Chapter 24: Home

Iris's POV

"Always," I said.

I was on my knees in the grass before the word was finished.

My arms were out, and Ronan's coat was falling off my shoulders.

Joey hit me at a run, and June came after him, and for a moment I could not see anything at all.

"I told you," June said into my neck. "I told him. Dad's wrong about everything."

"Not everything," Joey said, muffled. "He was right about pancakes."

I laughed so hard that I cried.

Ronan stood over us with a hand on each of our heads, not saying a word.

The whole bowl of Blackwater wolves stood in the torchlight and let us have it.

Three weeks later, a Sunday morning, a long envelope came to the Redfern house.

The silver-haired attorney had written on the front in his small square hand.

It said, For Iris Dunbar Hart and the twins.

"Is it a bill?" Joey asked from the table.

"It's a judge," I said, and opened it.

It was the adoption decree, with a raised seal.

Ansel had signed the rights over himself the week after the Rite.

His lawyer had called it a plea for mercy, and the judge had called it the first sensible thing he had done.

I read the line at the bottom aloud, and my voice shook.

"Parent: Iris Dunbar Hart."

Joey grabbed the paper and held it up to the light.

"It says Mom," he said. "In the box. Look, June."

"It says Parent," June said, practical, and then she snatched it away from him and read it twice. "It means Mom."

On the stove the pancakes burned.

The Beta sat at the table with a cup of coffee, because he liked our kitchen.

He got up and turned the pancakes over without a word.

"Blackwater called," he said. "They want their Alpha at the pack supper tonight."

"And they want the farmer there too, if he's up to it."

"He's up to it," Ronan said from the doorway.

He had his wound dressed and his sleeves rolled, and he was looking at me.

I would have paid six years of my life to be looked at like that.

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