Chapter 6

The gates of Wolf King City don't creak open like the ones I left behind. They part in silence, ancient stone grinding on some mechanism older than my father's father, and beyond them the city spreads out gold and glittering under a sky I haven't stood beneath in five years.

Wren's hand tightens in mine.

"Mom." Her voice comes small, uncertain, eyes wide on the towers rising ahead of us. "Is this really where you grew up?"

"It is."

Two figures break from the crowd gathered at the gate before I finish the sentence, and I know them the second they move, the same stride, the same restless energy I remember from childhood, older now, broader, but unmistakably mine.

"Elara." Thorne reaches me first, pulling me into his chest hard enough to lift me off my feet, and I feel five years crack open all at once against his shoulder. "You're finally home."

Griffin's right behind him, ruffling Wren's hair before he even looks at me properly. "And who's this? Don't tell me our niece finally decided to visit."

Wren ducks behind my leg, shy, and Griffin drops to a crouch in front of her, grinning.

"I'm your uncle. The good-looking one." He jerks a thumb at Thorne. "That one's just tall."

Wren's mouth twitches despite herself, the first almost-smile I've seen from her in days, and something loosens in my chest watching it happen.

Behind my brothers, twelve guard captains stand in formation along the avenue leading up to the palace, and as we pass, they drop to one knee in unison, fists to their chests, heads bowed. I stop walking. I'd forgotten what it feels like to be looked at like that, not pitied, not mocked, just honored, plain and simple.

"Welcome home, Your Highness."

The word lands strange after five years of being called nothing at all.

By the time we reach the palace steps, the whole gathered crowd has followed suit, a wave of kneeling wolves rippling back through the courtyard, hundreds of them, all bowed toward the daughter who left for love and came back with nothing but a child and a broken contract. I don't know what to do with my face. I settle for standing straight and letting them see me anyway.

My father waits at the top of the steps.

He looks older than I remember, silver threading deeper through his hair, but his eyes find mine the second I look up and hold there, steady, unreadable in the way I used to hate as a girl and understand now as restraint.

Dinner that night is quieter than the welcome. The long table fills with family, low conversation, the clink of silver against porcelain, and it takes less than twenty minutes for someone to bring up my marriage, an aunt, gentle but pointed, asking how five years with an Alpha from the border pack could end in nothing but a torn cloak and a six-year-old who flinches at raised voices.

I answer as much of it as I can stomach. Wren excuses herself early, and Thorne walks her out, leaving the table thinner, quieter.

My father sets down his glass.

"I watched," he says, and the table goes still around him. "Every year. Every report that came out of Obsidian territory, I read. I knew about the cloak before you dropped that cuff at his feet. I knew about her, the mistress, long before you found the mark in your own bed."

My throat closes. "Then why didn't you come?"

"Because you chose him over me, and I let my pride decide that meant you'd chosen him over all of us too." His voice cracks on the last word, and I've never once heard my father's voice crack in my life. "I was wrong. I should have come for you the day that cloak tore. I should have come the day you married him."

I don't decide to cross the table. I'm just there, folded into his arms the way I haven't been since I was a girl small enough to fit against his chest, and he holds on like he's making up for every year he didn't.

"I'm sorry," he says into my hair. "I'm so sorry, Elara."

"I know," I say, and for the first time in five years, I actually believe it.