The Wolf Queen & The Alpha Brat

( Rhydian)

Senna kept us in the infirmary for two days.

That was the right call and I knew it was the right call and I also spent most of those two days standing near the door calculating how long it would take to carry Elena and Luna to the room I actually knew how to be in.

The infirmary was Senna’s space. Everything in it was Senna’s — the positioning, the timing, the specific decisions about when Luna ate and when Elena rested and what order things happened in. I had no authority there. I had no protocol.

I had a chair.

I sat in the chair and I watched and I helped when I was told to help and I tried to be the thing that was useful rather than the thing that was in the way, which was a distinction that kept shifting and which Senna was patient about, mostly.

On the second morning she found me at the infirmary window at four in the morning and she stood beside me for a moment.

"You should sleep," she said.

"I know," I said.

"When did you last sleep."

"Some of it," I said.

"Some of it," she repeated.

"Two, three hours," I said. "Luna woke up twice."

"I heard her," Senna said. "And then I heard you before I heard her."

I didn’t say anything.

"You’re anticipating," Senna said.

"I’m—"

"You’re waking up before she makes a sound because you’re listening for her even while you’re asleep," she said. "That’s anticipating. It’s also going to exhaust you within a week."

"I’ll figure out the rhythm," I said.

"You will," she said. "But you have to sleep some portion of the night to have a rhythm to work with."

I looked at the window.

"Senna," I said.

"What."

"What if I do something wrong," I said.

She was quiet.

I kept looking at the window.

"She’s so small," I said. "I keep—" I stopped. "When I pick her up I can feel how small. The weight of her. And I know I’m doing it right, you showed me, Elena showed me, but my hands know how to do other things." I paused. "Climbing. Fighting. The specific grip that stops someone from—" I stopped again. "I keep having to think about what my hands are doing. I can’t make it automatic. And every time I think about it I think about getting it wrong and—"

"Rhydian," Senna said.

I looked at her.

"You’ve been picking her up correctly every time," she said. "I’ve watched every one. You’re not getting it wrong."

"But if I—"

"You’re not going to," she said. "The thinking is what’s keeping it right. When it becomes automatic, that’s when you stop worrying about it." She looked at me. "The fact that you’re this careful is the answer to your question about what if you do something wrong."

I looked at the window.

"Go sleep," she said. "In the chair. In the bed. On the floor if that’s where you land. But sleep."

I went back to the chair.

---

We came home on the third morning.

Senna cleared us with the specific conditions she delivered to everyone — what to watch for, when to come back, the list of things that meant come immediately rather than come in the morning. She gave the list to both of us. She made us repeat the most important parts back to her, which Elena did with the patience of someone who understood this was the last thing she had to do in the infirmary and was therefore prepared to do it with grace.

I carried Luna.

Elena could walk, which she had been demonstrating for two days with the particular determination of someone who had been told to rest and had agreed to rest and had also been walking to the window every few hours because the rest was making her restless.

She walked beside me.

We went through the settlement at mid-morning.

I hadn’t thought about what that would be like. The Pack going about its day, and us walking through the middle of it. The first wolf who saw us stopped. Then the wolf beside her. Then Corvin appeared from somewhere and his face did something large and quickly managed.

"Luna," Elena said to no one in particular, like she was just answering a question that hadn’t been asked.

The name spread.

I didn’t hear most of it. I was focused on my hands, on the specific careful carrying, on the fact that the path between the infirmary and our room had no obstacles I couldn’t anticipate.

But I heard the sound start somewhere behind us.

Low. Moving through the morning. The Pack sound, the old sound, the one that had happened in the yard after Elena’s barracks speech and at the co-Alpha ceremony and the day the trials ended.

This time it was quieter.

Not the full-throat version, not the ceremony version. Something under the breath. Like they were being careful of the new thing in the air, the specific smallness of what I was carrying, the eight weeks of early arrival.

Like they were saying *welcome* without saying it at a volume that would startle her.

Luna’s eyes opened.

She looked at the sky, which was grey and cold and probably not what she was seeing so much as the light of it, the difference between inside and outside.

She made the sound. The small wondering one.

"I know," I said to her. "A lot to take in."

We got to the room.

---

Elena sat on the bed.

She didn’t argue about sitting on the bed, which meant the walk had cost her something she wasn’t going to say out loud. I noticed and said nothing and made a note to tell Senna when she came tomorrow.

I stood in the middle of the room with Luna.

The crib was there. Against the far wall where I’d put it six weeks ago. The cedar smell was still in it, fainter now but there. The wolf toy sitting at one end.

I looked at the crib.

Then at Luna.

Then at my hands.

"You can put her down," Elena said.

"I know," I said.

"Rhydian."

"I know," I said again.

I kept standing there.

Elena watched me from the bed. She didn’t push. She knew the thing I was working through — she’d watched me work through things enough times to know the shape of it.

"What is it," she said.

"I don’t want to put her down," I said.

Silence.

"That’s not the same as being afraid of breaking her," I said. "I know that’s what it looked like in the infirmary. But this is—" I looked at Luna, who was still looking at the ceiling with the focused attention of someone working very hard on the concept of ceiling. "If I put her in the crib I’ll have to not be holding her. And I’ve been holding her for three days and—"

I stopped.

