The Eclipsed Life of Luna Mischa novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: Her Answer

The sea came in a little way and went out again.

I didn't make him wait for it.

I'd made one man wait twenty years for nothing, without either of us knowing. I wasn't doing it again.

"Yes," I said.

He didn't move. I don't think he'd breathed since he asked.

"Yes, I'll bond with you. At the fire, in front of both packs, and my girls, and the old Luna, and whoever else wants to watch."

"Mischa."

"I'm not finished."

He shut his mouth. His eyes were shining gold in the dark.

"I keep my firm. I keep my name on my own work. I'll never ask you to stop being proud, and you'll never ask me to stop counting."

"Done," he said hoarsely. "Done, done, done."

"And whatever happens at noon tomorrow, we don't lose this. If he takes the quay, we start again up the hill. With a van that works."

He laughed, and it broke in the middle.

Then he had me off my feet.

He kissed me on the cold sand in front of a stack of driftwood.

His arms were locked round me and my boots were off the ground.

I held his face and kissed him back until neither of us could stand properly.

When he put me down, my legs didn't want to work.

"Your aunt's in your spare room," I said against his mouth.

"I know."

"The chapel hall's full of northern wolves on lilos."

"I know."

"My room burned down."

"I know, Mischa."

We stood there, foreheads together, breathing.

Then somebody coughed on the slipway behind us.

Jago's aunt was standing at the top of it in her coat.

She had a rolled-up duvet under one arm and a carrier bag in the other hand.

"I'm sleeping in the chapel hall tonight," she said. "With the northern girls. They've promised to teach me a card game."

Jago stared up at her.

"Since when?"

"Since about a quarter of an hour ago, my love, when you came down here with that face on." She hitched the duvet up. "There's a clean sheet on your bed. There's a pasty in the oven for the morning. Don't let it burn like your mackerel."

"Auntie."

"Don't Auntie me. I've waited nine years to say this." She looked at me, very fond and very fierce. "Look after him, northern wolf. He's an idiot, but he's ours."

"I know he is," I said.

She nodded once and went off up the quay towards the lights of the chapel, and didn't look back.

Jago put his hand over his eyes.

"I'll never live this down."

"No. Never."

He took my hand, and we walked up the hill.

We passed the chippy with its shutters down, and the cottages, half of them still lit.

I was fairly sure every curtain on the street moved as we went by.

Then came the last cottage, with the blue door and the crooked chimney.

He opened the door and stood back to let me go in first.

The kitchen was dark. The empty dog bed sat by the stove.

He didn't turn the light on.

"Upstairs," he said. "If you want."

"I want."

His bedroom was under the roof, with a sloping ceiling and a small square window over the whole cove.

Somebody, his aunt, I guessed, had put a jam jar of sea pinks on the windowsill.

The moon was nearly full. It lit the bed white.

I turned round to face him.

"No cellar," I said. "No services car park. A bed and a whole night."

"You said that two weeks ago."

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