“She’s mine.”
“So you keep saying.” Ronan claps Tolin on the shoulder. “Welcome home, brother. Try not to disappear for another five years.”
He walks away, and Tolin pulls me closer.
“What were you two talking about?”
“You, mostly.” I lean into him. “He missed you. Even if he’d never admit it.”
“I know.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I missed him too. Missed all of this.” He gestures at the celebration around us. “I was so angry for so long. At him, at myself, at the world. I thought staying away was protecting my pride. But really I was just punishing myself.”
“And now?”
“Now I have something better than pride.” He turns me in his arms so we’re facing each other. “I have you. I have a family. I have a home.”
“You always had a home. You just forgot where it was.”
“You reminded me.” He cups my face in his hands. “I want to raise our children here, Imani. I want them to have what I had growing up. Brothers, sisters, cousins. A whole clan to look after them. I want them to belong somewhere.”
“I want that too.” My voice catches. “I want them to have everything I didn’t.”
“They will.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I promise you. They’ll have everything.”
The music shifts to something slower, and he pulls me into a dance. We sway together under the lit tree, surrounded by his clan, our clan, the snow falling softly around us.
I think about the green chair waiting for me in town. The apartment with bare walls. The life I was building piece by piece, all alone.
It seems so small now. So incomplete.
This is what I was really looking for. Not furniture. Not four walls. But this. People. Connection. A place where I fit.
I found it where I thought I never would. In a grumpy bear shifter’s cabin on a mountain. In a clan that welcomed me like I’d always been one of them. In a family that gave me a bracelet and called me daughter.
The tree blazes above us, bright against the dark sky, and I tip my head back to watch the sparks drift upward like stars.
“Happy?” Tolin asks.
“Yes.” The word isn’t big enough for what I feel, but it’s all I have. “Yes, I’m happy.”
He kisses me, soft and sweet, and around us the clan celebrates.
For the first time in my life, I’m exactly where I belong.
22
TOLIN
TWO WEEKS LATER
Imani is humming in the bedroom, something soft and off-key, while I stare at a box of books I haven’t opened since I moved up here. The cabin is chaos around us, furniture pushed to the center, closets emptied, my entire life being packed up and sorted through.
We’re moving to the clan.
Two weeks ago, I knelt before my brother and accepted my place as Beta. My mate was welcomed into the Ironwood Clan like she’d always belonged there. Two weeks of waking up with her in my arms, of falling asleep to the sound of her breathing, of learning the rhythm of life with someone else.
I’m not ready for it to end.
“Tolin.”
