Chapter 77: First and Last

Azura’s POV

Leo was still looking at me.

He had not moved. Had not looked away. Just sat there on the edge of that bed with his big hands on his knees and his eyes on my face, waiting the same way he always waited, like he had all the time in the world and was not going to let me off easy.

"Luna." His voice came out deeper than it had any right to. "You did not answer."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Ethan had stopped looking at me a while ago. He was staring at his hands again, turning them over slowly in his lap, front then back, like he was checking if they were still his. Like he was still not sure.

"She does not know how to tell us," he said. Quiet. Flat. Not a question.

Leo’s eyes moved to him. Then back to me. His jaw shifted slightly.

"Tell us what?"

Axel had not moved from his corner the entire time. Arms crossed, eyes on the floor somewhere between his feet and the door. He did not look up. He had nothing to offer, and he was not pretending otherwise.

I reached out and took Leo’s hand.

It swallowed mine. All of it, my whole hand just disappeared inside his, and his fingers curled around it without him deciding to, tight and automatic, and I felt my throat do something I was not ready for.

"I need you both to listen to me," I said.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.

I pulled in a slow breath.

Just then the door opened.

Genevieve walked in with a small cloth bundle under her arm. She was already crossing toward the beds when she glanced up and her eyes landed on my face.

She stopped walking.

Her eyes moved from me to the boys. To Axel in the corner. Back to me. Something in her expression shifted, just slightly, and she set the bundle down on the nearest surface without looking at it.

She looked at Axel.

"Take the boys to get something warm to eat."

Axel uncrossed his arms and pushed off the wall.

Leo’s hand tightened around mine.

He looked at me, and his eyes were ten years old though the rest of him was not.

"Will you still be here?"

"I will be here," I replied.

He held on for one more second. Then he let go, stood up, and reached across and took Ethan’s hand the same way he always used to when they were small and the world felt too big. Ethan stood without being asked.

They followed Axel to the door.

Leo stopped at the threshold. His hand on the frame. He looked back at me over his shoulder.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

He looked at me long enough to decide he believed it. Then he nodded and walked out. The door pulled shut behind them and the click of it in the quiet room felt louder than it should have.

I sat there.

The room was very still. Just Genevieve and me and the two empty beds with the blankets pushed back and the pillows still dented from where two boys who were not supposed to be men yet had been lying.

I stood up.

I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around Genevieve and held on.

She did not say anything. She just held me back, solid and warm, one hand moving in slow circles between my shoulder blades, and I pressed my eyes shut and breathed.

"How are you, child?" she said softly against the top of my head.

"I missed you," I said into her shoulder.

Her hand kept moving.

Then the door opened.

I stepped back and turned.

Torin was in the doorway. He looked at me. Then at Genevieve. Then at the exact distance between us where the hug had just been.

One eyebrow climbed slowly.

"Should I come back later?"

"You are already here," Genevieve said. She moved past me, sat down on the edge of one of the beds, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at the wall like she had simply decided to be comfortable.

Torin walked in. He went to the wall by the window, put his back against it, crossed his arms, and smiled at nothing in particular.

I stayed where I was and watched him.

He looked back at me.

Genevieve spoke first.

"What happened to the boys cannot be reversed."

I turned to her. My hands found each other in front of me without me deciding to.

"So their childhood is just gone?"

"Their childhood was stolen," she said. "We cannot give it back." She paused. "But we can give them something else."

"What?"

She looked at the empty beds. At the dents in the pillows.

"A chance to grow into the men their bodies have already become." Another pause. "There is a process. It will help their minds catch up. It will not be quick. But it can be done."

I nodded. I looked at the beds too. On the blankets. At the small scuff marks on the floor where they had jumped down and ran to me.

Then I looked toward the window.

Torin was not smiling anymore. He was watching me with his arms still crossed, his head tilted slightly, and his eyes doing that thing where they took in too much at once.

I did not look away.

"Was that why you brought him?" I asked. Genevieve could hear it was meant for her. My eyes did not leave Torin. "Before we even left for the Wraithfen. That was the reason."

Genevieve glanced at Torin. Just once. Then back at me.

"You already found out what he is," she said.

"Yes."

She looked at my face for a long moment.

"And you are not surprised."

