128

The room felt too quiet. Too sharp. My stomach flipped.

“They wanted control,” Burdock said softly. “Skye had claimed you. They wanted to claim you too.”

Torin’s jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

Ginger squeezed his hand before looking at me again. “We tried to shield you,” she said. “We did everything we could without putting you in more danger.”

I nodded slowly. The truth burned. It also made everything make a terrible, perfect kind of sense.

Torin slid his hand over mine and laced our fingers together. That tiny gesture steadied the ground beneath my feet.

Burdock exhaled. “You broke the cycle by leaving,” he said. “You walked away. You chose a life that belonged to you.”

Ginger smiled through the tears in her eyes. “And look at you now.”

I swallowed, feeling both small and powerful in the same breath. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “It means more than you know.”

“We are here for as long as you want us,” Ginger said. “And we will leave the moment you do not.”

I leaned into Torin, and he wrapped an arm around me, warm and solid.

“You can stay awhile,” I whispered.

Burdock nodded once, slow and touched. “Then we will.”

And for the first time in my life, with my past sitting in my living room and my future wrapped around my hand, I felt everything finally shifting into place.

The house felt quieter after Burdock and Ginger settled into the guest room, but it was not the uncomfortable kind of quiet. It was the kind that made you aware of your heartbeat again. The kind that made you notice the way sunlight stretched across the floorboards, warm and soft and real. The kind that came after years of running and bracing and waiting for something terrible to show up at your door.

I sat alone on the couch with my knees pulled up and my sketchbook resting on my lap. The loft smelled like coffee and bacon from breakfast, the air still warm from all the voices that had filled the room earlier. Torin had stepped outside with Jess and Rook to help carry in a few of Burdock’s bags, and the sudden stillness left me with nothing but the echo of what I had learned today.

The council. The same men who used to sit at the long table in the back of the compound with dead eyes and beer bottles and too much power. They had wanted to claim me.

A wave of nausea rolled through me, steady and cold.

Ginger had shielded me. Burdock had stepped between me and them. Torin had been pushed away not because he didn’t want me, but because men older and meaner had decided I belonged to them.

I wrapped my arms around my legs.

I did not want to cry, but something inside me cracked like old porcelain.

The door opened, soft, and Torin stepped inside. His eyes found me instantly. He closed the door behind him slowly, like he wasn’t sure how loud he was allowed to be.

“Hey,” he said gently.

I tried smiling. It came out crooked. “Hey.”

He crossed the room in that steady way of his. He always walked like he was coming toward a fight unless the person waiting for him was me. With me he softened. Even his shoulders lowered. Even his breath changed.

He sat beside me and let his thigh press against mine without saying anything. A long moment passed before he spoke.

“You have not moved in ten minutes,” he said quietly. “You are thinking too hard.”

I let out a shaky breath. “There is a lot to think about.”

He nodded once. He didn’t push. He didn’t rush me. He just waited, giving me the kind of space that still felt like a hug.

I stared down at the photo I had tucked inside the sketchbook. My mother standing between two babies she would lose. Rook on her hip. Me leaning against her shoulder. Her eyes were soft. A little sad. A little bright. She looked like she wanted something she didn’t know how to hold.

I traced her outline with my fingertip.

“Skye wasn’t the only one who tried to keep us apart,” I whispered. “It was the council. They wanted to groom me. Use me. Claim me.”

Torin’s jaw tightened. He didn’t interrupt.

“I thought I was imagining things back then,” I said. “Little comments. The looks from the older men. The way Skye watched me when I walked through the hall. I thought it was me. I thought I was the problem.”

His hand slid over mine slowly. “You were a child,” he said. “You were never the problem.”

I swallowed, throat tight. “They wanted you away from me because I was… what? Dangerous? Dirty? Too connected to Skye?”

“They wanted control,” Torin murmured. “And I fought it. Hard. I would fight it again.”

“But you stayed with them,” I whispered, not accusing, just remembering the way it used to feel.

He nodded. “I did. Because I thought someone had to stand between you and the things they wanted to do. I did not always succeed. But I never stopped trying.”

Breath shuddered out of me. I leaned into his shoulder, and he slid his arm around me, pulling me close in that steady, grounding way that always quieted the world.

“You kept me safe,” I said softly.

His fingers stroked the back of my head once. “You kept yourself safe too. You got out. You did that on your own.”

“I did not feel brave,” I said.

“You were,” he answered.

I closed my eyes and let my forehead rest against his collarbone. “It feels different now,” I whispered. “Like everything has shifted. Like the floor under me is finally stable.”

“It is,” he said quietly.

“Why?” I asked.

He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “Because your past is not chasing you anymore. Because Lucien is gone. Because the council is gone. Because Skye is gone. Because the only people left in your life are the ones who chose you.”

My throat tightened again. “Burdock and Ginger…”

“They love you,” he said. “They came a long way to prove it.”

I nodded slowly. “It felt like… I do not know. Like a missing piece clicked into place.”

He shifted slightly and tipped my chin so I had to meet his eyes. “You deserve every piece,” he told me. “Every truth. Every person who wants to love you right.”

My breath trembled. “And you?”

His thumb brushed my lower lip, soft and slow. “Me most of all.”

I pressed my forehead to his, letting the warmth of him sink into me. “I am not used to this,” I whispered. “People staying. People choosing me without a reason.”

“You are the reason,” he murmured. “You always were.”

Someone clattered a pan in the kitchen and cursed loud enough for us to hear. Rook’s voice followed with something that sounded like blame. Tannin answered with something that sounded like a threat. Reif laughed. Jess told them all to shut up. It felt like home.