Chapter 6 — Five Years Later
1515 Words
IRIS
Five years later
“Mommy, my cereal is sad.”
Theo holds his spoon in front of his face with the solemnity of a doctor delivering bad news.
I stop arranging medicine bottles on the kitchen shelf.
“Sad?”
“Very.”
“What happened to it?”
He points at the bowl.
“It’s wet.”
“That is a known risk of adding milk.”
“You added too much.”
“Yesterday you said I didn’t add enough.”
“Yesterday I was little.”
I look at him.
“You were four yesterday.”
“I grew while I was sleeping.”
“Of course.”
He narrows his silver eyes.
The expression is pure Roman.
The milk mustache is not.
I laugh before the memory can hurt.
Theo grins and attacks the cereal again.
Five years is long enough to build a life.
It is not always long enough to stop recognizing a man in your child’s face.
We live above my clinic in Alderwood, six hours from Silvercrest and far enough from pack politics that most emergencies involve fever, broken bones, bad shifts, and people who ignore medical advice with astonishing dedication.
My name is on the sign downstairs.
IRIS VALE — HEALER.
Theo’s name is Vale too.
I did not erase Roman from the truth.
I simply refused to hand my son the name of a man who, as far as I knew, learned he existed before birth and answered with silence.
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
Theo wrinkles his forehead, parts his lips, and stares dramatically into the distance.
“I do not look like that.”
“You do when you remember.”
“That is slander.”
“What’s slander?”
“Something Aunt Mara will teach you badly.”
My phone vibrates.
Theo looks at it.
“Aunt Mara?”
“Nine messages.”
“Then yes.”
He knows her.
Everyone within a fifty-mile radius knows when Mara has something to say.
The first photograph is a wedding dress pinned at the waist.
The second shows Felix behind her in the mirror with the guilty expression of a man who has been told not to look and looked anyway.
The third is just a close-up of Mara’s shoe with the message:
IF I DIE IN THIS, BURY FELIX WITH ME.
I laugh.
Theo abandons his cereal and climbs onto the chair beside me.
“Is she getting married?”
“She is.”
“To Uncle Felix?”
“No, to a mysterious stranger.”
Theo considers this.
“Uncle Felix will be sad.”
“Very.”
“Can we go?”
The question comes too fast.
My phone rings.
Mara.
I answer.
“You have no sense of moderation.”
“Open the envelope.”
“What envelope?”
“The one under your bills that you have been pretending is furniture for four days.”
I look at the counter.
Theo follows my gaze.
“You hid it?”
“I organized it.”
“Under bills.”
“Strategically.”
He runs to get it.
The Silvercrest seal gleams in one corner.
My stomach tightens.
Nyla whispers one word.
Home.
“Not anymore,” I murmur.
Mara hears me.
Her voice softens.
“I know.”
Theo brings the envelope back.
I break the seal.
Mara Vale and Felix Reed invite Iris Vale and Theo Vale to celebrate their union.
The ceremony will take place at the Alpha House in Silvercrest.
Theo leans over my arm.
“My name is there.”
“It is.”
“So I’m invited.”
“Technically.”
“What’s technically?”
“A word adults use when children are winning arguments.”
“I’m winning?”
“Unfortunately.”
At the bottom of the invitation, Mara has written by hand:
Come back for me. Not for him.
I sit down.
Mara stays quiet on the phone.
That is how I know she is serious.
“You came to every birthday,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You drove six hours when Theo had pneumonia even though I told you not to.”
“You were wrong.”
“You sent me fourteen photographs of wedding flowers yesterday.”
“Thirteen. One was cake.”
Theo whispers, “Can I have cake?”
I cover the phone.
“Traitor.”
He smiles.
Mara says, “Four days, Iris. Your own room. Your own keys. Felix controls the guest security. Gideon does not.”
My throat tightens at the name.
“What about Roman?”
There is a pause.
“He is Alpha.”
“What?”
“Aunt Mara came to my dinosaur birthday.”
“Yes.”
“And my space birthday.”
“Yes.”
“And the birthday where I threw up blue cake.”
“We do not discuss that birthday.”
“She came.”
I close my eyes.
Mara wins without saying another word.
Six weeks later, I am driving toward Silvercrest with both hands locked around the steering wheel.
Theo sleeps in the back seat with a plastic dinosaur under one arm and one shoe missing.
We have been on the road for almost six hours.
I have considered turning around twelve times.
I counted.
Going back is not forgiving.
It is not surrendering.
It is a wedding.
Four days.
I have hotel money, my own car, my own keys, and enough stubbornness to walk home if necessary.
The Silvercrest boundary sign appears around the next curve.
Nyla stands.
I feel her rise inside me, fur and memory and instinct, with such force that my skin prickles.
Home.
“Please stop calling it that.”
From the back seat, Theo wakes.
“Calling what what?”
“Nothing.”
“You were talking to Nyla.”
I glance in the mirror.
“How do you know?”
“You use the annoyed voice.”
“I have an annoyed voice?”
“You have three.”
I should be offended.
Instead, I laugh.
The east checkpoint comes into view.
It is larger now.
Electronic gates. Cameras. Reinforced barriers. More guards than a wedding weekend should require.
A temporary sign reads SYSTEM CHECK — EXPECT DELAYS.
That does not help my nerves.
I lower the window as we approach.
The guard takes our invitation and identification.
His nose flares.
Once.
Then again.
His eyes move past me toward the back seat.
Theo is looking out the opposite window.
The guard’s wolf flashes through his eyes.
My body goes cold.
“What?” I ask.
He looks back at me too quickly.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“Ma’am, I just need to verify the guest record.”
He turns toward the booth.
I start rolling up the window.
Then the wind changes.
Cedar.
Rain.
Warm skin.
Every muscle in my body remembers before my mind does.
Nyla makes a sound I have not heard in five years.
Roman.
I look toward the second security lane.
A tall man in a dark coat turns at the exact same moment.
Even from this distance, I know his eyes.
Theo leans forward between the seats.
“Mom?”
I cannot answer.
“Your hand is shaking.”
* * *
ROMAN
I tell myself I am at the east checkpoint because of a security problem.
Then a gray car turns into the lane, and Nox hits me so hard my vision narrows.
Her.
I know before I see her face.
Scent does not care about five years.
Cedar soap.
Lavender from the clinic oils she always used.
Iris.
The name lands like an injury.
Then I see her through the windshield.
Her hair is shorter.
Her face is older in ways that make no sense because five years should not be enough to change the shape of a person’s absence.
She is beautiful.
The thought is immediate and useless.
My body remembers her mouth before I remember how to breathe.
Nox pushes so hard at my skin that my eyes burn silver.
I take a step.
Every guard in the lane straightens.
Iris sees them.
Her hand moves to the door lock.
Click.
I stop.
Felix does not have to tell me.
He does not have to.
The sound of that lock is enough.
She thinks I might keep her here.
Something ugly twists under my ribs.
I earned that fear.
I do not get to be offended by it.
The checkpoint officer returns to her window.
“Invitation checks out.”
Iris says something I cannot hear.
Then the officer looks toward the back seat again.
His wolf flashes in his eyes.
Nox goes still.
There is another scent in the car.
Young.
Warm.
Iris.
And beneath it—
Blackwood.
My heart stops once.
Starts wrong.
Felix notices.
“What?”
I do not answer.
The officer reaches for the gate control.
The barrier rises.
Iris puts the car in gear.
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