Page 97 of The Wolf Queen

I rolled over to find a woman standing in my doorway, the smile on her face warming me all the way down to my toes.

No, not a woman, but my mother.

Not the young woman I saw as a ghost. She was still beautiful, but her face had softened and there were fine lines around her eyes as she smiled. Somehow I wanted to count every single one of them.

“Come and have breakfast,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting.”

Everyone?

I flicked back the bedclothes and found I was wearing a chemise, something I hadn’t worn to bed since I lived at the keep, but when I opened my wardrobe, I found the faded blue robe I’d worn over the top my nightgowns since I became a woman, then I walked out.

And into the keep, it appeared. Maids bobbed a curtsey as I passed, but when I entered the family dining room, I saw we had company. A man sat with his back to me, sipping his coffee, but it was his hand that had me moving forward. That scar across his knuckles, that broad expanse…

“Nordred…?” I barely choked out his name when he turned around and smiled.

“There’s my girl!”

He rose and came towards me, smiling in the way I’d seen loving fathers do, but never mine. He pulled me close and hugged me and something inside me cracked at the feel of it. A sob rose in my chest but got stuck there and he seemed to sense it.

“How did you sleep?”

“I—”

My throat caught on the word, then closed over, not letting a sound out and he pulled me closer.

“Shh… Shh… Now, now, what’s wrong?”

“Nordred—”

“Nordred?” He pulled back slightly and stared down at me. “Have you grown so big you can’t call me Father anymore?”

“Father…?” I asked.

“I would think I earned the title, pacing back and forth outside your mother’s birthing chamber for half the night when you were born, only for the midwife to bring me you.” He caressed my cheek then. “The most beautiful daughter a man could have.”

“Grandpa!”

A little voice had us both turning and a girl with light brown hair and bright blue eyes that were somehow familiar rushed towards us.

“Well, except for this little princess.”

She wasn’t Jan. She couldn’t be, and as soon as I thought of my daughter’s name, I felt a wrench inside me. The light spilling into the room seemed to dim somewhat.

“Kisses for your mother,” Nordred told the girl and she leaned over, pressing a kiss to my cheek.

“Look at the three of you.” My mother appeared in the doorway and then went to Nordred’s side and as their arms linked, I was able to put two and two together. They had the kind of casual affection of a long married couple. “Gentle, little wolf,” my mother told this girl as she launched herself into my arms, but when I held her, this felt right. Her weight, her presence, the warmth of her, it seemed to thaw something inside me, heal something that had been long hurting. “Faola was up with the birds again and chattering away to them like she spoke their language,” my mother said, pushing a strand of my daughter’s hair back.

“Faola?” I stared at the little girl, seeing another face superimposed over hers. Tears pricked my eyes when I realised who’s. The girl had some of the strength of Gael’s face and definitely his eyes, ones that stared back at me just as steadily as her father’s. “Is that what your name is?”

“It means little wolf,” the girl told me proudly, “because when I grow up, I’ll be big and strong like a wolf, just like my father.”

“He’s here too?”

I set the girl down, stepping away now, a strange kind of fear building in my chest as I walked from this room to the next.

“Gael?” My voice echoed down the hall that was strangely empty, the rest of the keep so much darker. “Gael?”

“You never could just acceptwhat is.”

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