True to our promise, I hadn’t gone looking for three months, I’d just spent time figuring this whole mom thing out.
She stilled, hands shaking slightly. “Did you?”
“Trust myself!” I burst into tears. “I needed to learn that I could trust myself to protect my body. Something I was never able to do when I was fifteen because of my attack.”
Sage dropped the knife, tears forming in her eyes as she nodded. Stepping over the pile of diced tubers, she opened her arms and pulled me into a hug. My face leaned over her shoulder, and then I was staring into the deep blue eyes of my baby.
This baby needed his dad. We needed to be a family. I needed Sawyer.
“Mommy’s going to get us home, okay, baby?” I told him.
This was the only home he’d ever known, but I wanted so much more for him.
My parents needed to meet him. Raven.Sawyer. I wanted my family.
Baby Creek blew spit bubbles with his mouth, giving me a gummy grin, and I pulled back from Sage. “Let’s go together, and then when I find the cave, you can wait outside with Creek?”
I didn’t want her attacked while I was gone. These woods were constantly trying to kill her if I wasn’t nearby.
She nodded. “Okay … you seem really sure...”
There was such a knowing inside of me—I just couldn’t explain it. “Sage, we’re going home. Today.”
Her eyes filled with more tears, and I walked into the cabin, grabbing a black chalk stick and writing an addition to the sentence that I had plastered on the wall.One day Creek might be out here, and he would find this.
Trust yourself, your heart, the land, whatever it is that is broken inside of you. Make peace with that and fully trust it, and the cave will show itself to you.
Throwing dirt on the fire, I watched as the smoke rose into the chimney in long, curling tendrils.
Sage stepped beside me and we looked at our small space.
Home.
“This is goodbye,” I told the small mud-plastered walls that I had insulated with my bare hands. Together, Sage and I quickly tidied up and prepared to leave our life here. I grabbed a sheepskin blanket in case the temperature dropped tonight and we were still finding our way out, but I left almost everything else. Anything left behind was something that would benefit my future children, and their children when they came out here.
We filled our canteens with water and tossed the rest from our storage pot so that it wouldn’t mold. I grabbed the clay rattle Sage had made Baby Creek, and then we left.
Placing one hand on the side of the house, I took in a deep breath. “Thank you.”
I would miss this place. As hard as it was here, it was a simple life, and I found a part of myself I didn’t know was missing in this cabin. A strong woman who could do anything. A leader. An alpha. A mother. A flawed but fierce woman who could survive hell and back.
It wasa strenuous hike up the mountain. I was still in the best shape of my life, but having the baby and then taking three months off from my usual daily hiking regimen had dulled my stamina. Not to mention I was running on three hours of sleep because baby Creek was going through a growth spurt or something. He wanted to eat like every hour throughout the night. It was exhausting.
But we made it to the top.
Taking a water break, Sage and I panted while Creek slept in the sling around my shoulders.
“I’ll take him now,” Sage whispered, and I nodded gratefully. I needed to start scouting for the cave, although something told me it would be easy now.
My wolf surged to the surface, ready to do the thing where we split up, but I stopped her.
‘Let’s do this together. As one,’I told her, and felt her acceptance and pride at that decision.
I trust myself.
Purely on instinct, I set off to the right and started my hike to the top, just trusting that I would find it on the way. Sage and the baby followed at a good distance behind me, giving me the space to sense and feel what I needed to. I scanned the mountain wall to my left with a critical eye, looking for grooves or holes or something that might have suddenly appeared that I might have missed before.
Then I felt it.
