Ravenna
The gathering ended and I could not go home yet.
Not with my chest doing what it was doing. That full and complicated warmth I did not have the right emotional equipment for. I needed the air to settle properly before I got into the car and arrived back at the house where Kate was probably already in the kitchen and Ryder was probably already deciding what to say about the gathering.
I found my way to the palace terrace through the side door off the east hallway, the one that stayed unlocked after seven and that nobody used in cold weather because it faced the wind directly. I pushed through it and stepped out into the dark.
The cold hit immediately. I pulled my coat together and looked out at the pack grounds below, the long dark stretch of grass and the tree line beyond it, a
