Sure enough, before a quarter hour had passed, Finn Thornwood came striding out of the compound, and right behind him, draped in gold and silver, was Edith Ashvale. The cloying scent of overripe peaches and crushed oleander reached me before she did, sweet enough to turn my stomach.
The steward pointed at me. "My Alpha, this woman claims to be your mate. If she's a fraud, I'll have her thrown out at once."
Finn looked down at me from the top of the steps. "Lift your head."
I tilted my chin up slowly, the ghost of a smile on my lips. My wolf was utterly still inside me, watchful, coiled, silent as a held breath.
The moment he saw my face, every drop of color drained from his.
"Narelle, is it really you? What are you doing here?"
He strode over and lowered his voice to a hiss.
"If you wanted to see me, you could have sent word through the servants. Why make a scene in front of everyone?"
"Besides, I told you in my letters not to come back on your own. When the time was right, I would have sent someone to bring you."
I held my daughter tight and stared at him in cold silence.
Five years apart, and Finn looked even more handsome than before. Younger, somehow. His wolf had clearly benefited from the life he'd stolen. His coat was cut from the finest cloth in the Territories, the cuffs stitched with silver-thread sigils marking the Thornwood Alpha line. A line he'd inherited only because I had stabilized his wolf with my Omega blood and given him the strength to shift at all.
My daughter and I, by contrast, were dressed in rags. Our rough-spun clothes had more holes than I could count. We carried no pack scent. We smelled like the wild, like dirt and hunger and the open road.
"Husband, didn't you promise me yourself? You said within three years, you would send someone to bring me back to the territory. It's been five."
Finn's expression darkened, though a flicker of panic crossed his eyes. I caught the subtle shift in his scent, that iron-rust sharpening beneath the damp bark, the way it always did when he was cornered.
"Narelle, I will bring you back. But not now. The den is hosting a feast for the Grand Pack Council delegates and visiting Alphas. Take the pup and leave. We'll talk later."
He slipped a heavy pouch of gold moons into my hands, expecting me to take the money, walk away, and pretend we had nothing to do with each other.