“Days. A week at most.”
I couldn’t shake the worry. I kept seeing it, Finneas in wolf form, teeth tearing into his shoulder, his side. The coffee Finneas put in front of me was going cold and I couldn’t drink it because my stomach was in knots.
“What do you need from me?” I asked.
He looked at me. Something in his face shifted. Recognition.
“I need you there. At the challenge. With Luca, somewhere safe, but visible. I need the pack to see you.”
“Then I’ll be there. I’m not hiding in this house while you fight for us.”
He reached across the table and took my hand. I let him. His thumb ran across my knuckles and neither of us said anything for a minute, just sat in the kitchen with cold coffee and a countdown ticking in the background.
The rest of the day was an exercise in pretending I was fine. I went to the animal wing because the animals didn’t know about pack challenges and didn’t care and that was exactly the energy I needed. Buddy followed me from room to room, pressing against my legs, and I sat on the floor with him even though getting down there at thirty-four weeks was a production and getting back up would require divine intervention.
I scratched behind his ears. “Your dad is going to be fine,” I told him. Buddy looked at me with big brown eyes that said nothing and everything. “He’s the strongest Alpha in the pack. Luca said so. By a wide margin.”
Buddy put his chin on my knee.
“A wide margin, Buddy. That’s a lot of margin.”
I was trying to convince myself and the dog knew it.
I called Grandma in the afternoon because I needed to hear her voice. I didn’t tell her about the challenge because she’d drive down here with a shotgun and try to shoot a wolf, which wouldn’t help anyone. We talked about the baby instead. She’d been knitting a blanket, yellow because she agreed with me about the blue-pink thing, and she wanted to know if I’d packed my hospital bag yet.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Andrea Marie Grey. You are thirty-four weeks pregnant. Pack the bag.”
“I will.”
“Tonight.”
“Okay, Grandma.”
“And put comfortable socks in it. Your feet are going to be cold. Trust me.”
I laughed and it came out watery but she didn’t comment on it because Grandma knew when to push and when to leave it alone. We said goodbye. I sat in the reading nook with the phone in my lap, Buddy at my feet, the worry lodged in my chest like a stone I couldn’t cough up.
The whole day felt wrong. The house was the same, the animals were the same, the light through the windows was the same. But everything had a thin layer of dread over it, like looking at the world through dirty glass. I’d catch myself staring at nothing, replaying the conversation in the kitchen, hearing Luca saydesperate wolves are unpredictableon a loop in my head.I’d picture Finneas in wolf form, massive, black, and then I’d picture another wolf lunging at his throat and my whole body would go cold.
Finneas spent the day on the phone with Luca. I could hear him in the study, voice low, strategic, the King voice that meant he was planning. I wanted to go in there and listen but I also didn’t because every detail I learned was another image I’d have to carry.
He came to find me in the animal wing around four. Stood in the doorway watching me read to Buddy, which I’d been doing for an hour because I needed something normal to do with my hands and my voice. He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me like I was the most important thing in any room he’d ever walked into.
“Stop looking at me like you’re memorizing my face,” I said. “You’re coming back. You promised.”
“I wasn’t memorizing. I was appreciating.”
“Appreciate quieter. You’re interrupting chapter twelve.”
He almost smiled. Almost.
That night I went to the nursery because it was the quietest room in the estate and the quiet was the only thing holding me together.
I sat in the rocking chair Grandma shipped from Whitebrook. It arrived last week with a note in her handwriting:Your mother rocked you in this chair. Now you rock your son in it.I’d cried for twenty minutes when I opened the box, pressing my faceagainst the worn wood that still smelled faintly of Grandma’s house.
I rocked slowly now, a tiny yellow onesie in my hands, folding it and refolding it because the repetition kept my fingers from shaking. The nursery was dim, the yellow walls soft in the lamplight, the crib ready, the stuffed wolf from Luca on the dresser.
