Yes. That was one word for it.
She wished Aurelia couldn’t feel her tension humming through her veins, but her daughter had always been far too perceptive. Aurelia’s magic was still budding, still wild, but her intuition cut clean and sharp.
Dani forced a smile. “They’re just mountains, Auri.”
Aurelia scrunched her nose. “Not just mountains. They feel…important.”
That was the problem.
Everything here felt important. Heavy. Like memories packed the air as thickly as the cold.
Dani tore her gaze away from the window, trying to breathe evenly. She’d expected nerves. Panic, even. But this…this was worse.
She hadn’t been back to Alaska in ten years.
She hadn’t planned toeverreturn.
Not for anything. Not for anyone.
Least of all Arthur Wells.
Her heart lurched painfully at the thought of him. She squeezed her hands together, trying to ground herself.
She pictured him as she’d last seen him. The carefully blank expression on his face. The cold wall he’d put up. The casual cruelty in his words.
Then she pictured him now.
Older. Harder. The Alpha of the Nordan.
And she pictured his expression when he sawAurelia.
When he realized she had a child.
A child with his eyes.
Dani’s stomach flipped violently.
“You okay?” Aurelia asked, leaning closer. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”
“I might,” Dani admitted.
Aurelia blinked. “Is it car sickness?”
“No,” Dani whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
If only it were because of car sickness. And not because of…
Because of Arthur.
Because of the pack that had exiled magic long before she was born, long before she had any.
Because if Arthur decided she was a threat…or worse, a traitor…
She didn’t want her daughter, had she been left behind in Salem, to receive a phone call that her mother—
She couldn’t even think the words.
As much as Arthur might hate her, he wasn’t sadistic. He wouldn’t kill a mother in front of her daughter. The strongest witches in the coven were in the delegation. Aurelia was safest amongst them. Underherprotection.
