Logic has no place here right now. It doesn’t matter if I’m pushing thirty. The little girl in me wants to know why she was never good enough to fight for.
“My sweet girl.” The warmth of his hand settles over my cheek, and he openly cries before me, yet smiles at the same time. “I did. So many times.”
My breath hitches, but I stay silent. I need more than that. So much more.
“Every chance I got. I saw you with your pink sparkle bike the first time you rode without training wheels. I smiled at your uneven pigtails on your first day of kindergarten. I held my breath as your mom took you into the hospital the day you broke your arm after falling out of the tree.” He pauses, his voice growing rougher. “I cried just as I am now when you graduated high school. I even slashed the tires on the truck of the first boy to break your heart.” His forehead presses against mine. “I came for you, Rowan. In all the ways I could. In all the ways that would still keep you safe.”
I really try to keep it together. I try to stay strong, but my attempts only last for so long. Before I know it, I’ve thrown my arms around his shoulders and am holding onto him for dear life.
He returns my gesture just as tight, both of us shaking with pent-up emotions.
“Dad.”
The word feels like a brand against my heart. One I might not ever let go of.
His hold intensifies around me, solid and warm and achingly familiar in a way that breaks open something hollow inside my chest. I breathe him in—frost, pine, and something that feels like safety, like the ghost of a childhood I never had.
“Dad,” I whisper again, softer this time. More fragile yet certain.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes searching my face as if trying to memorize every line. “I never really left you,” he murmurs.
Before I can acknowledge his efforts—before I can decide if it can truly be as easy as this to let him into my life now—Wolf’s attention shifts sharply.
Cade’s here.
Every nerve in my body goes electric.
Marius senses it too; his head jerks toward the cave’s mouth, shoulders tensing. A low rumble builds in his chest—the protective warning of a wolf who doesn’t yet know friend from foe.
Steps crunch softly through snow. Rushed, but not panicked.
Deliberate.
The kind of steps that know exactly where they’re going.
The cold air shifts and thickens, charged with something warm and wild and achingly familiar. My breath catches, because even before I fully scent him, my heart knows.
Mate.
Wolf howls within my mind, a piercing, broken sound.
Marius steps in front of me, half-shielding, half-ready to lunge.
But I place a trembling hand on his back. “Wait,” I breathe. “It’s?—”
A shadow fills the cave entrance. Tall and broad, wrapped in snow and fury and exhaustion.
Golden eyes burn through the dim light, locking on me like a promise.
Cade’s breath stutters. Mine disappears entirely.
I lift my gaze higher over my father’s shoulder and meet the eyes of the man who crossed mountains, storms, and probably hell itself to find me.
And just like that, the world stops, but I don’t.
I run right into his arms.
Chapter 14
