Going Home Steel Novel Mga Nobela at Kwento

My nails dug into my palms. “Where are we going?” “Home.” My stomach dropped. What did she mean by home? “Don’t tell you it’s—“ “Yes,” she whispered. “We’re going back to the pack.” My body went still. The world tilted. I was going back to the place where I was rejected. A place where I was betrayed.

He knew better. “Where to now?” he asked instead. I considered it. There were a dozen fires still smoldering: my father’s theft, the board’s displeasure, the operational headaches Vanessa’s lies had created. But none of them mattered as much as getting back to the only place I’d ever really belonged. “Home,” I said quietly. He inclined his head and opened the door. I climbed in, settling my cane across my lap as Paolo circled back to the driver’s seat.

I glanced sideways and saw Isabella desperately trying to hide her face behind my shoulder, yet her hand clung to mine with a strength that surprised me. Amid the deafening cheers, I looked at my family in the front row. Their faces were almost ashen. In that moment, I felt no vindication or even hatred. Because at last, in this reckoning 20 years overdue, I'd taken that scarred little girl by the hand and led her home. I finally understood that home wasn't where one was born, but where the love was.

What I remembered was Mom crouching in front of me, her eyes bright and kind, asking, "Do you want to come home with me?" I nodded. She smiled. Back then, her smile was prettier than anyone's at the group home. But just now, there had been no trace of that smile in her eyes. When she left holding my brother's hand, she did not even look back at me. Neither did Dad. They must really be planning to send me back. If they were going to say it sooner or later, I would rather go first. At least that way, it would not be quite so humiliating.

I’d been a kid when I’d left and I’d almost forgotten this world. And now I was alone here with a wolve. Well, almost alone. When I caressed my finger over my jeans, a heights nose poked out of the pocket, followed by two fluffy ears. “Zhen,” I coaxed, “get your gorgeous butt out here. We’re home.” Why were my eyes burning? To be home after a decade away and the murder of my parents? Could this truly be my home again? I sniffed, wiping at my eyes and refusing to let the tears fall, even though I couldn’t help imagining what it would have been like to grow up here into a proper Wolve Winner, rather than returning as a stranger who didn’t even know the rules of wolve care.

I mutter. Because the worst part isn’t Pierre. It isn’t even the heartbreak. It’s the fact that I want to go home so badly my bones ache with it. I miss stupid things suddenly. My apartment. Convenience store ramen. My phone charger that only worked at a certain angle. My mom yelling at me for forgetting laundry in the washing machine. God. I wanna get out of this novel. My throat tightens painfully. I press the heel of my palm against my mouth before another sob escapes. “Fuck,” I whisper brokenly.

I returned home to Azurea alone. My mother opened the door. The moment she saw that there was no one behind me, a look of quiet heartbreak flashed across her face. My father sat on the sofa, his back straight as always, but there was a deep exhaustion in the way he held himself. I could not help but recall what they said to me five years ago. And now I was back–like a soldier who lost the battle and fled home. I turned my phone on and off again. The unread messages and missed calls from Clara Miller almost flooded the screen.

I thought of the world that was currently waking up to a silence it didn’t understand. But as I felt that tiny, second heartbeat pulse against my palm, I didn’t feel like a fugitive. I didn’t feel like a victim of a global conspiracy. I felt like an Architect. The first book was about the blood. It was about the betrayal and the breaking of the old world. It was about the trauma of the glass and the roar of the mountain. But the second book? The one we were starting right now, in this quiet French valley? That book was going to be about the Home.

Jacob Larson, my older brother, gasped on the other end of the phone before chuckling. "What, has our heiress finally understood how cruel society can be and decided to return home to take over the family business?" There was silent support and encouragement in his familiar, lighthearted teasing. Unfortunately, I was in no mood to joke. "Yes. I'd like to go back. Can you arrange it?" Sensing something amiss, Jacob had a feeling that I was upset and hurt. He wasted no time in agreeing to my request. "Come back, then. The doors of Larson Group will always be open to you."

The wanting of someone who was going home. Home. The Varyn estate was not my home. But the people in it were. My mother and Iris and Vera in her library and Kaden with his precise handwriting and Celeste who made bad decisions fast and better ones slow and the box in the library with Margaret's field notes and Elena's letters and Aleksei's document and the two notes that would go in tomorrow. That was home. The building was just a building. "I want to tell my mother," I said. "Tomorrow," Nikolai said.