Chapter 27

CIARA

The walk back to my cottage is quiet. Red shifts back, we leave the cubs and their mothers with the rest of the Pack, and head on back to mine.

The road is quiet when we reach it and my cottage looks small, smaller than I've ever realized it seemed before. Perhaps that's because as much as it's been my haven, it's also been my cage.

I sense that Red knows this as well. She can't tell how I feel about it and I want to tell her—long to tell her—but I know that whatever I say will change how we are, who we are in this moment.

And I like this moment.

We get through the door, and my eyes are drawn to the bloodstain on my carpet, and I'm assaulted by the memory of Red, bleeding out on the floor. It makes me feel sick, and I march into the kitchen and grab a bucket and cleaning supplies from under the sink.

Red looks on curiously as I fill it with hot soapy water, and then begin to scrub.

"I don't suppose you fancy giving me a hand?" I ask. "It is your blood, after all."

She rolls her eyes, but comes to join me on the carpet.

I hand her a sponge and she looks at it in confusion. "What am I to do with this?" she asks, but she's not foolish, she can see what I'm doing, and when I don't reply, she watches for a moment and then follows suit.

There's something very satisfying about how quickly we clear the area. The blood comes out of the carpet with very little effort, and I scrub it hard enough that I don't think anyone would ever be able to tell that there'd been a bleeding wolf on my living room floor.

"We should eat," I say, standing up and grabbing the bucket. I'm in doing-things mode now, and I realize that as much time as I've spent with Red, before the last few days, it had always been outside of my cottage. She's never seen this manic side to me; the side that gets so bored that I have to do a million and one things at once, just to stay sane.

Red catches my hand and doesn't let go, even when I try to head into the kitchen. "You alright?" I ask, looking back at her casually, and her eyes… she looks so unsure and uncertain, that I put the bucket down and sit back down next to her on the floor. "Hey, what's the matter?"

"I brought danger to your door," she says, and I scoff because it couldn't be further from the truth.

"What are you talking about? You brought nothing to my door; it was my prick of an ex."

"But you've never had blood in your home before."

"That's not true." My words are blunt, but she needs to understand. "He made me bleed. Multiple times. And this time, he shot you. All of this is because of me, and whilst I am so very, very sorry that it happened, I won't let you slip into self-pity like this. No, Red." She looks like she wants to argue, but I bite out. "Are you The Morrígan or not?"

Her eyebrows snap together, and I can see something warring behind her eyes. Badb or Macha or Nemain, perhaps, trying to wrest control from her and put me in my place. I don't look away, don't flinch.

"You" —she says, her voice gruff— "are the most infuriating mortal I have ever met."

"Perhaps, but I bet I'm the best you've ever met. What happened to all that talk about me being perfect?" I tease, and I see the moment the other goddesses retreat, because Red melts and she's my Red again.

"You scare me," she says. "I've never been just Red before."

"Well," I say. "Now you are. I don't care about what happened to Robert—if anything, there is a small part of me that wishes that I'd had the guts to do it myself—but I do care about you."

"You are free now," she says, and the words are tinged with wistfulness. "You can go where you want, be whomever you want."

I look at her, completely bewildered as to how someone with so many centuries can be so slow to grasp intentions. "Red, I told you that this feels like home."

"But that was Pack." She speaks as if Pack is something completely separate to her and my understanding of her. "Pack will be with you wherever you are."

"Perhaps that is true, but that wasn't what I meant. I meant that this… life with you, splashing in the lake with wolf cubs and fucking in the forest, falling asleep on a pile of wolves… This feels like home. For fuck's sake, you feel like home."

Red's mouth drops open and she really didn't know. How could she not know?

"I love you," I say, and the words sound frustrated because of course I love her. How could I not?

"You… me…" It takes a moment to sink in, and then slowly, her face lights up, as if I've changed her entire world. "You love me."

"Yes," I say. "And now would be quite a nice time for you to express how you feel too."

She kisses me, fingers getting entangled in my hair, and we roll onto the floor, our bodies parallel to where she'd lain, a mere twenty-four hours ago. I bite her lip and she growls into my mouth and bites me back.

I'm going to have a litany of marks all over, by the time the day is out, I can tell. But right now, bite marks are not what I need. I need words. "Red?"

"I love you more than I knew it was possible for me to love," she says, and she doesn't stop there. "You are like sunshine and when you are gone it feels as though my entire world is overcast and cloudy. I'd do anything for you, kill anyone for you, and that is not Pack talking, that is me. You are mine, Ciara, as I have asserted over and over these past few days, but what I haven't said is that I am yours. Completely. Utterly."

And the words are all the words I wanted to hear, needed to hear so that I knew that it wasn't just me. But it isn't her words that convince me. It's the kindness in her eyes, kindness from a goddess who's spent her existence on the battlefield or in some kind of conflict. With me, she listens, she lets me stand up for myself, and she loves me the way I've always dreamt of being loved.

Kindly.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "So stay with me, and be my goddess, and I will love you the best way I know how.

"Always," says The Morrígan.

My Red.

The End