My Son Is the Secret That Will Break Them novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Five

Thea's POV

Arlo turned five on a Tuesday, on the lawn of the riverside house, in a paper crown.

I had been back from Los Angeles for six days.

My lease was ended, my plant had survived, and Mercer and Veil had a signed retainer to act as Tidewatch's outside counsel and a very smug look on the face of my boss.

The house was no longer Cora's.

Torin had had her things boxed and sent to the gate with no forwarding address, and then he had stood in the empty front hall for a full minute before he opened the windows.

Today there were streamers on the porch rail and a cake shaped like a ship.

Rowan had made the cake himself.

It was lopsided, and Arlo had pronounced it a boat.

The old healer sat in a lawn chair in her shawl, eating the sail.

My investigator, now officially the pack's counsel liaison, lay in a hammock with his ribs strapped and a plate of sandwiches on his chest.

Talbot had not come.

He was not allowed on the land.

But a courier had left a gift on the porch that morning, a small wooden rowboat, hand-built, with a card that said only *For the boy. From the one who was wrong.*

I had read it twice and put it in the boathouse.

"Mom," Arlo said, from the grass. "Can I open the big one?"

"After the cake."

"Torin says now."

I looked up.

Torin stood by the porch steps in a black shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, which I took as a sign of the new age.

He had said nothing to Arlo yet.

We had agreed, the night before, on the boathouse floor, that it would be Arlo's birthday.

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