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“Sexting?” Lucien repeated.

“Sending each other dirty messages. Like... I could send you a picture of myself naked in our nest and tell you that's what's waiting for you at home.”

Lucien’s cup slipped from his hand and shattered against the stone table.

I smiled at them over the rim of my cup.

God, I loved them.

Chapter 26

Lady Elowen

Haven House expected every woman, Beta or Omega, to help with the chores, no matter how poorly she managed them. I wasn’t making mistakes deliberately. I simply hadn’t spent years learning how to run a household the way most of these women clearly had.

“That piece will still be raw when the others have turned to mush.”

I examined the carrot beneath my knife. “You might have told me what size you wanted.”

“I showed you.”

“Your hands moved rather quickly.”

Tessa placed one of her pieces beside mine. I cut mine to match it, and she returned to her board without another word. There were women and children to feed. My dignity could survive until luncheon.

When two women found me after the airship crash, I had been sitting beneath a tree with bleeding feet and no idea how I was going to make myself stand again. They brought me here. I remembered very little of the journey, but I remembered Mistress Kennett showing me the lock on my bedroom door and placing the key in my hand.

The refuge sheltered Beta women, some with children, whose families or former Packs could not safely be told where they were. I was the only Omega.

During those first few days, the women silently watched me across the breakfast table. Now they passed me the preserves and reminded me when it was my turn to wash the dishes.

Tessa had taught me most of what I knew about helping around the house. Mistress Kennett had also discovered that I could reconcile an inventory without assistance, so she entrusted me with the storeroom records instead. I was beginning to recognise which children belonged to which mothers, who needed help on the stairs and which bedroom doors required a knock and an answer before I entered.

“Elowen.”

Tessa touched the back of my hand. I had stopped cutting, and the knife was resting against my finger.

“My apologies.”

“Leave that one. We have enough.”

She gathered the carrots into a bowl and turned her attention elsewhere, giving me a little time to collect myself without making anything of it.

My thoughts had gone back to Mireya again.

“The security officer will be here tomorrow,” Tessa said. “Perhaps he will have news.”

“Perhaps he will permit me to try again.”

The refuge’s security officer brought the equipment for supervised calls once each week. We used names agreed beforehand and gave no information about our location. He had ended all three of my attempts to contact my fathers after strangers answered, and following the third, he refused to allow another call to either address until he could establish who was receiving them.

Mistress Kennett had offered to make enquiries through an independent intermediary, but I begged her not to contact anyone outside the refuge until I could speak to Father myself.

“You could allow Mistress Kennett to help you,” Tessa said.

“And if her enquiries reach the woman who held me?”

“She would be careful.”