Page 69

He tightened the bracket. Tested it. The pipe held.

He climbed down, set the wrench on the kitchen counter, and washed his hands under the tap. The water was cold. He let it run over his knuckles until the chill pushed everything else to the edges. Then he dried his hands, pulled on boots, and left the quarters.

He walked to Kahn and Caitlynn’s cottage without even thinking about it, just allowing his feet to move. The garden path, the covered walkway, the older stone where the compound narrowed. Light burned in her kitchen window.

He knocked. Footsteps, bare on wood, then the door opened.

Caitlynn stood in a shirt that belonged to Kahn, her hair knotted at the top of her skull. Elianna sat on her hip, dark eyes blinking at Chris with infant focus.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“I was fixing the gutter.”

“At two in the morning?”

He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. “It was dripping.”

She studied his face. Whatever she found there made her step back without another question. He came in. The kitchen smelled like chamomile, lavender oil, candle wax. Kahn’s patrol reports covered the table beneath a mug and a glass jar with a flame leaning sideways in the draft.

She filled the kettle one-handed. Chris reached across and took Elianna. The baby grabbed his collar, pulled it toward her mouth, biting down with focused intent.

“She’s teething,” Caitlynn said. “Last week she ate Kahn’s reading glasses.”

“Ate them?”

“He had to negotiate their return. It took fifteen minutes. She drove a hard bargain.”

Chris sat at the table. Elianna gnawed his collar. Caitlynn poured tea, brought two mugs, and sat across from him.

“So what happened between you and Sloane?”

He looked up. “What makes you think anything did?”

“Because you show up at my door at this hour for exactly one reason, and the only person keeping you awake right now is twelve feet from your bed.” She blew across the surface of her tea. “Tell me.”

He freed his thumb from Elianna’s grip and gave her a spoon instead. She accepted the trade with an expression of serious evaluation.

“I was wrong about her,” he said.

Caitlynn waited.

“Two years I spent hating her for what she did to you. The staff she turned, the meals you ate alone, the whispers. When the ritual drew our names, my first reaction was fury. The magic had given me to the woman who isolated my sister.”

“I remember what she did, Chris.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.” He turned the spoon handle when Elianna lost her grip on it. “She didn’t go after you because she wanted power. She went after you because she was trying to survive. The Luna seat was the only protected position in the pack. She looked at it and saw safety. You were standing in the way of the only shelter she’d ever identified.”

Caitlynn’s hands tightened around her mug. The knuckles blanched, then loosened.

“Her father,” Caitlynn said, quietly.

“I can’t share her details. They’re hers. But I can tell you that she grew up inside a house where love was a word used right before pain, and nobody ever stood between her and the worst of it. She built herself around the principle that if she could get high enough, far enough, strong enough, he couldn’t touch her. Then you married Kahn, and the plan fell apart.”

“And I became the enemy.”

“You became the obstacle. She didn’t hate you. She didn’t know you well enough to hate you. She hated that you’d taken the one exit she’d spent years climbing toward.”

Caitlynn was quiet. She turned the mug between her palms. The candle flame steadied in a pause between drafts.