Chapter 17 · The Lock

"Hello, baby." The woman in the doorway wore my mother's scar.

It ran from her left cheekbone to her jaw—the same mark I'd traced when I was six and afraid of the dark.

My mother's name was Iris Crowe. She'd been dead for ten years.

The chains burned into my wrists. Runes pulsed across the walls. Every wolf in the chamber knelt beneath them, including Cain. Rex was on one knee, blood running from his mouth. Mara's gun lay three feet from her hand.

Nobody moved.

"Iris," Cain said.

His voice cracked on the name.

The woman stepped inside. Gray sweater. Dust-stained jeans. White threaded through the dark hair I'd inherited. She looked older than the mother in my memories, but the scar was real. So were the lines around her eyes.

She looked at my wrists first. Then at me.

"You're dead," I said. My throat barely worked. "I went to your funeral. I watched them lower your coffin."

"I know."

"You let me grieve you."

Her mouth tightened. "I didn't have a choice."

"You always had a choice!"

The runes flared.