Chapter 105 Coming Home

Chapter 105 Coming Home
Violet's Pov

We left Eric's territory forty-eight hours after Eli was born.

Helen cleared us for travel in the morning. She checked Eli twice and checked me once and told Jacob his arm needed proper attention within the week. He said yes in the tone he used when he was agreeing to something he intended to manage on his own timeline.

The journey took most of the day.

Hal drove. Darius sat in the front. Jacob sat beside me in the back with his arm in a proper sling Helen had made before we left. Eli was in my arms and slept through most of the road. He woke twice, expressed his opinions loudly, then went back to sleep as if the entire exercise had been satisfactory.

"He's very decisive," Darius said from the front without turning around.

"He is," I said.

"Gets that from both of you," Hal said.

"Everyone keeps saying that," Jacob said.

"Because it keeps being true," Darius said.

I watched the territory change through the window. Eric's land was giving way to neutral ground, then to roads I recognized. The trees were familiar. The light on them was familiar.

"How are you doing?" Jacob asked quietly.

"Ask me when we get there," I said.

He nodded and didn't push it.

Eli stirred. I adjusted him and he settled again. His eyes opened briefly, dark and focused. He looked at my face, then closed his eyes again.

"He keeps doing that," Jacob said.

"Checking," I said.

"Checking what?"

"That I'm still there. Helen said newborns do it. They look for the face they know, then go back to sleep once they confirm it."

Jacob watched Eli do it again. Open. Look. Close.

"Does he do it with me?" Jacob asked.

"Yes," I said. "He started yesterday. You were asleep."

Jacob looked at his son for a long moment. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

We reached the pack boundary in the late afternoon.

The gate guards saw the vehicle. One of them ran ahead immediately. Word traveled fast in a pack.

Hal pulled the vehicle to a stop at the main gate.

"Ready?" Jacob looked at me.

"No," I said. "Let's go anyway."

He got out first, came around, opened my door. I stepped out with Eli, straightened, and looked at the gate.

People were already there.

Not the whole pack. But enough. Word had moved faster than the vehicle.

Cael was at the front. He looked at me, then at Eli, his face doing the thing Jacob's face had done in the delivery room, like seeing something and not having a prepared expression for it.

"Luna," he said.

"Not yet," I said. "Soon."

"Violet then," he said. "Welcome back."

Finn was behind him. He nodded at me without speaking. The nod said everything his voice didn't.

Thorne was there too, his daughter on his shoulders. The little girl in the red dress looked at Eli with the fascination of children encountering someone smaller than themselves.

"Is that the baby?" she asked.

"That's the baby," I said.

"What's his name?"

"Eli."

She considered this seriously. "That's a small name for a baby."

"It'll grow," Jacob said.

She looked at him. "Your arm is broken."

"Yes," he said.

"Did it hurt?"

"Very much," he said.

I walked through the gate. The pack made room, not dramatically, just shifting naturally to let us through. People touched my arm as I passed. Brief. Warm. Not reverential.

Real.

I pressed Eli against my chest and kept walking.

Caius was standing at the edge of the main yard.

He was not with the gathered pack. Slightly apart, near the far wall, his hands loose at his sides. He had arrived two hours ahead of us. Jacob had told him to be here.

I stopped walking when I saw him.

Jacob stopped beside me.

"Take a minute," he said quietly.

"I don't need a minute," I said.

I walked toward Caius.

He watched me come. He didn't move toward me. He let me set the pace. When I stopped in front of him we were two feet apart. I looked at his face properly in daylight for the first time.

The eyes were mine. Not similar. The same. The same unusual grey-blue I had been looking at in mirrors my entire life, never seen on anyone else until the night Jacob described him to me.

"You've been watching from a distance for a long time," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Why didn't you push harder to reach me? Before Eric."

He looked at me steadily. "I tried four times to reach this pack boundary. I was turned away each time by people following your father's orders."

"He's not my father," I said.

"No," he said. "He's not."

I looked at his face. At the eyes that were mine. At the specific way he held his shoulders, which I recognized because I held mine the same way when I was containing something I wasn't going to show.

"Eli has your eyes too," I said.

He looked at Eli in my arms.

"May I?" He lifted one hand slightly.

I adjusted Eli so his face was visible.

Caius looked at him for a long moment. He did not reach out to take him. He just looked.

"He's strong," he said finally.

"Very," I said.

"The gift will come," he said. "Not immediately. But it'll come. Gradually at first. Then all at once."

"I'll be ready for it," I said.

"I know," he said. "You already know what it is and what it isn't. You won't be afraid of it the way your mother was."

"No," I said. "I won't."

We stood in the yard with Eli between us, the pack moving around the edges of the space.

"I have questions," I said.

"I know," he said.

"A lot of them."

"I expected that. I have answers to most of them. Some will take time to tell properly."

"I have time," I said.

"Yes," he said. "You do."

I looked at him. My father. My real one. The man who had been looking for me from various distances for twenty-three years, who had found the right way in when it mattered most.

"Thank you," I said. "For finding Jacob. For giving him the information when you did."

"He would have found a way regardless," Caius said. "I made it faster."

"The timing mattered," I said. "If it had been two days later……"

"It wasn't," he said. "I've been watching this situation for a long time. I know how to read when the moment is right."

"That's the gift," I said.

He looked at me. "Partly," he said. "Partly it's just paying attention."

Jacob came to stand beside me. He looked at Caius with the expression he had when giving someone a genuine assessment.

"The regional council received everything," Jacob said. "Eric and Stephanie are in custody pending the formal hearing. The buyers have been identified."

Caius nodded. "I've been in contact with the council representative since this morning."

"It'll hold?" Jacob asked.

"It'll hold," Caius said. "The documentation is thorough. Six weeks of observation plus everything Violet witnessed firsthand, plus the letters in Eric's drawer she can testify to." He looked at Jacob. "Your arm needs proper attention."

"Everyone keeps saying that," Jacob said.

"Everyone is correct," Caius said.

Eli made a sound. Small. Definite.

All three of us looked at him.

His eyes were open. He was looking at Caius's face with the focused attention he had been developing over the last two days. The same assessment he gave to new faces.

Then he looked at me.

"He checked," Jacob said.

"Yes," I said. "He does that."

Caius watched Eli look between faces. Something in his expression settled. Something that had been held at a careful distance for a very long time.

"He's here," he said quietly. Not to either of us specifically.

"He's here," I said.

I held Eli, stood in the yard of the pack I had grown up in, looked at the man I had come from, felt the specific weight of twenty-three years of a lie finally having an end point.

It didn't feel like closure. It felt like a long-overdue beginning.

"Tomorrow," Jacob said to Caius. "When things are settled. Come to the house. We'll talk properly."

Caius looked at me.

"Yes," I said. "Come tomorrow.”