Tak approached first and kissed my cheek. Still hovering, he said, “Don’t ever scare me like that again.” He tilted his head and smiled. “So you’re the one we’ve been waiting for. Come see your alpha.”
“It’s a girl,” I informed everyone. “And… I don’t have two wolves anymore.”
Holding the baby against his chest, Tak snapped his head in my direction. “Say that again?”
“My wolves split apart during the delivery. One of them is inside her.”
“So she has two?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. At least I don’t think so. My wolf wouldn’t have left me if she had one of her own. I think the experiments made her that way, and one of my wolves decided to guard her. That’s why my heart stopped. It happened the moment I felt my wolf leave me. Maybe I wasn’t meant to die; it was just a side effect of her detaching from my soul.”
When he patted her back, she burped loudly, making a few packmates chuckle. “Special indeed. The spirits were watching over you. They know.” He gently placed her back in my arms before shifting. Tak’s large black wolf sniffed the baby, then raised his head and howled. Catcher joined him in a harmonious chorus of celebration.
I gasped when the baby trembled. Her body shook as if she were having a seizure.
In a blink, she shifted into a little wolf. After stepping out of her diaper, she stumbled across the bed with her knit wolf hat covering her face.
Mercy cupped her cheeks. “Holy mackerel! I see it, but I don’t believe it.”
“Look at that pretty white fur,” Lakota remarked.
Archer gingerly removed the hat from her head before tossing it on the bed. “Her left ear is black.”
My baby yipped at him, and I was happy to see everyone’s pleased reactions. No one looked at her like she was a monster. All I saw were smiles. Instead of a newborn wolf, she looked about a month old already. When I gazed into her eyes, it was like seeing an old friend.
“Hi, Gypsy.”
She howled along with the alpha.
“She’s adorable!” Cecilia exclaimed.
Atticus sat to my left again. While the pack admired the pup, who faltered on unsteady legs, he leaned in close. “And you were worried your family wouldn’t accept her. See how much love you bring to this world? Your daughter is an extension of that love.”
“Ourdaughter.” I leaned against him and kissed his ear. “Our daughter.”
“Careful,” Milly warned while entering the room. “She’s not a pet. If you pick her up, hold her securely in case she shifts again. A baby doesn’t have control over her animal.”
When my daughter’s wolf wagged her tail, it made me giggle. “Why is she much bigger than when she was inside me?”
Milly checked my blood pressure again. “The gestation period for wolves is shorter. Shifting inside of you might have sped things up.”
“Will her wolf always be that size?”
After a minute staring at the blood pressure machine, she removed the cuff. “I doubt she’ll mature until your child does. I’ve seen a few Shifters who went through their first change at thirteen, and because of it, their wolves weren’t fully grown. Their growth rate slowed down to match the child’s.”
When Archer tried to snatch the hat, the pup barked at him and bit down on it with her little teeth. She was going to be fierce one day.
The little wolf flipped onto her side and then shifted back to human form.
“Holy shit! Look at that,” Archer exclaimed. “Her belly button healed.”
Hope gave him an admonishing look. “No cursing around the baby.”
Virgil put his arm around Krys. “If that’s the case, I guess you’ll be living outside from now on.”
Everyone leaned in to get a closer look at the newborn. The baby wailed, and I wondered if she was tickled by a food craving she wouldn’t be able to satisfy for a few years.
While Hope put the diaper and clothes back on my little one, everyone introduced themselves to the new packmate. Once she was swaddled up with her hat warming her head, the baby finally settled down. She didn’t understand all the noise and different people.
