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"Hey, it's okay," I insist, squeezing her hand tightly. "Viktor is gone for good, and I'm here now."
There will be time to grieve what was lost. We will have years to mourn the ones that were stolen from us. But right now, I've had enough sorrow, and I am not willing to give that man a single second more of my happiness. Not when I finally have what I never dared to hope for.
Friends. A pack. A family. My parents. We're together now, and that's all that matters.
"There is so much I want to ask you, I don't even know where to begin," I tell her.
"Ditto," she says, smiling at me through her tears. "I want to know everything. I don't even know what to call you."
I tense at her words, and Tristan senses the shift in me, taking a step closer to the bed. Vanessa's eyes widen, darting up as she suddenly realizes the three of us aren't alone in the room.
"It's okay," I say quickly, turning back to look at Tristan, whose eyes are trained firmly on me, his expression calm and reassuring. "This is Tristan Lyall, Alpha of the Rovers. He's- he's..."
"He's your mate," Vanessa says softly, startling me. I whirl my head back around to stare at her in surprise.
"How did you know?"
She gives me a knowing smile, but something woeful lingers behind her expression. "I may be a stranger to my own daughter, but a mother always knows. Just look at the way he watches you."
I glance back to find Tristan still watching me, unflinching under my mother's scrutiny as she looks back and forth between the two of us.
A few months ago, this man who didn't believe in the mating bond would have been just as likely to avert his eyes and avoid my gaze as I was. But now, neither one of us looks away as we hold each other in the only way we can, considering the circumstances.
"You have no idea," Vanessa says, finally drawing Tristan's attention away from me, "How happy I am to meet you, Tristan Lyall. Thank you for watching over... I'm sorry, sweetheart, I still don't know what to call you. What's your name?"
I lower my eyes, shrinking slightly into myself. I still don't have an answer.
"I-I don't have one. No one ever, um... I'm not..." I stammer.
I suppose I could have just picked something for my friends to call me. I could have made up a name to tell her, but it did not feel right. A name is meant to be given. It is the first gift a child receives from their family. Names can be chosen or changed, but they cannot simply be plucked out of thin air for convenience's sake. Where a word has meaning and definition, a name has a person. It is a life summed in a single string of letters.
Without a name, Viktor made me less than living. Without a name, what do you call out when you miss or need someone? Without a name, what would you curse when you're angry or whisper tenderly when muttered in a lover's embrace?
Tristan steps forward, standing beside me by the edge of the bed and resting a hand on my shoulder.
"She has many names," he says softly, answering when I could not. "The nightwalkers call her princess, and I know the Night King calls her his diamond. To the five packs of Silvertooth Peaks, she is referred to as the queen, but to the Rovers, she is our flower."
Vanessa's expression darkens as understanding fills those blue eyes that shine brighter than Viktor's ever could. After a moment, she blinks a few times, processing what Tristan has just said.
"They call you flower?" she asks, confusion and curiosity lacing her words.
"Of course, I never got the chance to tell you," Marco says, smiling slightly despite the heaviness that hangs between us as he nudges my mother. "It seems our daughter inherited your love of things that grow, my star."
"You like horticulture?" I ask tentatively.
Vanessa laughs, and it's a bright, musical sound that I didn't know I'd been missing my entire life.
"Like it?" Marco asks. "She adores it. We always used to say that when we eloped, and she came to live with me, she would start a garden right outside the castle."
"I was a botanist for the Banes, often working in tandem with the healer and apothecary of the pack. Viktor only allowed it for practical and medicinal purposes, but I always loved the poetry of it," Vanessa explains, her soft features still glowing with delight. "Oh, Marco, do you remember that book on flowers you got me? It was so long ago it seems like it's been lifetimes since then."
"Careful, my star, we're not THAT old."
Did my father, the prim and proper Night King, just make a... joke? Marco, the vampire... kidding about being old?
Tristan coughs a little awkwardly as if he's also struggling to make sense of what just happened.
I've never seen Marco like this, smiling and relaxed. It's like there's this whole other side of him that Vanessa brings out of him that he must have buried when he thought my mother had died.
