My Family Forgot I Existed, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Mine, If You Want to Be

I stopped my claws one inch from my mother's face.

I felt it cost me something in the bone, and I pulled my hand back against my chest.

My mother did not move.

"Easy," she said softly. "Easy, baby."

I couldn't breathe.

Then Torin had me, one arm around my waist, the other hand closed over my wrist, and the silver went out of the world as he dragged my palm up out of the dust.

"I've got you," he said in my ear. "Breathe. I've got you."

Fenna was already there, pouring something cold from a bottle over my hand.

It hissed on the burn.

The claws shrank back into fingers, and I sagged against his chest.

Across the altar, my sister wept.

"You saw it," Odette sobbed. "Every one of you saw. She's not safe. She was never safe."

"Be quiet," my mother said.

She hadn't raised her voice.

Odette stopped.

My father came around the altar.

He looked at my hand, and at the silver filings glittering in the hollow, and at his younger daughter's wet, pretty face.

He did not look at her for long.

"Imogen." He held out his arms. "Come home. Please. We'll look after you at the house. Whatever this is, we'll fix it there."

Every wolf in the clearing watched me.

I was leaning on a man who had waited three months at my gate.

I looked up at him, and he looked back at me, and I saw it plain on his face.

He was ready to let me go.

He would have opened his arms and stepped aside, and called it a gift.

"I am going home," I said to my father, and I did not look away from Torin. "It's forty miles east. You can visit when I say."

I felt the breath go out of the man holding me.

"Imogen," Torin said, very low.

"Take me home."

He picked me up.

I let him.

The pack parted for us, and nobody said a word, and the hound walked in front with his tail low.

Behind me I heard my mother turn on Odette and say, in a voice I had never heard her use, "What was in that hollow?"

I did not hear the answer.

Fenna dressed my palm at the kitchen table, with her mouth pressed thin.

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