mental note to make a special schedule for ‘us’ time. My calendar was packed but he also needed my attention.
“Mum, please don’t go.” Leo’s voice was soft, almost like he was about to cry but he was holding himself back.
Shock paralyzed me for a few seconds before I told myself that wasn’t the best reaction.
“Honey, what are you talking about?” I tried to pull back so I could look at his face. He tightened his hold on me, then he started crying. My confusion turned into panic real quick, I forgot about wanting to figure out what was going on.
“Baby, I already promised you I'm not going anywhere. Who will I leave my son with? You know you’re my first love, my first son.” I stroked his back gently as I spoke, assuring him I would be with him everyday, he’ll probably get tired of me. After a while, he stopped crying but I could still hear his little sniffs.
What did he hear? What did someone say to him that he would think I'm leaving? When I was sure he had calmed down, I offered him water which he took a few sips of. He released a little but I didn't let him go, leaving to rest his head on my shoulders.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? I’ll not tell anyone.”
“I heard the guards saying mean things about you. That they want you to leave.” I swallowed my shock and urged him to keep speaking.
I assured him they didn’t know what they were saying and I wasn't going to leave.
“I’m here forever and ever. I’ll stay so long, you’ll probably be begging for me to leave so you’ll breathe.”
“I’ll never want you to go.” He argued. I smiled, unexplainable joy filling my chest.
I spent the next few minutes with him there, but half of my mind was on what he’d told me.
Elder Carver was all over where the narrative was coming from. He’d decided to recruit pack members into his smear campaign. I didn’t know what else to call this.
The specific guards Leo told me about, I already planned to go and meet. If they have something to say, then I'll give them an audience to say it to my face.