Chapter 20 020

Chapter 20 020


MEIRA

He knocked on my door suddenly I wasn't expecting it.

I opened it and he was standing there in a dark jacket, no tie, hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had somewhere to be.

"Come," he said.

That was it. No explanation. Just come.

I grabbed my jacket off the chair and followed him downstairs and out through the side door into the grounds.

The morning was cold and bright, the kind of cold that gets into your nose and wakes you up properly. The sky was clear for the first time since I'd arrived here, actual blue in it, the trees along the edges of the building throwing long shadows across the grass.

I fell into step beside him and we walked and neither of us said anything for a while.

It wasn't uncomfortable, the silence. I had noticed that about Darius early on — he didn't feel the need to fill space with words. Most people did. Most people got uneasy in quiet and started talking to push it back. He just let it sit there like it belonged.

I was starting to do the same around him.

We followed a path along the side of the property that I hadn't been on before, running between the tree line and the edge of the garden. The ground was soft underfoot from all the rain and everything smelled like wet earth and cold air.

"Where are we going," I said after a while.

"Nowhere specific."

I looked at him.

"Rhen's list came through," he said. "There's an event in the territory on Saturday. A gathering at the eastern hall. Ranked wolves, families, open to the pack." He kept his eyes on the path ahead. "I want you there."

"Okay."

"It will be the first time most of the pack sees you," he said. "There will be questions. People trying to figure out what you are to me."

"What do I tell them."

He was quiet for a second. "Nothing specific. You don't owe anyone an explanation. Being there is enough."

I thought about that. Walking into a room full of wolves who didn't know me, all of them watching, all of them drawing conclusions. A week ago that thought would have made my chest tight. Now it just felt like something to get through.

"Will you be there," I said.

"Yes."

"The whole time."

He glanced at me. "Yes."

I nodded and looked back at the path.

We walked on. The path curved around the back of the property and opened out onto a wider stretch of ground, flat and green, the house visible behind us now and the territory spreading out ahead. I could see the edge of what looked like a village in the distance, rooftops through the trees, a thin line of smoke rising from somewhere.

"Is that yours," I said. Nodding toward it.

"The village? Yes. Most of the pack lives there or close to it."

"How many wolves."

"Three hundred and forty, roughly. Give or take the pups born in the last few months."

I looked at the rooftops. Three hundred and forty wolves who were all going to know my name by the end of Saturday.

"They'll be loyal to you," I said. "Whatever they think of me coming in like this."

"They'll follow my lead," he said. "And I'll make my position clear before Saturday."

I looked at him. "What is your position."

He met my gaze. "That you're here. That you're under my protection. That anyone who treats you otherwise answers to me."

I held his gaze for a moment. There was nothing warm in how he said it, no softness, just the plain flat certainty of a man stating a fact. And somehow that was more reassuring than anything dressed up would have been.

We kept walking.

The ground sloped slightly downward toward a stream at the far edge of the property, narrow and fast moving, the banks on both sides overgrown with long grass. We stopped there without deciding to, just both slowing and stopping at the same time like the water was a natural place to pause.

I stood at the edge and looked at it moving.

"Croft sent the letter," Darius said.

I looked up at him.

"This morning. A man dropped it at the gate before seven. The letter and everything else I asked for." He was looking at the stream. "My father's letter."

"Did you read it."

"Not yet."

I looked at the side of his face. The jaw, the line of his mouth, something held tight underneath the surface the way it always was with him.

"Are you going to."

"Yes," he said. "Tonight."

I didn't say anything. Didn't offer anything. Some things didn't need words around them and this was one of them.

We stood there by the stream for a while. The water moved fast over the rocks, white at the edges where it broke, and the cold air came off it and the morning was bright and quiet and for a moment the whole thing — Nicholas, Croft, Saturday, all of it — felt very far away.

"Can I ask you something," I said.

He looked at me.

"When this is over," I said. "When you've done what you came here to do and Nicholas has answered for what he did. What happens then."

He looked back at the stream. Thought about it properly, didn't rush an answer.

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't thought that far."

"Really."

"The plan was always the plan," he said. "I never thought much past it."

I looked at him. "That's a long time to not think past something."

"Yes," he said simply.

I looked back at the water. "My twins are going to grow up here," I said. "Or somewhere. I don't know where yet. But they're going to grow up somewhere and I need it to be somewhere stable. Somewhere with ground under it."

He was listening.

"I'm not asking you for anything," I said quickly. "I'm not asking you to be part of that or make promises. I just—" I paused. "I want you to know that's what I'm building toward. Whatever this is right now, whatever it needs to be for your plan, underneath that I'm building toward something stable for them."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I know," he said.

I looked at him.

"You've been building toward it since the night I met you," he said. "That's not something I missed."

Something moved through my chest, warm and unexpected, gone before I could hold onto it.

I looked back at the stream because looking at him right then felt like too much.

We stood there a little longer and then turned and walked back toward the house without deciding to, just both moving at the same time, falling back into step beside each other on the path.

The cold was sharper on the way back, the sun lower, the shadows longer. I pulled my jacket tighter and we walked and the house came back into view through the trees and neither of us said anything for the rest of the way.

But something had shifted, the kind of shift you don't notice until later when you're lying in bed running the day back and you realize something is different than it was that morning.

I took my mind of it

I just walked beside him and let it be what it was.