Page 8 of Finlay

The fifth of September rolled around, the same as it did every year.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. I knew how time worked. But there was no denying that I wished it wouldn’t happen. Wished we could skip straight from the fourth to the sixth, without having to pause in the middle.

Maybe then I could make it through without breaking.

The pain wasn’t a surprise. It had lessened, like a wound that had scabbed over, but it would never fully heal.

Grief didn’t work that way.

Over fifteen decades later, the loss could still sucker punch me out of nowhere. I’d be going about my day, and something seemingly innocuous would catch me off guard. Sometimes it was a thistle, or perhaps a piece of yellow fabric, blowing on a washing line. Neither seemed interesting, but I’d be hit with the memory of how Sarah had loved thistles,or the faded comfort blanket Maria had toted everywhere with her, clutched in a chubby fist.

Grief never left you. It was a band around your chest that could never be removed. But with each passing decade,it lessened, allowing you to take a slightly deeper breath. To think that maybe, someday, the air might fully inflate your lungs again.

That maybe you could find happiness.

“Finn?” Calan’s deep voice rang out a beat before he rapped his knuckles on the door. Why he bothered with both was beyond me. “Ye in there?”

“Yep.” I piled up the last of the paperwork, pinching the bridge of my nose. Honestly, where else would I be? It wasn’t like I had any semblance of a life outside of the clan borders. “Come in.”

Calan’s usual scowl pulled deeper as he stalked into my office, taking in my slumped position behind my desk. “How long have ye been in here today?”

“Not long,” I lied.

“Since four thirty a.m.,” Logan announced brightly, appearing in the doorway. Unlike Calan, he didn’t bother to wait for an invitation, bouncing inside and plopping himself into a chair. In his hands, he held an oversized cup of bubble tea. It was bright pink and filled with neon tapioca balls. If Logan weren’t immortal, I would’ve questioned the sanity of consuming it. “So, sixteen hours, give or take a few minutes.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I muttered, trying to get ahead of Calan’s ire.

I wasn’t fast enough. “So then ye shift. Go for a run. Wake one of us up to spar for a few rounds. Fuck, even making a pack breakfast would be better than drowning yourself in paperwork.”

“Calan’s right,” Evan said, sliding into the room and leaning against the wall. A newer member of the inner circle, he’d nonetheless slipped comfortably into his role of giving me a hard time. A littletoocomfortably, if I werebeing honest. His sharp blue eyes missed nothing. “You work too much.”

“Fantastic, the whole gang is here,” I said drily. “You lot are worse than a pack of mother hens.”

“Do hens move in packs?” Logan asked, his thumb flying over his phone. “Nah, it’s a flock. I knew it didn’t sound right.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Is there a reason you’re all here? Or do ye just want to give me shit?”

“We’re worried about ye,” Calan said, cutting straight to the point as always. “You’re shutting yourself away in here too much. It’s not healthy.”

“A clan doesn’t run itself.”

“But you weren’t like this before Danny returned,” Logan said, noisily sipping his drink again. “I mean, you were still a workaholic, but you’ve definitely got worse.”

I sighed internally, wishing I could disagree. “I know.”

A year ago, the unthinkable had happened. Danny had taken a mate and been forced to return. I’d relinquished control to him as agreed. Not that he’d wanted it. He’d built a new life for himself down in Southampton, hundreds of miles from here.

He’d moved on. I wished I knew how to.

Danny’s tenure here hadn’t lasted long. Turned out there were enough traitors in the council who still wanted him gone.

And me too.

Apparently, my rule hadn’t gone as well as they’d hoped. In translation, I had more of a fucking backbone than they’d been expecting. They couldn’t manipulate me like they’d thought they’d be able to. So, they’d plotted to take out myself, Danny, and his human mate, Riley, in one fell swoop. Logan too.

Unfortunately for them, it hadn’t worked out that way. Thanks to my brother’s stubbornness, Logan’s cunning, and mine and Danny’s strength, they hadn’t succeeded. Even Riley had fought, not letting the fact that he was a human facing off against fully grown shifters stop him.

It was amazing what you could do when defending those you loved.

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