Logan
Brie looks exhausted, but otherwise… happy, thank the Goddess, as she sits between her mother and Misty, listening to their conversation and picking at a sandwich.
I lean my elbows on the table across the room where I’m sitting in silence, alone, still waiting for my mind to catch up with my body after Maeve jumped with us from the middle of the ocean to Veiled Valley.
A shadow moves into view, crossing through the doorway before a shadow breaches the informal living area. Ryan looks around before turning the corner, beelining for me, waving away several rushed questions coming from the group of women on the couches nearby.
He braces his hands on the table beside me, leaning down to whisper into my ear, “I need to speak to you in private before Ryatt returns. Can you come with me?”
I glance at Brie, who’s watching us with her brows furrowed in worry. I suck my teeth before nodding, and Ryan moves back a step so I can stand.
Brie and I have been using the mind-link as much as we need to, which hasn’t been often, seeing as up until a day ago, we were together almost constantly, but I send her a quick message through the bond, telling her I’ll be back shortly.
My footsteps echo on the dark stone floors as I follow Ryan through the woven, interlocking hallways of the ancient castle. I haven’t spent much time here at all. I’ve only ever been in the more formal rooms downstairs and Evander’s office. Ryan takes me all the way downstairs and out into the front garden, which is in full bloom now. It’s mid-summer. Brie and I were gone for the first truly hot, sunny month, having spent it on the sea instead.
Ryan sighs with relief as the sun beats down on his face. He’s finally starting to look his age–a man in his mid-forties with two teenagers daughters constantly giving him hell. His dark brown hair has gone a soft, pepper gray around his ears and forehead, and his neatly trimmed beard is almost completely gray, but I’ve never known him to keep a beard this long.
Smile lines are deep set around his eyes and mouth, a map that highlights the good years more than the bad ones. I know he went through hell when he was my age. Younger than me, actually. He nearly lost Aviva twice–the second time dying beside her and their unborn child on a desert battlefield.
The thought of them makes my chest squeeze with regret, but Ryan’s motioning me to follow him to an outdoor seating area surrounded by the overgrown, wild front garden. Vines wrap around the wrought-iron benches as the sun filters through the trees overhead, but it’s shaded and cool here.
“That’s better,” he grunts, sitting in one of the chairs. It groans under his weight but he ignores it, spreading his legs while running a hand over his face.
I lean against the trunk of the tree shading the garden, breathing in the smell of flowers and fresh, summer grass. “What’d you want to talk to me about?”
“Nothing that hasn’t already been said. I figured you’d probably want to get out of a house full of women as much as I did, though.”
I chew my lower lip to stop from smiling. “Where’s Mom?” The word falls from my tongue without thought, without any care of the connotations behind it. It’s not the first time I’ve slipped up and called Aviva my mother but it's definitely the first time I’ve said it in front of him.
Ryan, to his credit, doesn’t do more than smile faintly. “She’s around. Nora’s having a rough go of it. It’s a lot, I think, going from one extreme to the other–thinking you were dead and then… being yanked out of bed and jumping here to see you alive.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I whisper, guilt ripping through my chest.
He nods, his stormy blue eyes going a shade darker than normal. “Did you have a chance to talk to Evander?”
“Briefly. But not about–about the fact that Brie and I are mates. It was… glossed over. I don’t think it’s hit anyone yet, honestly. He needed to know about Alex of Tempest Valley and his pack, first and foremost.”
“That’s been dealt with. Alex and his mate are here in Veiled Valley. Their pack is docked in Avalone.”
“Are they safe?”
“Yes,” he says with a nod. “Kenna already set them up, and she’s making long-term arrangements for them. It sounds like they’ll be staying here in Veiled Valley for a year, at least, unless–” Ryan cuts himself off, his eyes raising to meet mine. “Logan, what’s your plan now?”
My back slides down the trunk of the tree until I’m in a seated position, stretching out my legs in an entirely casual fashion that betrays all of my training as a warrior.
“Brie and I have discussed a few options,” I admit. “It’s mostly just… dreams, I guess.” I lick my lips, trying to find the words, the solutions, but everything feels different now that we’re home. I peer through the trees at the tall gray fortress just within view on the other side of the valley, its windows shining in the sun’s glare. “I’m a warrior, Ryan. I’m a Ghost. A captain,” I begin, meeting his eyes again. “I have some money set aside. If she wants to stay here, in Veiled Valley, I’ll buy a house for us. Something comfortable for her. I’ll be close to the barracks and my offices, close to Commander–”
“Evander, your soon-to-be father in law?” he cuts in with a smirk.
“Still my commander as it stands, but I was promised leave… a long enough leave that we could stay in Silverhide for the remainder of the summer to help with the harvest before truly settling down.”
