"The scar?"

"After. Yes."

She turned the wooden wolf over in her fingers. "Even when you thought I was dead? You still wanted me?"

"Every single day. I talked to you. In my head. I told you about my day. I told you about this place — the trees, the stream, the people. I told you everything, even though I thought you couldn't hear me." I swallowed. "I never stopped being your mother, Lily. Not for one day. Not for one second."

She leaned back against my chest. The wooden wolf was pressed between us. I could feel her heartbeat through it — fast and small and alive. So alive.

"Rhea?"

"Yeah, baby?"

Her voice was getting small. Sleep-heavy. The words came out soft, blurred at the edges, the way children's words do when they're letting go of the day.

"Mom."

One word.

Not a question. Not testing it out. A statement. A decision made by a five-year-old who'd spent her whole life calling someone else's mother "Mama" and knowing it wasn't right, feeling the wrongness of it in her wolf, in her bones, in the face that looked back at her from mirrors and matched no one in that house.

Mom.

I didn't move.

If I moved, something would break. Something I'd spent six years building — the wall, the armor, the version of myself that could take a hit and keep standing. If I moved, if I breathed wrong, if I did anything except sit perfectly still and feel the weight of this word settle into my chest, I would come apart.

So I sat. And I held her. And she fell asleep. And the wooden wolf dug into my ribs and I didn't move it.

My eyes burned. I blinked and something hot ran down my cheek. Then the other cheek. I couldn't wipe them because my arms were around her and I wasn't going to let go. I wasn't ever going to let go.

Six years. Six years of thinking she was dead. Six years of talking to a ghost. Six years of building a territory for throwaway wolves because I couldn't protect the one wolf that mattered.

And she called me Mom.

Like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Torren found me an hour later. Lily asleep, my arms locked around her, my face wrecked.

He stopped in the doorway. Read the situation the way good Betas do — with his whole body, not just his eyes.

"You okay?"

"She called me Mom."

He was quiet for a moment.

"And then?"

"That's it. That's the whole thing. She just — she was falling asleep and she said it. One word. Like she'd been saving it."

Torren leaned against the doorframe. He didn't come closer. He knew better.

"I forgot," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "I forgot what that sounds like. Someone needing you like that. Not because you're Alpha. Not because you're strong or useful or dangerous. Just — " I pressed my lips together. "Just because you're their person."

He nodded. Didn't say anything wise. Didn't try to make it a lesson or a moment. Just stood there, solid and present, the way he'd been standing for three years.

"Want me to take the night watch?" he asked.

"Already covered."

"Want me to — "

"Torren."

"Yeah."

"Go away. I'm fine."

He almost smiled. "You're not fine."

"I know. Go away anyway."

He went. His footsteps faded down the hall, and then it was just me and Lily and the dark and the carved wolf between us and the wet tracks on my face that I still couldn't wipe.

I leaned my head back against the chair.

Mom.

I was never going to get tired of that sound.