Chapter 19: What He Gave Up

Hamish's POV

"No," Yvaine said.

She said it gently, which was worse.

I stayed where I was, on one knee with her hands in mine, and I heard every person in that hall stop breathing.

"Not today," she said. "Maybe not ever. I'll decide that. You don't get to decide it by kneeling."

"I know."

"Get up, Hamish."

I got up.

My knees did not want to straighten, and I let them take their time.

She looked at me, with the gray-green eyes my son had, and I saw she was shaking.

"You didn't do this to be forgiven," she said. "I know. I'm saying it so you hear it from me."

"I heard it."

"Good."

She turned and walked to the doors with Finlay on her hip, and the pack parted for her.

I stood there with her no in my chest, and it did not feel like an ending.

It felt like the first thing she'd said to me in five years that I could do something about.

I went out to the cedars.

The stone stood where it had stood for five years, on the rise among the Roake graves.

BABY ROAKE was cut into the gray granite.

I knelt and put my hands under the base.

It took the wardens a while to understand what I was doing.

Then four of them came up the rise and stood around me, and the youngest said, "Alpha, we have tools."

"I know," I said. "I want to do it myself."

It took the whole afternoon.

I broke two nails and tore the skin off one palm.

I didn't stop until the stone rocked free and went over onto its back in the grass.

I looked at the small square of bare earth it left, and I did not look away.

The old gravedigger came and stood beside me.

"I'll fill it," he said.

"Not yet," I said. "Leave it open. Yvaine's going to say what goes there."

At dusk I called the pack to the hall.