LOGINHe didn't say anything else. He stood and let it hang, and I understood it was meant to follow her around the house for weeks, in the hall and the garden and the dark. *Let me,* my wolf growled, so low it vibrated my teeth. *Let me go down there. Let me remind him what he's standing next to.* *N
Ethan pov It took three of us to get them off the road. Neither woman wanted to let go. Elena had Marissa's face in her hands again, thumbs moving over her cheekbones as if she were checking they were real. Marissa kept saying "I'm okay, I'm okay" and crying harder with every repetition. In the
"I know. I *know.* Grandma wrote it in a letter. She said you wondered." "Every day." Elena pulled back, framing Marissa's face in both trembling hands. Her thumbs swept the tears off her cheeks, and her own kept falling. "Every single day. I counted. I knew your birthday to the hour. I never—"
Ethan pov The green sedan stopped crooked on the shoulder, one wheel in the ditch, and nobody on that road moved. The driver's door opened. For a long moment nothing came out of it but a hand, gripping the top of the frame. It was a thin hand with a plain silver ring. Then a woman stepped out, s
--- Elena Marsh was nine hours away. Rhys had arranged an escort at the state line. Delaney wanted the meeting in a neutral place, with a counselor present, and my mother had already started cooking enough food for forty people. Nobody mentioned the county road. We had agreed, silently, not to.
Ethan pov We let Carol Dawn in at 6:40 that morning, and it was the hardest thing I did all week. My father made the call. He stood at the gate with his hands in his pockets and looked at her for a long time, at the torn palms and the mud and the way she was swaying on her feet. Then he nodded t







