Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cassian's POV

Three things happened on the sixth day.

The council liaison confirmed the expedited review request had been accepted. The sixty-day window was reduced to fourteen, which meant Adrian's legal maneuvering had less room to breathe than he had counted on. Ryker brought me the confirmation over breakfast with the closest thing to satisfaction I had ever seen on his generally neutral face.

The second thing was that two BloodMoon wolves, neither of them Gordan, appeared at the gate mid-morning asking to speak with June directly. They were turned away politely and firmly and they left without incident, but the fact of them mattered. Adrian was testing whether June could be reached around me rather than through me.

The third thing was that June asked to train.

She found me in the east yard where I was running drills with Finn and two younger pack members and she stood at the edge of the yard with her arms folded against the cold and watched for a while before she said anything.

"I want to start working again," she said when I called a break. "Physically. My wolf needs it and so do I."

I looked at her. She was standing straight in the pale morning light with her chin level and her eyes clear. A week ago she had moved through the house like someone conserving energy for an emergency that might arrive at any moment. This was different.

"What were you doing before," I asked. "Before BloodMoon."

Something crossed her face. "I trained every day when I was younger. My father taught me. After the bond I wasn't permitted to train with the pack warriors." A pause. "Adrian felt it was inappropriate for his mate to spar with other males."

Finn, who was within earshot, had the good sense to keep his expression neutral.

"Start light," I said. "Work with Sera this week. She'll assess where you are and build from there."

June nodded. Then she looked at the yard with an expression I recognised from the faces of people returning to something they had been kept from for too long. Not eagerness exactly. Something quieter and more serious than eagerness.

"Thank you," she said.

"You don't need to thank me for this."

She held my gaze for a moment. "I know. I'm thanking you anyway."

She went to find Sera and I went back to the drill and Finn very carefully said nothing, which I appreciated.

That afternoon I reviewed the formal rebuttal documents Ryker had prepared in response to Adrian's procedural objection. They were thorough and precisely worded and cited seven Covenant precedents that made the objection look thin. I signed them and they were submitted before the day's end.

In the evening I found June in the library.

She was sitting in the window seat with a different book, one of the old pack history volumes from the lower left shelf that she had apparently worked her way down to. She had her knees pulled up and the lamp on beside her and she looked entirely at home in a way that settled something in me I had not realised was still unsettled.

She looked up when I came in and moved her feet to make room without being asked.

I sat at the other end of the window seat and she put her feet back, not quite in my lap but resting against my thigh with the casual ease of someone whose body had decided to trust without waiting for permission from the rest of them.

I did not remark on it.

"I've been reading about the pack's history," she said, holding up the volume. "Did you know there was a treaty dispute in this territory forty years ago that lasted eleven years and was eventually resolved by a single arbitration meeting that both Alphas almost didn't attend."

"I know," I said. "The Alpha who almost didn't attend was my father."

She lowered the book and looked at me. "Seriously."

"He overslept. My mother woke him up by pouring cold water on his feet."

Her expression moved through surprise into something warm and then quietly laughing, not loud, just a shift in her face that reached her eyes.

"She sounds remarkable," she said.

"She was the most practical person I have ever known," I said. "She had no patience for drama and no tolerance for problems that had available solutions. She would have had Adrian Cole filed with the council and removed from his position inside a week."

June smiled. It was full and unguarded and it stayed.

"What happened to her," she said, gently.

"Seven years ago. An illness that moved too fast." I kept my voice even. "She held the pack together for three years after my father died and then she handed it to me and stepped back and told me I was ready even though I wasn't certain I was."

"You were ready," June said.

"Eventually."

She looked at me with those hazel eyes in the lamplight. "She would have liked this. Watching you do this."

I held her gaze.

Outside the wind came up through the pines with a long low sound and the lamp flickered once and steadied.

"Yes," I said. "I think she would have."

We sat in the window seat with the history book between us and the lamp holding its warm circle against the dark outside and the house quiet around us in the particular satisfied way of a place that was full.

June read and occasionally said things about what she was reading. I listened and sometimes answered and sometimes simply sat in the good and unremarkable fact of her presence.

At some point her feet shifted from resting against my thigh to resting across it, and my hand settled over her ankle without either of us making a decision about it.

Outside the territory was still and dark and tended.

Inside the pack's Alpha sat in a lamplit library with his mate's feet in his lap and felt, with a completeness he had not expected to find in this life, that everything was exactly where it ought to be.