Page 27

I knew it.

Of course I did. Maybe the problem was not the knowing, but the way I’d denied it. I was so sure that Phina wouldn’t lie to me about that. That she would have told me, kept me from leaving all those years ago.

Or maybe I thought that I would know more unequivocally. I was unprepared for the uncertainty when I couldn’t scent myself on the girl.

But I’ve spent weeks with her. Playing chess. Reading. Talking through issues and watching her brilliant mind attack problems with the same methodical precision I use.

It’s hot up here on the ridge. Embers float through the air, blowing through from the fires in town, the wood crumbling under the weight of the daemon flames.

I haven’t been to the ridge since I was a kid. Behind Declan, there’s nothing but sky. If I remember the drop from coming up here and looking out as a teen, from walking along it with my dad, it’s impossibly steep. All rocky cliff face on the way down.

A beach at the bottom, more rocky than sandy and at least a mile out, marks the start of Silverville Lake.

The water is inky black in the night and blinks away into the other side of the basin, running up against the foothills of more mountains.

Too dangerous for kids to play out here.

Multiple signs and chain-link fences used to line the edge, but were apparently removed by my uncle.

Maybe even for a little stunt like this.

Nora Winward stands less than ten feet from me, under the thumb of my uncle, and she is my daughter. Nora is mine. It’s obvious—from her eyes, the way she carries herself. It’s been obvious this entire time.

And now, beyond the blood, carried on the smoky breeze, even beneath the fearful sweat on Nora’s skin, I can smell it. Something unmistakable. Familiar.

My scent.

Not just the kind that hangs on the surface, that she would adopt from sleeping in my house, but something more.

Something bone-deep and undeniable. There are pieces of me in her DNA.

Alpha blood calling to alpha blood. What I’ve been sensing from her all this time wasn’t just potential—it was heritage.

My heritage, flowing through her veins.

“Nora,” I whisper, unable to say anything else, hit with the full implication of those ten years apart from her.

No baby days and first steps, no first word, no trying to get her to say da-da .

Ten years missed of inside jokes and the knowing that would come with seeing her grow into herself. “Ten years.”

“That’s right,” Declan says, like some sort of self-important teacher.

Like he knew this entire time. I know there’s no way that’s true—if he knew I had a child, he would have used her as leverage long before this point.

“Your little legacy, raised in poverty and shame while you played house with the humans.”

I feel Phina beside me, worn with exhaustion and as stiff as a board. Tired of her personal life being aired out for everyone to see.

Strangely, rather than summoning anger at her, I can’t help the first thought that comes to me— we’re even.

I hate that I hurt her all those years ago, betrayed and humiliated her.

But this? Losing ten years with my child?

It should more than make up for it. The pain can’t be measured, but maybe in some way, in some world, we can consider it equal.

Because I understand the situation she was in.

I can see why she made the decisions she did.

And I know, above all else, that she is sorry for them.

“So, now you know,” Declan says, his teeth glinting in the light of the fires. “You know what’s at stake here. Let me make this very simple for you.”

The knife glints as he adjusts his grip, and Nora’s breath catches, her hands rising up to grip tightly to him.

Those blue eyes—so like mine—lift, catching mine. And I see something there that breaks my heart. Something less like fear and more like understanding.

Nora knows what’s coming. She understands the choice I’m faced with.

And after weeks of conversation, of playing chess together, she thinks she knows which choice I’ll make. Just like I did a few days ago, I hold her gaze, give her the slightest shake of my head, just like I did when I promised her I would keep her secret.

“You’re going to swear a blood oath,” Declan drawls as I stare at my daughter. “Right here, right now. Swear that you’re leaving Silverville, and that you’ll never return. Punishable by death if the oath is broken. We’ll do it in front of your little fire brigade, just to make it final.”

The danger in a blood oath is the ancient magic that runs within it. When an oath like that is punishable by death, it doesn’t mean that someone will hunt you down and stick you in an electric chair.

It means you’ll drop dead the second you violate what you swore to adhere to.

And the only reason Declan is doing this is because he knows he can’t take me. He knows he can’t take me, and that none of my brothers can, either.

“You’ll swear to never challenge my authority as alpha supreme,” Declan goes on, his voice carrying across the wind.

There is no choice. I would choose Nora over anything. Maybe Declan knows that, or maybe he doesn’t.

If my father was here, he might be disappointed in that instinct. He might tell me again that my duty is to the pack, always. That a shifter is nothing without his pack, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

If my father were to come back and stand right here, stopping time and counseling me on this moment, he would tell me not to promise away my right to a challenge.

He would tell me to do my best to save Nora, but to accept that I can’t control everything.

That her death would be at the hands of Declan, the one holding the knife to her throat.

My father would tell me to think . To come up with the answer to this.

And, eyes locked with my daughter, I realize the answer is already there, in her eyes.

She figured it out a long time ago, and she’s been waiting for me to figure it out.

Without speaking, I can see it there between us, hanging in the air so intelligibly that I’m surprised Declan can’t see it, even as he continues to drone on about the choice I have to make.

“… and in return,” Declan is saying, “I’ll let the girl live. You can take her back to whatever human hovel you’ve been hiding in.”

Nora is not afraid. She’s clever and resourceful, too smart for her own good. She sees something that I don’t, an angle that I don’t understand.

The slight nod she gives me back is almost imperceptible, but it’s enough.

And I find that I trust her to follow through.

Without warning, and in the middle of another rambling monologue from my uncle, I launch, shifting mid-air and running toward him at full speed.

At the same time, Nora pushes away from him, but he turns and grabs her, throwing her with all his might over the edge of the cliff.

Phina screams as I collide with my uncle.

And the three of us go tumbling over the side of the ridge.