Chapter 277: Chapter 277: The Aftermath Of The Hearing
Damon’s POV
He held it together in the hall, All four hours of it.
Through Sable’s testimony, the vote record and the directive read aloud in Vassin’s thin carrying voice. The forty minute deliberation and the finding and the gavel.
He held it the whole time and throughout the journey back home
He made it to the kitchen.
Stood at the counter.
And then he put both hands flat on the surface and breathed out and let everything out.
All of it.
Four months of Callum. Twenty years of trust and four months of betrayal.
Eve found him there.
Stood beside him at the counter.
She didn’t say anything, She Just stood there beside him. With the warmth of her hand on his back
He straightened up.
Looked at her.
"It’s done," he said.
"It’s done," she said.
He looked at her face.
At the woman who had stood in that hall and watched twenty years of architecture come down.
"You okay," he said.
"Yes," she said. "You?"
"Getting there," he said.
She put her arm around him briefly.
He leaned into it, then he straightened.
"Right," he said. "I’m making food."
She almost laughed. "It’s eleven in the morning."
"I’m still making food," he said again.
She sat down at the table.
"Okay," she said.
He made enough for everyone.
That was the thing about cooking for Damon, Whenever he was dealing with something, he released the tension by cooking.
They filtered in one by one.
Silas came in first, He sat at the table, Then Damian came inside. He pulled his Jacket off, rolled up his sleeves and sat across from Eve.
Vessa sat at the end of the table. She looked....lighter. Not young. Just lighter.
Raphael and Elena came in together. Elena sat down and Raphael sat down beside her, his hand on the table near hers.
Maya beside Eve. Already talking. Something that made Eve tip her head back and laugh.
Damon put plates on the table.
Sat down.
Looked at all of them.
His family. Every single one of them.
Assembled around a kitchen table on a Tuesday morning.
He picked up his fork.
"Eat," he said, more like a command which is so like Damon.
****
After lunch he went to find the girl.
He’d been thinking about it for a while now, Since Callum’s face in the inventory room and the one thing Callum had said....he had her name, her teacher’s name, the name of the family she walked home with on Thursdays.
He’d asked for her name that night.
Damian had found it.
Passed it to Damon quietly the next morning without asking what he planned to do with it.
He drove to the village himself.
No pack escort. No announcement.
Just Damon in a car going to the pack school at half past two on a Tuesday because the school let out at three and a little girl named Rosie walked home every Thursday with a family called the Hendrys and he needed to know she was safe with his own eyes.
He parked across the road from the school and waited
At three the doors opened.
Children everywhere. The particular chaos of small people released from containment. Noise and movement and backpacks and parents collecting them.
He watched.
He saw Callum’s daughter immediately.
Dark hair. Eight years old. Backpack with a fox on it. She came out of the doors looking for something.....someone....and then her face lit up when she found what she was looking for, A woman with two other children, waving from the gate. Rosie ran to her.
The Hendrys.
She was fine.
She was completely fine.
Damon sat in the car and watched her take the woman’s hand and fall into step with the other children chattering about something and he felt the relieve rush in almost immediately.
She was fine.
He’d needed to see it.
He drove home back home in silence.
He found Damian in the study.
Sat down across from him.
Damian looked at him.
"She’s fine," Damon said.
Damian held his gaze.
"Good," he said.
"she looked so lively," Damon said. "And she was carrying a fox backpack like the information said."
Damian looked at him for a long moment.
"Damon," he said.
"I know," Damon said. "I just needed to see it."
Damian nodded and went silent.
That was the thing about his brothers. They never needed more words than were actually required.
The evening was quiet.
Properly quiet. That particular atmosphere of a large house that had been running at crisis level for months and had finally overcome it.
They sat in the sitting room after dinner.
All of them.
Eve on the sofa with Silas beside her and her feet across Damon’s lap. Damian was in the chair closest to her with his hand resting near hers on the armrest. Vessa in the corner chair with tea. Raphael and Elena on the other sofa. Maya horizontal on the floor with a book she wasn’t really reading.
Damon looked around the room.
At all of them.
At Eve’s face in the firelight, the pendant visible at her collar, the photograph somewhere against her heart, the look on her face was that of a woman who had come through everything she had come through and was sitting in a room filled with the people she loved
Eve caught his eye across the room.
He raised an eyebrow then smiled, She smiled back.
****
Silas’s POV
He was up before the estate.
That was normal.
Had been normal since before he could remember.
He made coffee.
Stood at the kitchen window.
The grounds in the early grey light. The treeline. The sound of warriors training somewhere on the estate, The ordinary beautiful machinery of a morning.
**
Vessa found him at seven.
She came into the kitchen already dressed. Poured her own tea. Sat across from him at the table.
They looked at each other.
"You’re leaving," he said.
"Today," she said. "Yes."
