#5 Homecoming

Daeira POV

We run until the moon begins to sink.

The world becomes a smear of silver and green. My paws eat the earth with a rhythm that’s much older than me. Muscle after muscle coils and stretches. The burn is delicious, the kind of pain that proves you’re alive. Rabbits blink at us from the brush and keep bounding, fearless in the thunder of our passing. The air is clean and cold and full of pine.

I should be tired. I should be wet and hungry and falling apart. But I feel… lit. Every inch of me sings with freedom I didn’t know I still had. “Where are we going?” I pant softly. Lunaryn hums against my bones like an answering chord.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Only that we are being pulled.”

That’s exactly how it is. it's like a thread is tugging, insistent and humming. We follow it for hours. The forest thins, the path straightens, and the air changes. It thickens with something older than magic, something that smells like rain on stone. “Wards,” Lunaryn breathes, and her voice is practically giddy. “Old ones. Powerful. Ours.”

The sign appears like it was waiting in the fog for me to remember it. The letters have faded to ghost white on splintered wood.

WELCOME TO GLACIER NATIONAL PARK.

There’s a strange, aching recognition that isn’t just memory. It’s bones and sky and my mother’s lullaby folded into the wind. My breath hammers. The path ripples ahead like heat above a road, magical distortion. I step forward and the shimmer washes over me like warm water.

And then I see the keep.

It rises from the trees like a command. Massive stone, with turrets sweeping into the dying moonlight. There ade banners that have somehow escaped rot. The little town around it? Ruined. Streets buckled, roofs caved, nature choked everything, except the keep. It stands pristine, and patient as a stone god. It's as if it's waiting with folded hands for whoever was meant to come back.

I shift back, my knees wobbling. The burlap sack clings to me like a stupid reminder of who I was. I let my fingers trail along the cool moss of the gate post. My chest is tight. The air tastes like the beginning of rain. “This was mine,” I whisper. It comes out like a confession.

The doors are heavy oak banded with iron, crescent moons etched into the planks. I push. They give with a groan like an old beast waking up. The smell that hits me, linen and lavender, wax and hearth, it knocks me sideways.

I wander like a sleepwalker through halls I know by muscle memory I forgot I had. Tapestries with moon sigils, portraits of women with my jawline and men with my father’s eyes. Up a grand staircase. There is a crescent moon carved into a door. I press my palm to it and it opens like a mouth of memory.

My room. It’s ridiculous the way my chest falls open. Moonlight slices through stained glass, pooling light on a bed that looks like a throne. I stare until my eyes blur, then force myself to the closet and fling it wide.

Clothes. Actual clothes in my size. Dresses, leathers, plain shirts. It's enough to drown in. Bras, panties, boots, bags, shoes, every drawer full and calling my name. In the bathroom the shelf is a small civilization of soaps, perfumes, creams, things I thought I would never know the names of again.

“What the actual fuck,” I breathe. Lunaryn purrs in my skull with something like amusement. “We must have triggered a failsafe,” she says. “The keep recognized our blood. The wards awakened.”

I’m not ready for what happens next. I wander into the kitchen with a growling stomach and my eyes widen when I see her.

She stands in the kitchen like it’s her temple. Small, round, an absolute force with flour dusted on her apron and eyes wide as saucers when she sees me. She looks as if she’s swallowed a thousand midnights and the moon herself cooked her bones into kind sugar and spice.

“Oh dear!” she screeches like someone who’s simply delighted the world has corrected itself. “You frightened the fur right off me, lovey!”

She rushes at me, and I nearly topple into her arms. Her presence is warmth and safety. Her hands are strong and warm. She fusses, clucks, and pats the seat beside the stove, and then waves her rolling pin like a battle staff.

“You’re starving,” she states as fact. “Sit. Table’s through here. No arguments or I’ll feed you until you beg mercy.”

