The study door was open an inch. Light came out under it like a thin line of gold.
Ewan: Nessa. I can hear you breathing out there. Come in.
He sat behind a desk stacked with river maps. His Alpha coat hung on the chair like it weighed too much.
Ewan: You should be resting. You took a bad knock down at the dock.
Ewan: Hear me first. I can send you upriver to my cousin's place.
Ewan: You'd be safe there. Nobody would know your name.
Hide me. Like a wrong number in somebody's ledger.
Ewan: Don't put it that way.
Two years I was gone. You wrote me four letters.
Not one of them said come home.
Dax called me a wolf-less bitch in front of two hundred people.
And you said fuck all. You sat up there in your coat and let it happen.
Ewan: You think I don't hear that in my sleep?
Ewan: And now you want me to seat you beside me, so the old guard can take you apart in public.
Ewan: You couldn't hold this river one winter.
Ewan: You couldn't even hold your wolf.
That stung worse than Dax's hand ever did.
It stung because it came from the one man I wanted to believe in me.
Ewan: That was ugly. I'm sorry.
No. It came out straight. That's why it cut.
Ewan: I lost your mother to this river. Then I nearly lost you to Teller's son.
Ewan: I'm scared, Nessa. Every day. Fear made me small.
I see how tired you are. I do.
But I am not a thing you keep safe in a drawer.
I don't want to be only your daughter tonight.
I want to be someone you could see running this pack.
Ewan: If I back you and you lose, they'll say I broke the seat for my own blood.
And if you don't, they'll say I was never worth one word from you.
He went quiet for a long time. The lamp hummed. The river knocked at the pilings below us.
Ewan: I did not stand up for you two years ago. That was my failure, not yours.
Ewan: Sit down. Tell me what you'd do with the docks and the ferries.
Ewan: I'm listening. I make no promises past that.
It was not yes. It was not no. It was the first time he had ever asked me to make my case to him.
Ewan: Slow is how I decide things. Don't take slow for a no.
Slow was all he had ever given me. This time I needed more than slow.
So I opened my mouth and gave him every reason I had.
His fear was still a wall. But for the first time, I could see a door in it.