He couldn’t even imagine how Lydia’s wolf’s howl sounded.
He took her hand so they could go to Ruth’s room together.
*
This was it.
Even if Lydia wanted to deny it, wanted to hope against hope for another week or even another day, her wolf knew.
These were her grandmother’s last few minutes of life.
Andrea, her face drawn and her eyes welling over with tears, stood up as Lydia and Case came in.
“I was going to come out and tell you we were—close,” she said, sniffing and rubbing at her eyes. “I was trying to collect myself. But I’m sure you—” She touched her nose.
Lydia nodded. Her own tears were already threatening to spill over too.
“All this fuss,” Ruth said, in a thin wheeze that was now raspier and more rattling than ever. “All this fuss over nothing.”
“You’re not nothing,” Lydia said, easing into the seat Andrea had vacated. Case stayed at her side, his fingers still tightly laced in with hers.
Ruth let out a strained, breathy noise that was probably a laugh. “I’m an old wolf who’s had a good run. That’s all. But,” she added to Lydia’s surprise, “I’m glad I got to see you find your mate.”
It wasn’t like Ruth to be at all sentimental. Lydia could count on one hand the number of times her grandmother had said something like that to her, something “gushy” as Ruth herself would have called it. But she’d said it now. That made the hottears well up even more, and Lydia finally gave in and blinked, letting them roll down her cheeks.
“I’m glad you got to see that too.”
“I’m glad I got to meet you,” Case said to Ruth.
Lydia knew the two of them had already butted heads a few times, and Case had been polite but clear about thinking that Ruth had been too hard on her, but he sounded like he meant it. And she knew he did, too. That was one of the things she loved about him, one of the things that made her know in her bones that he was made for her and was exactly the mate and co-alpha she needed. He was honest, and he cared.
“Take care of the pack,” Ruth said.
It was what she’d been telling Lydia her whole life.
“We will,” Lydia said, and Case nodded too.
“I did,” Ruth said.
Lydia’s next nod made even more tears fall. “You did. Nobody could ever say otherwise.”
“I don’t have ....” Ruth sucked in a breath that should have been deep, for all the effort it took her, but was horribly shallow, just a sip of air to someone else. “Regrets.”
Her eyes—still bright and keen, even now—were glittering, and it took Lydia a stunned second to realize that Ruth was crying too. It rocked her back. She hadneverseen her grandmother cry: not at her own husband’s funeral, not when her own son pulled up stakes and moved as far away from her as possible, and not when they eventually heard he had died too. Not even when Ruth had decided not to leave Mountainview for the funeral. She had sent Lydia there on her own. It was the only flight Lydia had ever made, in her crumpled black dress, stiff and awkward with her wolf distressed and yowling up a storm inside her.
Ruth had hugged her when she’d come back—that was one of the “gushy” things Lydia could count—but even then, hergrandmother had stayed as dry-eyed as ever. If she had cried in the last twenty-odd years, she had never done it where Lydia could see her.
Was that because Lydia was still part of Ruth’s pack, even if she was Ruth’s heir? Had Ruth kept a distance between them because she believed that was what alphas did, but now the wall was finally crumbling?
Or had she really buried everything over the years, like Lydia had always tried to?
Either way, it made Lydia’s heart ache that the tears had finally come right as Ruth had claimed to have no regrets. She reached out to gently brush her grandmother’s tears away.
At the touch of her hand, Ruth closed her eyes.
And that was it. It was done.
Lydia twisted around to bury her face in Case’s shirt, and he held her tightly, stroking her hair. Her grief was already hitting like a boulder, trying to smash her flat, and she knew that the weight of all her new responsibility would come along soon to try to finish the job. But as long as he had her, she would be able to make it. She knew he would never let her go through this alone.