"You knew I would find out," I said. "You knew before we even left."

She said nothing.

I turned to face Torin fully.

"You already found out," I said. "That I know."

He pushed off the wall. Walked toward me slowly and stopped a few feet away. His arms dropped to his sides.

"Yeah."

"How?"

"When I froze time, everything was meant to stop." He held my gaze. "Every sound. Every movement. Everything in the area locks. That is how it works."

He paused.

"But I felt something still moving. A small energy. Leaking through the frozen time when nothing else was."

My stomach tightened.

"And?" I asked.

"It was coming from you."

I said nothing. I kept my face still and my breathing even and I said nothing.

Torin glanced at Genevieve. Then back at me. His expression shifted. The easy version of him that lounged against walls and smiled at everything stepped aside and something quieter took its place.

"There is something else I need to tell you," he said.

I waited.

He looked at me for a moment like he was deciding where to start.

"I have been in this pack for weeks," he said. "Around you for days. Close enough to notice," A small pause. "And in all that time I have never once felt your wolf."

My hands went still at my sides.

"Not once," he said.

His eyes did not move from my face.

"But you have a mate." He muttered it slowly, like he was still working through it. "So the wolf exists. It has to."

I watched him.

He was quiet for a moment. His eyes moved over my face, reading something I could not see.

"Then why have I never felt it?" He was not asking me. He was asking himself.

He shook his head slightly.

"That only means one thing." He said it carefully. Each word was placed where he wanted it. "Someone sealed it. Your wolf. Your power. Everything." A pause. "Locked away so deep that even I could not sense any of it."

I looked at Genevieve.

She was looking back at me. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her face was very still, and she did not offer me anything.

"Until I froze the time," Torin said.

"How do you know about sealing?" I asked.

He was quiet for a beat.

"I didn’t," he said slowly. "Not really. But putting everything together..." He stopped. Started again. "There is no other explanation. It has to be that." Another pause. "And I have read about it. In a book."

"A book."

"My mother keeps it locked away." He paused. "I found it once when I was young. I was going through things I should not have been touching." The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. Just for a second. "I only got through a few pages before she found me. But those pages."

He stopped.

"What did they say?" I asked again.

He looked at me steadily.

"They described a sealed wolf," he said. "Hidden powers. I was too young to understand most of what I read." He paused. "But I remember what the book said at the end of those pages. That someone like that, by every rule of this world, should not exist."

The room was very quiet.

"I never saw the book again after that day. She hid it somewhere I have not been able to find. I have searched for years. Used magic. Tried everything." He shook his head once. "Nothing."

My hand moved to my pendant.

I noticed it after it was already there, my fingers around the metal, warm against my palm, and I did not move my hand away.

Torin’s eyes dropped to it. Stayed there for a second. Then came back up.

"When I felt that energy in the frozen time," he said, "coming from you, still moving when everything else had stopped, I knew." He looked at me the way he had looked at the blue pearls in the Wraithfen. Like something real and impossible at the same time. "You are similar to what that book was describing."

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Torin held my gaze and did not fill the silence.

"The book is called Aegis," he said.

The word settled into the room like something with weight.

"Aegis," I whispered.

"And yes, just remember something important, a page of it said that one day someone would come. What was it again?" He paused, remembering. "Ah."

I watched his face.

"Someone who would be the first."

The quiet in the room got thicker.

He paused again. Longer this time. His eyes stayed on mine and something in them told me he had been carrying the next words for a long time and was only now putting them down.

"And the last."

I did not move.

First, and last.

I turned to Genevieve.

Her face was pale. Her hands in her lap were very still, the stillness of someone holding themselves together carefully. She was looking at the floor just in front of her feet and there was something in the set of her mouth and the line of her shoulders that I had never seen from her before in all the time I had known her.

She looked like someone who had been waiting for this moment and had hoped it would not come.

"Genevieve."

She did not answer.

"Genevieve." My voice came out barely above a whisper. "What does that mean?"

She looked up at me.

Her eyes met mine and for the first time in all the time I had known her, there was nothing behind them that was ready. No calm. No explanation waiting to be given. No quiet confidence that she already knew what to do next.

Just her. Looking at me. With nothing to give.

Wow Torin. Just wow.