Chapter 12 Gravel and Glass

Odessa

Nobody moved for a long time.

The fighting had stopped the second Draven vanished. His Alphas had either fled or been pinned to the ground by Sorrel wolves, and the whole courtyard had gone strange and quiet, the way a room goes quiet after someone drops a plate. Blood on the gravel. Torn banners. A dozen wolves panting in human skin with their clothes in ribbons.

And my mother, on her knees beside a dead woman's robe, sobbing like someone had cut her open.

I had never seen her cry. Not once, in twenty-three years. Not when Grandma died, not when Dad lost the company. Elaine Kade folded her grief up small and put it somewhere nobody could find it. So watching her come apart in front of the whole pack was like watching the sun go out.

"Mom."

I was across the courtyard before I decided to move. My legs were still shaky, and the silver under my skin hummed with every step, but I dropped to my knees in the gravel and took her by the shoulders.

"Mom, look at me."

"Don't." She shook her head hard. Her hair had come loose from its pins, and mascara ran down both cheeks. "Don't touch me, baby. Not until you know."

"Know what?"

"What I did."

"Mom..."

"What I did, Odessa."

Her voice cracked on my name, and it broke something in me. I pulled her into my arms anyway. She fought for one second, stiff as a board, and then she folded against me with a sound I felt in my own ribs.

Over her shoulder I saw Dad. He had stopped three feet away, hands hanging open, face gray as ash. He wasn't surprised. That was the part that hurt. He looked like a man watching a storm he'd seen on the horizon for twenty-three years finally touch down.

"John," Alpha Grayson said quietly. "Get them inside. We can't do this out here."

"We do it here," my mother said.

Everyone turned.

She pulled back from me, wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and tried to stand. Her knees wouldn't hold. Dad was there in a heartbeat, one arm around her waist, and she let him take her weight.

"Your pack is watching, Grayson," she said, and her voice came out raw but steady. "Draven said it in front of every wolf here. If I walk inside and whisper this behind a closed door, they'll spend the rest of their lives guessing. My children deserve better than rumors."

"Elaine," Dad said softly.

"No, John. I've kept this for twenty-three years. I'm done."

Evan

I watched Odessa watch her mother, and I felt it through the bond like a cold hand on my heart.

She was terrified. Not of Draven, not of the silver that had just poured out of her body and turned a monster into paper. She was terrified of the woman in front of her. Of whatever sat at the root of her own life.

I wanted to go to her. I made myself wait.

Josh was a few feet away, still half-shifted, with a ragged tear down his sleeve and a cut over one eye. Mia stood at his shoulder. Neither of them was touching the other. Neither of them had moved away. My best friend's face was the saddest I'd ever seen it, because he had already guessed.

Draven's last words were still hanging over the courtyard like smoke. Ask your mother what she traded.

"Healer Mara," my father called. His voice carried across the gravel, steady and tired. "Tend the wounded. Everyone else, give the Kade family room. Whatever is said here, it stays in this pack, and any wolf who repeats it answers to me."

Slowly, the courtyard rearranged itself. Wolves stepped back. Shoulders turned. A hundred people suddenly found something fascinating to look at on the ground.

It was the kindest thing I had ever seen my father do.

I crossed the gravel and stopped beside Odessa. I didn't say anything. I just put my palm flat against her back, between the shoulder blades where the glow had come from, and felt her breathe.

"I can't hear them anymore," she whispered, so only I could hear. "The kitchens, the guards. It all went quiet when she started crying."

"Because you're only listening to her."

"I'm scared, Evan."

"I know."

"What if it's something I can't forgive?"

I thought about lying. I really did. But there was no point, because the bond would catch it, and she'd have known.

"Then you don't have to forgive it today," I said. "You only have to listen. The forgiving can wait."

She leaned back into my hand. Just slightly. Just enough.

Across from us, Elaine Kade drew herself up to her full height, a small, shaking woman in a ruined dress standing on gravel in front of an entire pack. Her gaze went to her husband, then her daughter, then her son.

She settled on Josh last, and she held it.

"Joshua," she said. "I need you to come here, baby. I need you to hear this first."

My friend didn't move. A muscle jumped in his jaw. For one long second I thought he'd turn and walk away, and honestly, I wouldn't have blamed him.

Then Mia, quiet Mia, who had every reason in the world to hate this family, touched two fingers to his wrist.

"Go," she said softly. "I'll be right here."

Josh closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet.

He walked to his mother.

The wind picked up. Somewhere on the roof of the great hall, a loose shutter banged once, twice, against the stone. Odessa's fingers found mine, and she gripped so hard it hurt.

My mother-in-law, my wife, I thought, and the word landed strangely and perfectly in my chest. Her mother took a breath.

"The night Odessa was born," Elaine Kade said, "she wasn't breathing."