Eleanor's hand stays light on my elbow as she guides me down the corridor toward the kitchen. The noise of the banquet fades behind us—voices, laughter, the clink of glasses—until it's just the two of us and the soft pad of our footsteps on polished wood.
I should be nervous. I should be rehearsing what to say, how to stand, how to prove I'm worthy of the woman walking beside me.
But I'm not.
Because the moment we step into the kitchen, Eleanor releases my elbow and moves straight to the block where the venison roast sits resting under a linen cloth. She lifts the edge, inspects the glaze with the critical eye of someone who has cooked a thousand meals for a pack and knows exactly what she's looking for.
"The third iteration," she says without looking up. "You had trouble transmitting the herb measurements at that range."
I move to the counter and reach for the carving knife. "Four attempts," I admit.
Her mouth curves. "You told me three."
"I didn't send the fourth. It was a mess."
Eleanor glances at me, and there's something warm in her expression. Something that feels like approval earned rather than given. "Honesty," she says quietly. "Good."
She adjusts the herb crust by a fraction—rosemary, thyme, a hint of cedar that I added on instinct during the final exchange because it reminded me of Victor's scent. The kitchen smells like him. Like smoky pine and something earthy and grounding. I realize, with a small jolt, that I've been cooking for him in my head for months without ever naming it.
I start slicing the roast. The blade moves cleanly through the meat, and the glaze holds exactly the way the recipe promised it would. Eleanor watches my hands, not my face, and I understand that this is the real assessment. Not my words. My competence.
"You coordinated the mind-link range tests without telling him," Eleanor says.
It's not a question.
"I wanted it to be a surprise," I say.
"It will be." She pauses, then adds, "He doesn't know I kept the journal."
I glance up sharply.
Eleanor's gaze is steady. Knowing. "He wrote it when he was fifteen. The night he first caught your scent. I found it on his desk a week later and asked if I could keep it. He said yes, but I don't think he expected me to remember."
My throat tightens. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because tonight is going to be harder than you think," Eleanor says simply. "And when it gets hard, you'll need to know that this bond didn't start when you walked back into his life. It started over a decade ago. The Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes, Colette. She just waits for us to catch up."
I set the knife down carefully. My hands are steady, but something in my chest feels unsteady. Fragile.
Eleanor reaches over and adjusts one of the slices on the platter. "He's been waiting a long time," she murmurs. "Don't make him wait through dessert."
I laugh before I can stop myself. It comes out shaky, but real.
Eleanor smiles.
---
When we carry the roast back into the great room, the table goes quiet.
Not tense. Just… attentive. The kind of silence that happens when a pack recognizes something significant is about to unfold.
I set the platter in front of Victor. Eleanor takes her seat beside him, her expression serene.
Victor looks at the roast. Then at me. Then at his mother.
His brows draw together slightly—confused, like he's trying to solve a puzzle he didn't know existed.
Eleanor offers him a single, innocent shrug.
I keep my chin level, but I can feel the heat climbing up my neck.
Victor picks up his fork and knife. Cuts a piece. The glaze catches the candlelight, dark and glossy, and the scent of cedar and rosemary fills the air between us.
He takes a bite.
I watch his face.
Recognition hits first—his eyes widen slightly, just a fraction. Then confusion, because this is *his* roast, the one his mother makes for him on his birthday and after hard pack decisions, the one he's eaten a hundred times but never expected to taste here, tonight, made by someone else.
Then something else.
Something private and unguarded that he doesn't try to hide.
He looks at Eleanor. She raises one eyebrow, her mouth curved in a way that says *I told you she was worth keeping*.
Then he looks at me.
His voice, when he speaks, is quiet. Rough around the edges. "How long?"
"Three weeks," I admit. "Five failed transmissions. One very patient former Luna."
The table murmurs—soft, approving, the kind of sound a pack makes when they've just witnessed something that matters. Not the roast itself. The conspiracy behind it. The weeks of coordination, the mind-link exchanges at the outer edge of comfortable range, the care threaded through every measurement.
Lena Park, seated halfway down the table with her mate's arm draped casually over her shoulders, grins at me. "You've been holding out on us, Colette."
"I had help," I say, glancing at Eleanor.
Eleanor's expression doesn't change, but there's satisfaction in the stillness of it. The kind that says she's been waiting for this moment longer than I realized.
Victor sets his fork down slowly. His hand finds mine under the table—warm, steady, his thumb brushing over my knuckles in a rhythm that feels like a heartbeat.
"Thank you," he says quietly.
It's not just for the roast.
I know that.
Lune knows that.
Across the table, at the courtesy end, Duke's jaw is locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. His glass sits untouched in front of him. His gaze moves from Victor's hand over mine to the platter, to Eleanor's satisfied expression, to the pack murmuring their approval.
He doesn't know what my cooking tastes like.
He never once asked.
And now he's sitting at the far end of the table, watching another Alpha savor something Duke didn't even know to want.