Chapter 24: The Kitchen Table

I went down to the gate in my robe with a pup on each arm and Bram carrying the third.

Burke was already there, holding the latch, with his hand on it and his eyes on me.

He didn't open it.

He waited, because I was the Luna and he'd been told to wait.

"Beta," I said. "Open the border."

"Yes, Luna."

The iron swung wide.

It was the same gate I had walked to at midnight, with one bag and my mother's ring, and a Beta who couldn't look me in the face.

Nobody was stopping me from going anywhere now.

I stood in it with my children, and I stayed.

The old aunt came through first, with her cane clicking on the gravel.

She looked at the three small faces and let out one soft unsteady laugh.

"The little one has her mother's chin," she said.

"The little one has opinions," Bram said.

"Come in," I said. "There's breakfast."

Addie had been up since four, and her kitchen showed it.

The long table was laid for forty, with bowls of scrambled eggs and cast-iron pans of biscuits and a whole ham.

Blackthorn wolves were already crowded on the benches, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and every one of them stood when the Greywater women came in.

Nobody said anything.

Then the cook in the flour-white apron, the one who'd called me barren for three years, stepped out from the stove with a plate in her hands.

She put it down in front of the aunt.

"Sit," she said, in a gruff voice. "You've been on the road all night."

The aunt sat.

The rest followed, cousins into the gaps on the benches, and a quiet clatter of forks.