I turned as she appeared in the kitchen doorway.Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she wore one of my white dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.The hem hit her mid-thigh, showing off her bare legs, and the top three buttons were undone, revealing the hollow of her throat and the shadow of her collarbone.
The sight of her in my clothes, marked with my scent, lit a possessive fire in my wolf.Made him want to press her against the nearest wall and put his mouth on every inch of visible skin.Made him want to carry her back upstairs and spend the rest of the day making her scream his name.
I stayed where I was.Barely.
“You were gone,” she said.“When I woke up.”
“Coffee.”I held up my cup, though I had barely touched it.“Alice is making breakfast.”
She nodded, but she didn’t move into the room.Her eyes drifted past me to the window, then around the kitchen, taking in the morning light filtering through the glass, the copper pots hanging above the stove, the details of a home I had built from the ashes of everything I had lost.
Then her gaze caught on the doorway behind me.The one that led to the stairs.To my bedroom.
“That sculpture,” she said slowly.“On your nightstand.I saw it this morning.”
My whole body went still.
“It’s different from the ones in the greenhouse.”She took a step closer, her brow furrowed in thought.“Smaller.Rougher.Like it wasn’t finished.”
I set down my coffee cup with exaggerated care, buying myself time to find words for a truth I had never shared with anyone.The sculpture on my nightstand.The one I had kept beside my bed for nearly twenty years, through pack initiation and the construction of this manor.The one no one else had ever asked about.
“It wasn’t,” I said.“Finished.”
Lena waited.She had learned that about me, somewhere in the weeks of hostile proximity and grudging truces.That I needed silence to find words for the things that mattered.That pushing would make me shut down, but patience might coax the truth out of me.
She was learning me.The thought was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
“My mother was working on it,” I said.“The night she died.”
A soft intake of breath.She knew about my mother.Alice had told her, back in the early days of the contract, when Lena was still trying to understand the monster she had sold herself to.She knew my father had killed her.Knew I had been three years old.Knew I had hidden in a closet and watched through the slats as my world ended in blood and screaming.
“You know what happened to her.”
It wasn’t a question.I could see the knowledge in her face.The weight of it she had been carrying since Alice’s confession.
“Alice told me.”Lena’s voice was quiet.Careful.“I didn’t want to ask you directly.It seemed…”
“Too raw.”
“Yes.”
We stood there in the morning light, the truth between us, and I did something I had never done before.I spoke about it.Not deflecting.Not changing the subject.Not retreating behind the walls I had built to keep the grief contained.
Just telling her.
“Alice found the sculpture in my mother’s studio, after,” I said.The words came slowly, dragged from somewhere deep in my chest.“She kept it safe while I was away at school.When I finally came back, eighteen and barely civilized, she gave it to me.Told me my mother had been making it in secret.A gift for my fourth birthday.”
The one I never had.The one that came three days after my mother’s funeral, while I was on a plane to the boarding school that would be my personal hell.
Lena’s expression shifted.Not pity.I would have hated pity.This was recognition.Understanding.The look of someone who knew what it meant to lose a parent and carry the wound for years afterward.
“She kept it all those years,” Lena said softly.“Waiting for you to come home.”
“Yes.”My voice was rough.I cleared my throat, but the thickness wouldn’t leave.“I’ve kept it beside my bed ever since.Alice kept it safe for fifteen years.The least I can do is keep it safe for the rest of my life.”
Lena crossed the room toward me.Not to touch me, not yet.She paused at the doorway that led upstairs, then looked back at me with a question in her eyes.
“Can I see it?”