Storm helped her settle Red Wolf on the couch, looked at her with all the intense affection in his gaze as if she had really been his sister, then left with Maker. Whisper settled down in a chair Harry had put by the couch and traced one hand over his cheek.

"Your husband?" he asked in that soft, rough voice of his.

She turned, keeping contact with Wolf, but accepting the cup of hot spice tea he handed her. Her ability to speak openly was rusty at best. "Common law," she finally managed. If the administration had ever found out, both of them would have been dead. Her eyes flicked up to meet her father's gaze.

He sat down beside the fire in a shabby, but comfortable old chair. "You could have come sooner," he said quietly, pained.

Her mother had been a negligent alcoholic, but somehow she had managed to get custody and take away his right to see her when the two divorced. But she was too negligent. Nobody had even known when one day, her daughter Sierra Lewis simply disappeared.

Whisper knew because she had been that daughter. She shook her head sadly and answered, "I couldn't." She sipped her tea and turned back to Wolf. "I wish I could have," she murmured, low enough that she didn't know if her father would hear.

She was here now. Wolf was alive. For a brief moment, that was all that mattered.

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