Seven weeks. Alex was seven weeks away. I was supposed to be thinking about birth plans and hospital bags and whether we had enough diapers. Instead I was sitting in my mother’s rocking chair trying not to think about what a wolf’s teeth could do to the man sleeping down the hall.
Finneas appeared in the doorway. He watched me for a minute, the folding, the rocking, the way I wasn’t looking at him because if I looked at him I’d start crying and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry about this.
“I can’t stop thinking that you’re going to get hurt,” I told the onesie in my hands. “Really hurt.”
He came in, crouched in front of the chair, and took my face in both hands. His palms were warm. His amber eyes were close.
“I’m not going to get hurt.”
“You said challenges aren’t clean.”
“Cuts and bites. Nothing serious. I won’t let it.”
“And if it is serious? What happens to me and Alex?”
“Luca knows. If anything goes wrong, he gets you both out. Takes you to Whitebrook, to your grandmother.”
“Stop.” My voice cracked. “I don’t want a backup plan. I want you to come home in one piece.”
“I’m going to come home.”
“Promise me.”
“Andrea...”
“Finneas. Promise me.”
He looked at me. His hands on my face, his thumbs on my cheekbones, his eyes sure in the low light.
“I promise.”
I put my hand over his. Held it against my cheek. Alex kicked hard, pressing into my ribs like he was trying to make space for himself, and I took a breath that filled me all the way down.
“Okay,” I said.
He kissed my forehead before he left.
I sat in the rocking chair with the onesie in my lap, listening to his footsteps fade. The nursery was quiet. The yellow walls were soft. My son was kicking under my hand, alive, present, five weeks from being here.
“Your dad’s got this,” I whispered. “He will be safe.”
44
— • —
Finneas
The challenge grounds were on the eastern edge of the estate, a natural clearing ringed by old growth oaks where pack disputes had been settled for longer than the Kingsley name existed. My father fought his first challenge here when he was twenty-six. His father before him. The ground was packed earth, worn smooth by generations of wolves. It smelled like pine sap and adrenaline and history.
By the time I arrived the clearing was full. Hundreds of wolves, shifted and human, filling the treeline, the open ground, the rising slope at the north end. The tension was a physical thing, a hum in the air that pressed against my skin like static before a storm.
Luca was beside me, running through security one final time. “Patrol on north and south entrances. Six guards on theperimeter. I’ve got eyes on Conrad and Regina in the crowd, east side, near the staging area.”
“George?”
“Far side. Staging area. Conrad was with him ten minutes ago.”
“And Lorraine?”
