Adrian crossed the room in three strides and pulled his brother into a fierce embrace.
“Congratulations.”
“He’s perfect.” Derek gripped him back just as hard. “Ten fingers, ten toes, a full head of dark hair. Julie is… God, Adrian, she was incredible. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying or more beautiful in my entire life.”
“Can we see them?”
Derek nodded, stepping back and wiping his eyes with absolutely no shame. “I want you to meet your nephew.”
The birthing suite smelled of antiseptic and something else—something warm and new and unmistakably alive. Julie lay propped against a mountain of pillows, her hair damp with sweat, her face exhausted but radiant. And in her arms…
His breath caught.
The baby was so small. Impossibly small. A tiny bundle of blankets with a shock of dark hair and miniature fists clenched against his chest. His eyes were closed, his rosebud mouth working in sleep, completely unaware that he’d just been born into one of the most powerful werewolf families on Monster Island.
“Come meet him.” Julie’s voice was hoarse but happy. “He won’t bite. Yet.”
He approached the bed carefully, as if the wrong movement might break something. Harper hung back near the door, her eyes wide.
“Here.” Julie shifted the bundle. “Do you want to hold him?”
“I—” He looked at his hands. Hands that had fought and killed and led a pack through crisis. Hands that seemed far too large and rough for something so fragile. “I don’t know how.”
“Support his head. There you go.” Julie guided the baby into his arms, and suddenly he was holding his nephew.
The world shifted.
The baby weighed almost nothing. His tiny heartbeat fluttered against his chest like a hummingbird’s wings. When his eyes cracked open—blue, the unfocused blue of all newborns—he felt something ancient and powerful stir in his chest.
Pack,his wolf whispered.Family. Protect.
“He’s got your scowl,” Derek said from beside him, and he realized he’d been staring at the baby with an intensity that probably bordered on alarming.
“I don’t scowl.”
“You absolutely scowl. You’re doing it right now.”
“He looks…” He searched for words. “Strong.”
“He is.” Derek’s hand settled on the baby’s head with impossible gentleness. “We’ve been talking about names. Julie and I.”
“Oh?”
“We want to call him Robert.” Derek’s voice grew thick. “After Dad.”
His chest tightened. Their father—strong, steady Robert Moonstone, who had led the pack with wisdom and grace until Vivienne’s poison had slowly destroyed him. The father he’d spent years trying to live up to, the legacy he’d feared he could never match.
“Dad would have loved him,” he managed.
“He would have loved seeing us like this.” Derek met his eyes. “Together. Brothers again. You know, after Vivienne, after everything that happened, I wasn’t sure we’d ever…”
“I know.”
“But you came to my wedding. You accepted Julie. You let Harper into your life.” Derek’s hand found his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, little brother. And I know Dad would be too.”
The words hit harder than he expected. For so long, there had been distance between them—not hostility, exactly, but a careful separation. Derek had left for the city, built his empire, and mated a human. He had stayed in the mountains, held the pack together, nursed his wounds alone.
But now, standing in this room with his brother and his nephew and his mate waiting nervously by the door, he felt the last of that distance dissolve.
