Terms

You fall asleep with the phone in your hand, the screen still glowing with the last thing he sent, and you wake to the sound of your son laughing.

For a second you don't know where you are. Cedar beams. Woodsmoke. Grey light through a window with a view of fir trees marching up a mountain. Then it all comes back: the parking lot, the spring, the old man kneeling on the gravel with his terrible kind smile. The texts that went back and forth until two in the morning, his short, blunt lines and your longer, angrier ones, the bond under your ribs humming every time the phone lit up.

Whatever you told him last night, whatever you didn't, you're still here. In the guest cabin by the moon lodge. On Thornvale land.

For Wilder. Only for Wilder.

You find him on the porch in yesterday's flannel shirt, cross-legged on the boards, feeding pieces of a granola bar to a fat grey jay that has clearly done this before.

"Mama! This bird is my friend. His name is Steve."

"Hi, Steve." You sit down next to him and press your lips to his forehead. Cool. Normal. You close your eyes and let the relief run through you like warm water. "How do you feel, baby?"

"Hungry. And my bones aren't wiggly anymore." He leans into you. "Mama, the big man said I can see the pup den today. With other kids who turn into wolves. Can I? Please?"

The big man. You swallow.

"We'll see."

The infirmary is exactly where you left it and nothing like you remember.

Calla's greenhouse is overgrown, tomato vines gone wild against the glass, her lavender beds choked with weeds. Inside, the long room with its six narrow beds smells of dust and disuse. Somebody has been doing the bare minimum. Bandages, painkillers, a first aid kit any human scout troop would have.

Her chair is still by the window. The old wingback with the patched arms where she used to sit and tell you exactly what you'd done wrong.

You didn't know she'd died until Van told you last night, stumbling over the words. Two winters ago, in her sleep. You were in Astoria scrubbing hospital floors and reading picture books about trucks, and the woman who raised you from fourteen died without you, and nobody knew where to send the letter.

You stand in front of her chair for a long time.

"Is this all right?"

You turn. Caius is in the doorway, filling it. He's in a grey henley and dark jeans this morning, sleeves pushed to the elbow so the wolf on his forearm runs bare, and he's freshly showered, that silver-blond hair damp and pushed back from his face. Two of the young wolves sweeping the path outside have stopped sweeping to look at him. One of them blushes when he glances her way.

You're not one of them. You are absolutely not one of them.

"You said you wouldn't take charity," he says. "So, a job. Thornvale's had no real healer since Calla. The pack's been driving to human doctors and lying about their bloodwork." He pauses. "It's yours if you want it. As long as you're here."

"As long as Wilder needs the moon lodge."

"As long as you're here," he repeats, quietly, and doesn't argue.

You look at the dusty shelves. At Calla's chair. Your hands are already itching to start.

"I'll need supplies," you say. "And the greenhouse cleared. And I'll need someone to watch Wilder while I work, someone I choose."

"Clementine Halloway runs the pup den now. Van's sister. You remember her?"

You remember a freckled girl of nineteen who used to braid wildflowers into your hair. "I'll meet her first. Then I'll decide."

"Your terms." He nods once. "Always."

He turns to go. Then he stops, one hand on the doorframe.

"He asked me this morning if wolves can eat pancakes," Caius says without turning around. "I told him yes. I'm telling you so you know I'm not undermining anything."

Before you can answer, a small whirlwind in a flannel shirt barrels past your knees and wraps itself around Caius's leg.

"Can we go now? Mama said maybe and maybe means yes!"

"Maybe means maybe," you and Caius say at the exact same time.

You both freeze. Wilder looks from one of you to the other, delighted.

Caius looks down at him, and his face does something you weren't ready for. It goes soft all at once, the hard Alpha mask just falling away, and you see him at twenty-four on the dock, laughing at something you said.

You look at the floor.

By noon you've decided you love Clementine Halloway.

She's twenty-four now, golden-haired and freckled and lovely, with a voice like warm honey and the spine of a drill sergeant. She lets Wilder show her his new tooth and his scab and the place where he lost a shoe, and then she squats in front of him and says, "Here's the rule in my den. If you shift, you tell me first. If you get scared, you tell me second. If you want a snack, you tell me third. Deal?"

"Deal," your son says solemnly, and walks into the pup den without looking back.

You stand outside with your arms wrapped around yourself.

"He'll be fine," Clem says gently. "I'll text you every hour. Caius gave me your number." She hesitates. "Ava. I'm so glad you're not dead."

You laugh. It comes out wet and surprised. "Me too."

You meet Elodie Draycott in the greenhouse at four, elbow-deep in weeds.

She steps through the glass door like a model stepping onto a runway. Raven hair to her waist, pale grey eyes, the bone structure of a statue and a camel coat that costs more than your car. Behind her, two of the young wolves who blushed at Caius this morning are staring at her too.

"You're the healer," she says. Her voice is low and composed. "Ava Fairlie."

"And you are?"

"Elodie Draycott. My father is Alpha of the Draycott pack." She looks at you calmly. "And in five weeks, at the Hunter's Moon, the council will present me to Thornvale as Caius Redmayne's Luna."

The trowel slips in your hand.

You knew. Of course you knew he'd marry someday. You told yourself in Astoria a hundred times that he had probably married years ago. That he had pups of his own. That he never thought about you at all.

You didn't know it would feel like a fist closing around your lungs.

"Congratulations," you say.

"Don't." Elodie glances back at the door, and then lowers her voice. "I didn't come to warn you off him. I came because I'm the only one in this pack who isn't afraid of Cornelius, and you should know something before you trust anyone here."

"Why would you help me?"

"I have my reasons." She steps closer. Her grey eyes are steady. "Five years ago, someone paid the two enforcers who drove you over the border. Paid them well, and paid them quietly." She pauses. "It wasn't Caius."