Outside the cockpit door, Daisy was interrogating Keane like a she-wolf on a mission, and Keane — my mate's Beta, my ex-husband's best friend, a man physically incapable of keeping a secret when a pretty Omega blinks at him — was folding like wet cardboard.
"Nothing strange," Keane was saying, arms crossed, smile suspicious. "They're just... former colleagues."
"Keane."
"Former colleagues who were married," he conceded.
"Married?"
"Formerly."
I let them have their little drama. I was busy re-bandaging my arm in the galley and pretending my palm wasn't still burning from where the bond had yanked on it mid-turbulence, like a hook set in my sternum.
Daisy materialized at my elbow, eyes enormous. "Luna-ji. You were MARRIED? To CAPTAIN IRONCLAW? The Alpha? That Alpha?"
"Formerly," I said, and smiled the smile I keep for passengers who complain about the weather. "Ancient history."
"Ancient—" She grabbed my arm, then hissed at the bandage and gentled instantly, which is Daisy all over: a hurricane that turns to cotton around anyone she loves. "You flinch when he boards. You color-check his roster. And today I watched that man look at you like you were the last full moon on earth."
"Daisy—"
"I'm just saying. That's not ancient history. That's a saga on pause."
Silverwing 07 back to New York landed at six p.m., and seventy-two hours of leave opened up in front of us like a road. I was first down the jet bridge, scanning arrivals for one face specifically —
And there she was.
My mother stood by the barrier with her arms full of a squirming, giggling, three-year-old comet in a yellow sundress. The moment Charlotte spotted me, she wriggled down, and came pelting across the terminal on those sweet unsteady toddler legs, yellow dress flying, one stubborn curl bouncing.
"MOMMY!"
The terminal might as well have emptied. My whole world reduced to forty pounds of moonlight crashing into my arms.
"Hi, baby." I scooped her up and kissed the soft, round cheek. "Did you miss me?"
"SO much." She kissed me back with an audible smooch, then spotted the bandage and gasped like I'd lost a limb. "Mommy, your hand is hurt! Blow-blow!" She seized it in both chubby hands and blew with tremendous seriousness, brow furrowed, until the imaginary ouchie was officially managed.
"That's my girl. All better."
Daisy had gone statue-still beside us. Her eyes traveled from Charlotte's face — to mine — and the math finished itself behind her lashes. "Luna-ji. This is... your daughter?"
"Charlotte," I said. "My daughter."
Charlotte, being Charlotte, immediately spun in my arms, beamed at the new person, and melted her completely with a dimpled "Hewwo, Daisy-Auntie!"
Daisy made a sound like a kettle dying. "She's PERFECT. You hid a PERFECT CHILD from me for—"
It was at that exact moment that my daughter's whole face changed.
She'd gone very still, the way she does when she's working something out — and then her little hand rose, one tiny finger aimed past my shoulder like a compass finding north.
"Papa!" she announced, delighted. "That's Papa! Papa, we're HERE!"
Time did that thing where it stops pretending to move.
I turned.
Victor stood fifteen feet away, frozen mid-stride, staring at my daughter as if the ground had opened and shown him the future. And I watched — helpless, in slow motion — as three years of dead-scent discipline shattered in his nostrils.
Because there was no hiding it anymore. Not from him.
A pup's scent is half its mother's and half its father's. And Charlotte's scent, floating across that terminal, was cedar and storm and midnight —
His.
He crossed the distance like weather. Daisy and Keane scrambled after him. I shoved Charlotte's face into my shoulder, spun, and ran — which, in hindsight, in front of half the crew, was neither dignified nor effective.
"MOMMY, THE PAPA UNCLE IS CHASING US!" Charlotte reported, thrilled, over my shoulder.
Baby. Baby, we talked about the Papa Uncle—
By the time I got her strapped into my mother's back seat and turned around, he was there. He put one hand on the car door — gently, always gently with her — and looked through the window at the little girl buckled inside.
Charlotte looked back. Tilted her head. And waved.
His whole body locked. I watched his pupils blow wide, watched the Ironclaw mask shatter down to the bare man, watched his lips shape the word mine without any sound at all.
"Victor—" I started.
"How old." His voice was wrecked. Quiet as a confession. "How old is she?"
The truth was a bomb with a three-year fuse, and it was sitting in my back seat, waving.
"Three," I said.
His eyes closed. When they opened, they were wet, and burning, and full of arithmetic.
"Three," he repeated. "Luna. She was born the year you left me."
I said nothing. My silence said everything.
And somewhere behind us, Daisy whispered to Keane, in the loudest whisper in the state of New York:
"Formerly married to WHOSE baby?"