We took three weeks before anyone mentioned the search again — three weeks that felt, after everything, almost obscenely peaceful, the kind of quiet I hadn’t let myself believe I was allowed to have.
Ronan taught me to run in wolf form from the passenger seat of his own shift, loping alongside me through the estate’s back acres while I stumbled through my first tentative changes, laughing more than I’d laughed in years at how thoroughly I fell over my own unfamiliar limbs. My mother stayed through the first two weeks, tentative and careful, teaching me recipes from a childhood she’d apparently spent decades assuming I’d resent learning, and by the time she finally flew home, something between us had mended enough that she called twice a week instead of not at all.
Dee visited for four da
