“Why not?”
“Because telling him about the flutter means telling him I want the baby. And telling him I want the baby means admitting I want a future that has him in it. And admitting I want a future means—” I stop. The words are stacking up, each one pushing against the next. “It means I’m choosing this. All of it. Him. The packlands. The history. The work of making something new out of something broken. And I’ve spent my whole life running alone, Willow. My whole life. I don’t know how to stop.”
“You stopped on the ridge this morning.”
“My wolf stopped.”
“Your wolf is you, Briar.”
I look at her. She looks back with the steady patience of a woman who cares about me and won’t let me lie to myself about it.
“I love him,” I say. “I love who he’s becoming. The man who mucks stalls and makes oats and holds a rubber ball like it’s holy. I love that man. And I’m terrified of losing him. And I’m terrified of keeping him. And I’m terrified that if I go to Forrester packlands and build a life with him and raise this baby on that land, I’ll wake up one morning and find out the man I love was just a version he was performing and the corridor was who he really is.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing on this rock?”
The question sits between us. The morning wind moves through the trees below. A hawk circles the far ridge.
“I’m being afraid,” I say. “And I’m almost done.”
She doesn’t push further. We sit for a while. The hawk makes lazy circles. The compound noises drift up. Somewhere down there, a child laughs, the sound carrying the way children’s laughter carries in still air.
Willow stands and brushes off her jeans. “Come find me later if you need me.”
“Willow.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For not giving up on me.”
“I would never.” She touches my shoulder. “You’re the most stubborn wolf I’ve ever met, Briar. But stubborn isn’t the same as lost. You’ve always known where you were going. You just needed time to admit it.”
“I’m glad you see that.”
“You know what else I see?”
“What?”
“You’ve talked more since you met this man than you did in the entire time I knew you before. I think that’s a good thing.”
She walks down the ridge. I watch her go.
The sun climbs. The rock is warm under my hands. I sit with the warmth and the flutter-memory and the knowledge that Willow is right, and my wolf is right, and the baby tapping against my insides is right. The only one who’s been wrong is the woman who spent six weeks pretending she hadn’t fallen in love with a man she was supposed to destroy.
I’m done pretending.
The realization doesn’t arrive with fanfare. No thunderclap. No dramatic shift. Just a settling. Like the flutter in my belly, likethe mother-sound my wolf made on the ridge. A natural thing, arriving in its own time.
I love him. I want the baby. I want the packlands and the hard ground and the man who’ll be standing on it waiting for me. And there’s something else. Something I’ve been carrying alongside the pregnancy, and the love, and the fear. Something unfinished.
The mark on my neck. His teeth. His wolf’s claim, given in a clearing while I screamed.
There’s no mark on him.
The thought arrives, and once it’s there, it takes up all the space. His wolf claimed me. My wolf submitted. The bond runs in one direction: his to mine, the alpha’s bite, the dominant male’s mark. Every wolf who sees my neck knows I belong to someone. But Garrett’s neck is bare. Unmarked. No wolf looking at him would know he’s taken.