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“I have no right to ask you for anything,” he said roughly. “But when my Nalla—”
“Yes, I will come to you when it is her time. And you will be reunited in the Fade. Lassiter and I will make sure of it.”
He released the breath he’d been holding for nights now. “Thank you. The idea of living without her is…”
“I know. You do not have to say it.”
“And thank you for bringing me back that night, thirty years ago. Life is a gift. I just forgot that for a very long time.”
“You had your reasons. And you are very welcome.”
The hug they shared was that of family, and when they stepped back, he looked to the cottage’s rear door.
“Making the peace,” he murmured. “It’s my new side hustle.”
“You do it well. I know I feel much better.”
Nate thought of his parents, whose home he’d just left after he and Nalla had enjoyed a great First Meal with them. Murhder and Sarah were even better than blood to him because they’d chosen him as their son, had picked him up out of an untenable situation and stuck with him, ever since. Again, when he thought about the things he’d said and done? Shame spoiled his stomach.
But he was going to keep proving that he had changed.
And God, they loved Nalla so much. They’d accepted her instantly, and the feeling he’d had, as he’d pulled out his mate’s chair at the table, while his father had done the same for his mother, had made him feel a full-circle kind of satisfaction.
He’d been lost. Now he really was found and claimed.
“You’re right,” he said hoarsely. “About the forgiveness thing and what it means.”
Why they still loved him, he couldn’t understand. But as his father had told him, and his mother had underscored, he was a part of them, of the love they had for each other, of their home. Of their past, present… and future. When he’d pressed them on it all, on how they could possibly look past his shutting them out, they had just smiled and promised, if he had young of his own, he would understand.
Man, he hoped that would happen for him and Nalla sometime, in some way. He really wanted to adopt at least one young.
He turned to the cottage. “Time to face the music with Wrath and the Brotherhood. I’m meeting Shuli after this. And then I think I’ve crossed off everyone on my list.”
As if she could sense his tension, Rahvyn reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “You are on a roll. Keep it going.”
“My father said he’d help me.”
“Good.”
With a wave, he took his leave of her, tromping through the snow to the glow by the back door. In his head, he tried to recite the speech he’d written out over day, once more going through the words that he’d worn out from practice. You’d think the number of times he’d reviewed the thing would have made it better. Instead, the sentences were a mash, an over-tossed salad that had been profound on its first iteration, but was now just a sappy hack job.
Ah, hell, maybe it had always been that, but the emotions he had been feeling had turned the prosaic into prose, and then he guessed the treadmill of repetition had given him the clarity that those fighters and the great Blind King were going to have the second he opened his pie hole.
Whatever, he thought as he waited to be cleared at the back entrance. It was all he had, and at least his father had offered to take him into his audience with the—
The first of the three portals was sprung, and Nate stepped inside a cubicle-like space.
Sweaty palms. Pounding heart. Shaking hands.
The second clearance was granted, the heavy steel door releasing so that he could take another couple of steps and wait for another review. Looking up, he noted the tiny holes in the steel ceiling. Mounted as they were, they were not unlike the stars in the sky, so small compared to the expanse they were on. But they were nothing to wish on. If you were a trespasser dumb enough to make it this far? You were going to get hit with enough nerve gas to get turned into an inanimate object.
He was passed forward again, and as he confronted the final checkpoint, he just pictured his father standing tall and true in the homey kitchen on the far side, Murhder’s red-and-black hair and leathers a comfort—
The seal let go, he pushed the way in… and stopped as soon as he stepped forward.
Across the way, it was Zsadist by the Aga, not his father.
Behind Nate, the steel door shut itself and relocked, and abruptly, the details of the kitchen got a little blurry, while the scents in the air got sharp: Scones. Coffee. OJ.
