7. Terms
1346 Words
I left Mara’s cottage with my medical bag and a promise. Ninety days.
She said she would keep Onyx in line. She would threaten him with her own life if she had to.
I should have been grateful. I was tired.
Mara had never moved back into the main house after her last collapse. She kept herself close enough to watch the family and far enough away to pretend she could live in peace. She was well aware of what I was up against.
I almost reached the arch before Onyx’s growl cut across the courtyard. I stopped.
He was out of view, but his anger slammed through the bond. My wolf surged toward him before I could stop her, desperate to answer pain with comfort, desperate to go back to the man who had taught my body to mistake his unrest for my responsibility.
No.
I dug my nails into my palm and forced my feet to stay where they were.
I hated him. I hated what he had done. I hated every woman he protected before me. None of it stopped the bond from pulling hard enough to make my ribs ache.
That was why I needed to leave. Not later. Not once everyone understood. Now, while I still had enough pride left to drag my wolf away from him.
Onyx stepped onto the main path before I reached the arch.
He stopped.
For once, I saw surprise before he buried it.
He looked at the bag first. Then at my cheek.
He stepped closer. “How is Grandmother?”
I kept walking.
He shifted into my path. “Ember.”
I stopped because walking around him would have let him think he controlled the space. “Why do you not go in and see for yourself?”
His wolf stirred faintly behind his eyes. “Do not take that attitude with me.”
“I am all out of acceptable ones.”
He looked past me toward Mara’s closed door. “What did she say to you?”
I walked past him before he could decide whether to grab me, order me, or pretend he had meant to let me go.
By evening, I moved into the small border cottage Harlow rented for me under another name.
It sat at the edge of Cedar Moon land, close enough for the pack energy to brush against my skin, far enough from the main house that Onyx could not appear in a doorway and order me back into place. The cottage had one bedroom, a tiny kitchen, a crooked back porch, and windows that stuck if I pulled too hard.
It was the first place in seven years where no one had decided what room I belonged in.
I set my bag on the table and unpacked everything that reminded me of Lily before I unpacked myself.
Her drawings went on the kitchen counter. Moon. Wolf. Tree. Mama with long brown hair. A smaller girl beside her with blue eyes and a purple dress. In the corner, she had drawn a man with blond hair and labeled him Uncle Kano, then given him a speech bubble that read, "No climbing the curtains, Potato Wolf."
I hung my coat by the door, stacked my Spiritwalker books in the bedroom, and tucked the bond documents inside a locked metal box beneath the bed.
The cottage felt bare after the packhouse. No velvet chairs. No formal dining room. No painted portraits. No omegas pretending not to know who I was.
Good. Bare meant nothing had been stolen from me yet.
I slept three hours and woke before dawn with my cheek stiff and the bond restless under my skin. I made tea, checked the lock twice, and opened my laptop to transfer clinic notes into a private drive. I removed every patient file Cedar Moon had no legal right to keep under my name. Mara had asked for quiet. She had not asked for surrender.
At nine, Harlow knocked twice and came in without waiting.
She had a paper bag full of breakfast in one hand and enough anger to start a border war.
She set the food on the table and looked at my cheek. “That one is new.”
I pulled out a chair. “Joanna’s parting gift.”
Harlow gripped the bag. “And Onyx?”
I sat down. “Handed me ice.”
She stared at me.
I opened the food because one of us had to do something besides plot murder. “After that, he went back to his call.”
Harlow dropped into the opposite chair. “Mona?”
“Who else?”
She dragged both hands down her face, then stopped herself before she started yelling.
“I heard something on the way here.” She pulled out her phone and shoved it across the table. “You need to see it.”
Mona filled the screen in a pale blue scarf, curled in the passenger seat of a luxury car with a blanket over her knees. The caption glittered beneath the photo.
Alpha Onyx insists warm air will help me recover. I told him I only had a tiny cold, but he worries too much.
The next image showed ocean water beyond a resort balcony. The one after that showed Onyx’s hand holding a steaming cup near Mona’s blanket-covered lap.
No face. Just enough of him for everyone to know.
I stared until the screen dimmed.
Harlow reached for the phone. “Emme.”
I tapped the screen awake again. “A warmer neighboring state for a cold.”
“She is milking it.”
“No.” I handed the phone back. “He is feeding it.”
Harlow rolled her eyes. “You were slapped twice in two days.”
“And handed ice. Grand gesture, right?”
“Mona sneezes and gets a private healer, an escort, and beach air.”
I broke a cookie in half. “The adulterer and the adulteress on vacation.”
Harlow choked on air.
I took a bite because hunger was easier than grief.
For seven years, I had measured love in shortages. A missed dinner. A closed door. A bed used without a life attached to it. A husband who knew how to shield another woman, but looked at my bruised cheek like it was a scheduling problem.
Now the deficit sat in front of me, bright and public and smiling from Mona’s post.
No more confusion. No more excuses dressed up as patience.
I had not been hard to love.
I had been standing in front of a man who did not know how to. At least with me.
Harlow leaned her elbows on the table. “Are you really not sad anymore?”
I looked at Lily’s drawing beside the salt shaker. Two figures under a moon. No faceless father this time.
“It is not that I am not sad.” I folded the edge of the napkin until it tore. “I have just stopped being surprised.”
Harlow stayed quiet after that.
I pulled a folded invitation from my bag and slid it across the table once we finished eating. “The Moon Conference is tomorrow in Golden Pine territory. Neutral ground. Every major northern pack will attend.”
Harlow read it, then looked up. “Kano?”
I nodded without taking my eyes off the invitation. “Yes.”
“You are finally going to talk to him about joining his pack?”
Kano already kept my daughter safe under his name. He had offered me work, shelter, and patience. He wanted me. I knew that. He had never used it against me.
That made him dangerous in a way Onyx never understood.
Not because Kano could take me. Because he knew how to wait for me to choose.
I picked up Lily’s stack of drawings. “Yes. Not for sanctuary. To discuss terms.”
Harlow smiled slowly.
I knew what that smile meant. She had waited years to hear me say that.
- Writer