"It’s too short," I said. "Three days is too short."

Elena was quiet.

"That’s going to be the whole thing," I said. "Isn’t it. She’s going to keep getting older and there’s going to be a last time I carry her like this and I won’t know it’s the last time and then it’ll be over."

"Rhydian," Elena said.

"I know," I said. "I know it’s—"

"Come here," she said.

I crossed to the bed. I sat beside her, Luna still in my arms, and Elena shifted to make room, and we sat together against the headboard with Luna between us in the specific configuration we’d found in the infirmary that worked for all three.

Elena looked at me.

"Every day with her is a first time," she said. "Not just a last time. Both things." She put her hand on the blanket at Luna’s edge. "First time she sees snow. First time she walks that path through the settlement. First time she hears the Pack sound and understands it." She paused. "You’re going to be there for all of them."

I looked at Luna.

"What if I miss something," I said.

"You’ll miss things," Elena said. "That’s not failure. That’s just — there’s a lot of it. You’ll miss some."

"I don’t want to."

"Nobody does," she said.

I held Luna.

She made the sound.

"She’s going to tell you when she needs you," Elena said. "She’s already loud about it. You’ve noticed."

"I’ve noticed," I said.

"So you won’t miss the important things," she said. "She won’t let you."

I looked at the wolf toy in the crib. The small dark rocking wolf with the legs that weren’t perfectly even and the ears I hadn’t known I was making and the tail that came out right.

"I need to show her that," I said.

"She’ll find it," Elena said.

"I want to show it to her," I said. "I want to be the one who—" I stopped. "I made it for her. I want her to know I made it."

Elena looked at me.

"She’ll know," she said. "When she’s old enough to ask, you’ll tell her. And when she asks why, you’ll tell her you made it in the corridor at two in the morning while she was figuring out how to exist." She held my gaze. "And she’ll think that’s exactly right."

My throat closed.

"Okay," I said.

"Hold her how I showed you in the infirmary," Elena said. "The position that lets her see your face."

I shifted my hold.

Elena reached over and adjusted my elbow by a fraction, and Luna’s angle changed slightly, and suddenly she was looking up at approximately where my face was.

Her eyes — still unfocused, still finding the architecture of the world — moved.

In my direction.

She didn’t see me clearly. She wasn’t built for seeing clearly yet. But something about the proximity, the specific warmth of being held by this particular person, she seemed to register.

She made the sound.

"Hi," I said.

My voice came out wrecked.

"Hi," I said again, steadier.

She kept looking.

"I made the wolf," I said. "I’ll show you when you’re ready." I looked at her face. "I made the crib too. The joint on the right side gave me trouble. Ask your mother about it, she’ll tell you the whole thing." I paused. "You’re named Luna. We both chose it. At the same time. Without telling each other. That’s probably going to keep being how we do things." I paused. "Your mother is the best person I’ve ever known. You’re going to figure that out on your own but it’s also just true."

Elena put her head on my shoulder.

I felt it, not saw it.

"And you," I said, still looking at Luna. "You’re eight weeks early and you howled the moment you arrived and you’ve had opinions about everything since. The temperature and the light and the holding position and the general concept of bedtime." I paused. "You’re going to be exactly like her, aren’t you."

Luna made the sound.

"That’s what I thought," I said.

Elena made a sound that was a laugh that caught itself.

I held Luna.

The thing started in my chest the way it always started — somewhere specific and structural, from the place where things had been stored for too long without room to go anywhere.

I didn’t try to stop it.

Elena had told me not to. A long time ago, in the context of nightmares and corridors and learning to stay through things rather than pulling away from them. She hadn’t said it about this specifically but the principle was the same.

*Feel it. Stay. Let it be what it is.*

I stayed.

The tears came the way they came now — without shame, without the performance of managing them. Just the body doing what it did when something was real and large and present.

Luna’s eyes moved.

She found the direction of my voice.

"I’ve got you," I said.

Not as a promise about the immediate moment. As everything.

As the whole thing.

As the specific commitment of a person who had spent four years in a cave and learned to survive and had then, with a great deal of help, learned to do something else entirely.

*I’ve got you.*

The fire was warm.

The crib was in the corner with the wolf in it.

Elena’s head was on my shoulder.

And Luna, eight weeks early and already opinionated and already entirely herself, kept looking in my direction with her unfocused new eyes and her small certain presence that took up every inch of the room.

"She’s looking at you," Elena said quietly.

"I know," I said.

"She likes your voice," Elena said.

"How can you tell," I said.

"She does the sound," Elena said. "Only when you talk."

I looked at Luna.

She made the sound.

I held her closer.

And outside the window the settlement went about its morning, and somewhere in the corridor Cade was probably doing something inadvisable, and Brennan had reports, and the eastern border needed checking, and Marta had charter things, and all of it was there and all of it could wait, because right now there was this room and these people and the specific weight of a small certain howling thing who had decided to exist eight weeks early and not made any apologies about it.

My daughter.

My family.

The rest of my life.

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