He nods but says, “You know we have everything settled in Silverhide–”
“But we could always… come to live there,” I cut in, and his eyes meet mine in the hazy glow of summer sunlight. “I could come home, Ryan. I–I had to sever my ties with you, with Silverhide, when we were in KiloKilo. I had to pledge my allegiance to Alpha Alex, but it meant nothing more than a formality needed to be able to communicate with the crew I was leading at the time. But I could come back. I could live in Silverhide, start a farm or something–”
“Is that what you want, Logan?”
“Yeah,” I breathe, smiling around the word. “I do.”
I’ve rarely seen Ryan show any type of emotion beside… happiness. He’s always been a content, easy-going man. I know he can be scary and vicious when it’s deserved and is a tough, commanding Alpha, but he spared us from that side of him growing up. Right now, his eyes are dark, however. “What about Emberfyll?” His words ghost through the air between us, creating a void I can’t climb out of.
There’s so much I could say on the subject. I could spill my heart out, telling this man who raised me like his own son while I balked at his leadership and affection every step of the way, that I can’t see myself leaving, that my life has been spent here, and wasted, and I don’t want to waste another second on a what if, on a fairy tale.
“The second I saw Brie,” I tell him, my voice low, “I knew that whatever future I had planned for myself didn’t matter anymore. I fought it. I fought it for weeks, but she’s my mate.” I meet his eyes. “I want to be here–with her. She is the only thing that has ever felt like home.”
Even in my fractured memories of Emberfyll, I can’t conjure the same feelings of warmth and togetherness. I don’t remember sunlight. I don’t remember soft skin and a warm bed. I don’t remember love until the memory of my father crying out for my mother as she washed away sprints back to the forefront of my mind.
He’d held me until he couldn’t, and the waves separated us. That was the only kind of love I knew in Emberfyll, and it’s a reminder of why they left in the first place.
“I was meant to be here, in Eastonia. Brie was always what I was meant for. I spent years training,” I continue breathlessly, holding his gaze, “to be able to protect her. The Goddess put me in your path, Ryan, you, and Aviva, so I could learn how to love her. That’s what I was always meant to do, and I was fucking stupid when I let her reject me, when I accepted her rejection. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life, and I’ll spend the rest of my days making it up to her.”
Ryan hides his smile, and maybe even a few relieved tears, while bowing his head and chuckling, “Then come home, Logan. To Silverhide. Bring her with you, even if it’s just for the summer.”
“I will.”
Aviva's voice rips through the air, “Ryan? Are you and Logan out here?”
He chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “We are.”
She huffs under her breath as she fights through the overgrowth, popping into the clearing while shielding her face from the sun. “Are you hiding? Is that what's going on?”
“We’re talking.” Ryan corrects her but rises with a soft groan. “We’ll head back in now. Logan and Brie have something to discuss before we all leave for Silverhide in a few days.”
“Silverhide?” Aviva’s dark brown eyes catch the sunlight and turn a bright, shimmering amber as she narrows her gaze.
“I think it’s time I went home,” I tell them, gripping her shoulder. “I’ll be bringing my mate home, too.”
Her eyes glisten before she turns her expression to steel. Her tongue darts over her lower lip as she glances from me to Ryan. “Ryatt returned from Moonrise. He’s back, and so are Evander and Sydney. They arrived a few minutes ago. I came out to find you, to tell you because–because they need to speak to you and Alpha Alex of Tempest Valley. Warriors have been dispatched to fetch him and his mate from where they’re staying in the barracks across town”
I bristle at her worried tone. She shakes her head, her eyes downcast on her sandals.
“What’s going on, Aviva?” Ryan asks, stepping to her side with his hands braced on her upper arms.
Something like the deepest, sharpest sense of unease prickles through my body. I rush away, cutting through the garden, leaping over stones and what remains of a toppled fence. I stalk across the driveway where, once, what feels like a lifetime ago, I drove Brie away from this very castle and the paths we laid for our futures fractured, blurred, and wove together.
I’ve barely crossed the foyer when I hear raised voices coming from Evander’s office and catch a glimpse of Brie as she slips out of the doorway, her face pale and eyes dark.
“Brie,” I rasp, reaching for her.
She looks up at me with wide eyes, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong?” I pull her against me, smoothing a hand down her spine as she coils her arms around my waist, burying her face in my shirt.
Just out of view, I hear Sydney say, “These stones change everything. You have to understand that.”
Kenna scoffs, followed by Misty raising her voice to a near yell. “You can’t be serious, Sydney! They just got home!”
My stomach twists as Brie clutches me close, her tears soaking into my shirt, and I realize our bed has been made.
“He’s an Alpha King. He has to return to Emberfyll. This has been laid out and planned for since he was a boy, and now we have a way to support him in taking over his rightful throne,” Ryatt says. “With Hannibal Arachnis trying to undermine our family’s monopoly on the Allied Kingdoms at every turn, we can’t risk such a strategic territory going unclaimed, especially with KiloKilo now breathing down our necks. Logan will return and claim his lands as Alpha King of Emberfyll. That’s final.”