She is ridiculous and fierce and perfect. She moves like magic. Pots leap into place, herbs fly into a boiling cauldron, bread plumps, all while I stand in the middle of the kitchen and start crying before I even sit down. The grief I’ve carried for five years unspools like thread. She doesn’t flinch. She wraps me in an apron of a hug and lets me unravel.

"I'm Velwyn lovey. I'm in charge around here." She chuckles softly as she strokes my hair. "I was, until you showed up. Now, you're in charge deary." She smiles brightly and stands.

“They’ll be sniffin’ around,” she says between clucks and pot slams. “But they won’t breach these walls, deary. Not with the enchantments in place. You’ll not be prey here.”

The plate she sets before me is obscene. Steak so perfect it practically croons. Potato, butter, and asparagus like green spears. I inhale it. I eat with the silence of someone who hasn’t been allowed such a thing, and is making up for it in gulps and grateful moans.

Velwyn listens when I tell her the story, shorthand versions at first, then the full ugly tale. The Bloodhowl takeover, the pack’s cruelty, the trading of people like salted meat. I tell her I was taken, broken, and trained to be nothing. She gasps at the last part like I’ve slapped her.

“Well,” she says at one point, slamming a ladle so hard the counter rattles, “we’ll have to do something about that.”

The anger in her voice tastes like justice. For the first time in a long time, someone in the room believes me. Velwyn dries her hands on her apron and says, “Come along, lovey. Time to meet the rest of your staff.”

"My what?" I stutter before I can help myself.

She beams at me. “Your staff, silly. You don’t expect us to let the keep sit empty, do you?”

She leads me through hallways that bloom into a great hall big enough to have its own weather system. Voices go quiet and then, like a tide, there is a chorus of gasps. The people at the far end line up like soldiers. They bow, curtsy, and there, tearing through the crowd like a comet, is a young woman on a mission.

“Alpha!” she cries and rushes me. She is all neat braids and efficient hands, eyes that don’t miss a beat. “You’re filthy. You’re alive. We’ll get you scrubbed and dressed.”

She curtsies with a ridiculous enthusiasm and calls me Alpha with a ridiculous reverence, and it burrows into me like a warm brand.

Bennick, the butler, nods. The maids all curtsey. The janitor Kel grins like he’s got the best gossip of his life. Royce and Velwyn are both like old kings and queens of the stables. Ronan and Jerric glare like they’re going to shout orders, then soften. A full staff, that’s what they are. Mine. It’s absurd. It’s terrifying. It’s everything.

“How do I pay you?” I blurt in a small, panicked voice.

They laugh. Full belly laughter like I haven’t heard in years. It feels infectious. Velwyn winks because she’s got mischief in her bones.

She takes me to the master suite. She pulls a painting aside and reveals a safe the size of a wardrobe. Royce turns the dials with expertise, and the door opens. Inside is literal treasure. Stacks of coin, velvet pouches, relics with shine that smells like old power. It’s ridiculous. I laugh in a way that makes the sound leak out like it’s been waiting inside me.

“You’re not a servant anymore,” Velwyn says plainly. “You were never one. This was always yours.”

Lunaryn hums. "All will be well. Let it in. This is our family inheritance."

I spin, my cheeks raw and my eyes burning. “Okay then. Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

Velwyn claps like a child and sends Tarin to give me a bath fit for a goddess. The room smells of roses and lavender. Tarin helps me strip the anger and the burlap and washes the blood out of my hair like she’s erasing the pain. She doesn’t ask questions. She cleans my shoulders like she’s cleaning a battlefield scar. She hums while she works, and somehow it steadies me.

I climb into a bed that might be excessive, and sigh into sheets that feel like clouds. For the first time in years I fall asleep without the terror choked twitch that has been my nightly companion. There’s a hint of destiny in the air, and I dream of a moon that smiles like a promise.

Tomorrow, Velwyn says, we meet the pack. We form the link. They’ve been waiting. I close my eyes and let the word “home” roll across me like a blessing.

Lunaryn purrs smugly. "Finally. Now we begin."