I laughed. The sound was different. Richer. The resonance of a body that had been rebuilt to hold a wolf and a woman and a queen, all in the same skin.
“I was always in the pack,” I said.
“Now it’s official.”
I closed my eyes. Let the bond carry me into the space between wakefulness and sleep, where four heartbeats synchronized into a rhythm that my wolf recognized as home.
80
— • —
Mira
The portal deposited me in the Glowwood clearing and the human world dissolved behind me into the violet haze of a Veyndral afternoon.
I adjusted the bag on my shoulder.
Three new picture books from the shop, a jar of the blackberry jam that Percius would fight his siblings for, and a handwritten letter from Wyatt that I’d read on the walk home.
His organization was growing. Forty-seven members across six countries, human and supernatural alike, watching for the real threats and leaving everyone else alone. He’d signed it the same way he always did:Still playing my part.
Mira’s Pages was thriving.
I’d named it six months after the coronation, standing in the doorway of the rebuilt shop with a paintbrush in one hand and Lucian holding the ladder steady because he refused to let me climb anything higher than a step stool.
The letters went up in copper paint and the moment I stepped back to look at the sign, the name that had taken me years to commit to, a knot behind my ribs settled into place.
My pages. My story. Written in a shop that had survived fire and war and the complete restructuring of my understanding of the world.
All the while, Altun and Rheda treated babysitting as a competitive sport. Rheda maintained a color-coded calendar. Altun simply showed up early and refused to leave.
Farmon just sat in the nursery reading to Solian in a low voice, and Solian, who rejected every other babysitter, climbed into his grandfather’s lap and stayed for hours.
The Kaelwyn butler, Cedric, visited weekly with estate provisions and toys. He’d held Percius once and said, “Rowson and Diera would have loved their grandchildren.”
The Glowwood path curved through the bioluminescent trees. My wolf senses picked up the castle before I saw it along with the sound of six heartbeats.
Three small. Three familiar.
The courtyard gate opened before I reached it. By a shadow hound the size of a small horse, its smoke-dark body pressed against the iron bars.
“Hello, Nox.”
The shadow hound’s tongue found my face before I could dodge. He slept at the foot of the triplets’ bed. He followed Mireille everywhere.
He once ate an entire roasted boar from the kitchen and Percius had taken the blame because, in his words, “Nox was hungry and I’m a good brother.”
He was four. He had Percy’s moral compass and Solomon’s stubbornness and my inability to let anyone I loved face consequences alone.
A raven landed on my shoulder.
“Hello, Edgar.”
Edgar clicked twice. The original Edgar, Lucian’s“professional relationship,”had fathered a small dynasty of ravens who treated the royal family as their personal jurisdiction.
This particular Edgar, Edgar the Third according to Percy’s naming system, had bonded with Solian on the boy’s second birthday and hadn’t left his side since.
The courtyard was chaotic. The standard state of any space that contained my children.
