lia's

both a blessing and a curse. Rupert Whitmore had been Lysander's beta

ple who'd looked genuinely sorry

His voice carried that careful neutrality that

d gymnastics. Being around pack members again after five years of isolation was like

rrently threatening rain with the deter

ell enough to share inside jokes, now separated by years of carefully

t been there before, a tension in his shoul

because dancing around the

professional facade to genuine worry. "Bad enough that th

e man who'd rejected me in front of half the supernatural community was

to the passenger seat, noting that the car still smelled like e

nd we began the winding driv

get it, stone walls, sheep that looked perpetually judgmental, and in the d

gressive curve. "Whatever's affecting him, it's not responding to convent

old life approach with all the enthusiasm of a

lia

could launch into whatever apology

screaming at me to barricade myself in my studio with

he fact that I'd been in love with Lysander since we were teenagers. Like the fact that the

itics over his supposedly fated mate, a

etly as we turned through the famili

mething complicat

pottery shows up in the village shops. When tourist

came out sharper than intended.

ht have been homesickness. Ravenshollow had been in the Ashworth family for centuries,

ning the intricacies of pack politics and dreaming of

nd I noticed the subtle signs of negle

once were, and there was a general air of thin

should know... he's not the same. The illness, whatever it is, i

than usual?" I su

seriously. "And that

r, our footsteps echoing on the ancient stone. A de

er. Backed into a corner, facing his own mortality... Well, that ha

midatingly grand, still designed to make visit

expressions of aristocratic superiority, and I wondered if any of them ha

disapproving. Margaret Ashworth, Lysander's mother and current pack matriarch, de

be polite, not enough to be deferential. Five ye

assessment usually reserved for live

said cheerfully

mewhere inside the house. Shouting, the crash of something expensive hittin

, desperate, and und

ulders. "Let's go see what sort of me