Chapter 25. The Road to Tarrow

Ronan's POV

It's a long day's drive from the Thornfall outpost to Tarrow Hall on mountain and back roads, if the weather holds and nobody's shoulder is held together with fishing line. We took two trucks and split it, with a night at the pack's hunting cabin halfway.

The weather held.

We were six. Me, Garrick, Brenna, Maren. Edda, who had never ridden in a truck for more than an hour in her life and told me so every hour. June.

And Osric's daughter's boots, which June took off that night at the cabin and lined up neatly beside her bedroll, toes pointed at the fire, like a soldier's.

I noticed that. I noticed everything she did. I'd stopped pretending I didn't.

She'd taken my hand.

I kept coming back to it, the way your tongue keeps going back to a chipped tooth. On the tower, with Osric singing off-key below and the stars coming out over the Reach. She'd told me she was still