“Okay,” I say to my belly. To the flutter. To whatever piece of Garrett and me has taken up residence in my body and is now knocking to let me know it’s there. “Okay. I hear you.”
I stand on the ridge with my hand on my stomach and the morning rising around me, and I think about Forrester packlands. The hills. The cedar. The creek that doesn’t dry up in August. A child running in wolf form through Hill Country scrub, learning to track, learning to hunt, growing up on land that has a history its parents are trying to rewrite.
I think about a man in a barn who saidbecause of you, not because of the baby.And how I believed him. And how the believing didn’t scare me the way it should have.
I walk the rest of the ridge slowly. The flutter doesn’t come again, but I carry the memory of it — warm, protected, the most precious thing I’ve ever held.
I return to the tree where I left my clothes, and I dress, but I don’t leave the ridge.
Willow finds me at the overlook. She sits beside me on the rock, and we look out at the hills.
“He asked me to go to Forrester packlands with him,” I say.
“I know. Conner told me.”
“Of course he did.”
“They’re brothers. They talk now. It’s a whole thing.” She pulls her knees up. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him I’d think about it.”
“And? Have you?”
“It’s all I’ve been thinking about, Willow. I ran the ridge to clear my head, and my wolf decided to stop and listen to the baby instead.”
“Listen to the baby?”
“I felt something. A flutter. And my wolf—” I stop. Start again. “She made a sound I’ve never heard from her. The mother sound. The chuff.”
Willow is quiet for a moment. Her hand finds mine on the rock. “That’s the quickening. The first movement.”
“It’s early.”
“For a human pregnancy. For a bonded wolf carrying an alpha’s child? The timelines are different. The baby is growing fast.” She squeezes my hand. “Briar. What does the flutter tell you?”
“That the baby is real. I know that sounds stupid. I’ve known for weeks. Greta confirmed it. My wolf has been guarding it. But feeling it move… that’s different from knowing. That’s—”
“A person.”
“A person. Inside me. Half his.”
“And you want this person.”
“Yes, I want this person.” My voice catches. “I want this person so much it scares me, Willow. I’ve never wanted anything I couldn’t fight for with my hands or run down with my legs. This is something I have to grow. Something I have to be still for. Something I have to let happen to me instead of making it happen.”
“You hate that.”
“I hate that.”
“And him?”
I look out at the hills. The morning is fully up now. The compound below us is working; Greta’s chimney, Merric on the fence line, the sounds of wolves living their day. Somewheredown there, Garrett is shoveling straw and waiting for me to finish running from him.
“When I was on the ridge,” I say. “When the flutter happened, and my wolf made the mother sound, the first thing I thought… Not the second thing, not the thing I thought after I’d had time to construct a rational response… Thefirstthing I thought was: I want to tell him.”
“So tell him.”
“It’s not that simple.”