He Signed My Freedom Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 55
Those sounds slowly faded into the distance.
Later, Clara told me Highridge was not doing well.
I took no pleasure in hearing it, nor did I ask for details. Tidewatch and Highridge had already finalized the formal allocation of responsibility for the children: I would provide the educational share due from my maternal assets on schedule, while Lucian would bear the responsibility for their daily care and medical decisions. Any visitation would have to be initiated by me, not sprung on me by him arriving with the children.
I fulfilled the part that was mine.
But I no longer treated motherhood as something that required me to go back.
This was the only institutional link I kept to the past. It was clear, limited, and would never suddenly become “for the children’s sake, you should forgive us” in the middle of the night.
Lucian remained occupied with territorial affairs. Noah and Iris entered the boarding division of the pack academy. They were no longer willful, but they never regained the happiness they once had.
They tried to enter Tidewatch again and were denied by the Registry every time.
I still dreamed of the past now and then.
I dreamed of Noah clutching my hand the first time he had a fever. I dreamed of Iris smiling when she first learned to say “Mom.”
When I woke, Elias would sense my quickened heartbeat and draw me into his arms, but he never asked if I regretted choosing him.
Only once did he ask softly, “Do you regret leaving Highridge?”
I looked out into the yard.
Chloe was crouched by the flowers, trying to build a little nest for two stray kittens we had just rescued. Tidewatch’s sea wind moved beneath the eaves of the bookstore. The new pack’s mindlink flowed quietly around us. Ember was awake and whole inside me.
“No,” I said. “This life is the one I chose for myself.”
Chloe came running over with both kittens in her arms.
“Mom, can we keep them?”
“Of course.”
I brushed a blade of grass from her face.
“This is our home. You get a say, too.”
Sunlight filtered through the leaves and fell across the three of us.
The shadows of the old days still existed, but they could no longer choose my direction for me.
Once, I had thought that after leaving Lucian, all that would remain of my life would be a blank space.
Later, I understood that the blankness wasn’t the end.
It was the place where I could finally write a new life with my own hands.