Page 66 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“What does that mean for what’s coming?” Dane asks.

“It means the door into the celestial realm opens for me and for nobody else alive. It means Faelan isn’t using a door. He’s going through the wall, he’s most of the way through, and what every person in this room has been feeling for two days is him doing it.”

Dane doesn’t move. He needed a plan tonight and what I have is the truth. I start on the rest, softening the first sentence without catching myself doing it, because there’s a room full of people already bleeding in front of me.

“There are parts of this that will keep until we’ve all slept, so tonight the useful piece is knowing what the key opens and how long we have, which is...”

“Stop.”

Kaspian speaks from the middle of the room. I stop.

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Not tonight. Not in this room.”

“Kaspian.”

“You’ve done it my entire life.” He isn’t shouting, he’s worn through and it comes out of him anyway. “You decide how much a person can hold, you hand them that much and carry the rest yourself. Most of the time you’re right, I’ve let you because you’re right. You’re not right tonight. Look at them.”

I look. Nova with her hand on her wrist. Kari with hers shaking against her palm. Dane with both hands on a table that has nothing left to tell him. Evren by the door sweating in a cool room.

“They’re already hurt,” Kaspian says. “You don’t get to decide what this family can survive hearing. Not anymore.”

I’ve carried the heavier version of every hard thing since I was old enough to know there were two versions, I’ve always called that loving people. He’s right.

“All right,” I say. I give them the rest with nothing taken off it.

The angels knew what breaking the death-lock would open. They did it anyway, picked Ben to pay for it because what they needed was love willing to break itself. Leaving the truth buried would have taken something just as real out of every realm eventually. Nobody has ever had a clean answer available, only two bad ones. Then the last of it. The founders built their fourth point out of fear of exactly one thing, and I’m walking around being it. I keep my voice steady the whole way through. Dane goes quiet and stays that way. Nova’s grip closes tighter on her own wrist.

“Is mine going to keep getting worse?” Kari asks. Quiet, sharp, straight at me.

There are three answers I could give her, every one of them true, not one of them good enough. She’d know which kind she was being handed before I finished the sentence, because she’s Kari, and she has never let me get away with the clean version of anything.

“Yes,” I say.

Then the room pulls apart. Nobody raises a voice. Nobody accuses anybody of anything. It’s smaller than that, worse. Rafe stands beside Kari without touching her. Nova turns her body a few degrees away from Dane. Evren leaves. The warmth that has run under this pack since the first night I walked into it thins out until there’s almost nothing left of it in the room. I go out to the porch. Valen is at the treeline. I want him. Not later, after this is handled. Now, with his arms around me, my face against his chest, in front of every one of them if that’s what it takes. I’m off the steps and moving before I’ve decided anything. I cross half the yard and stop a dozen feet short of him. He watches me come and doesn’t move to meet me. He’s got several days of stubble, his hair’s damp at the temples, pushed back off his forehead where he’s had a hand through it. His eyes are gray, they’re on my face, they stay there. That man tracks every corner of every room he stands in. Him looking at one thing and nothing else is the loudest thing he’s ever said to me.

Nothing in his face gives me an opening. Neither of us says a word, he turns away and goes back toward the trees. I stand there a while before I go back to the lodge.

Behind me in the dark there’s a man who could put his arms around me and end most of what’s wrong with me by crossing twelve feet of grass, yet I’m the reason he won’t.

Tomorrow, I have to ask him to walk into the celestial realm with me.

Chapter 38

Valen

Nothing has crossed the line all night.

I walk the ridge anyway. North end first, down along the rocks where the deer come through, the long stretch above the pasture, then the turn back. The night’s clear, cold at the edges. The day’s heat is still lying low in the valley under me, the air changes twice on the way down and twice on the way back. The lodge is lit up below. Most of the cabins are too, later than they should be for a pack that was up before dawn. Ansel comes up the slope while I’m at the turn.

“I’ve got the rest of it,” he says.

“The perimeter’s clean. Nothing came near it.”

“It never does when you’re on it.” He goes past me and settles himself against the rock where he can see the whole treeline. Ansel has slept outside every night since I came here - he’d rather watch the trees than have a roof over him, and I’ve never heard anybody give him grief about it. Dane comes up behind him a minute later. I know what that means before he opens his mouth. Dane doesn’t climb this ridge at midnight for a perimeter report.

“Nyxiana’s back,” he says. “She came in tonight.”

“I saw her.”