The Wolf Queen & The Alpha Brat

(Elena)

Nobody told me about this part.

That’s the thing. There’s a great deal of information that gets passed around a Pack about pregnancy and labor and what to expect in those first hours. Wolves talk about the contractions and the exhaustion and the specific difficulty of early arrival. Senna had been thorough. Marta, who had given birth twice, had been surprisingly candid one afternoon when I’d asked.

Nobody said anything about this.

About the specific, relentless, humbling difficulty of something that was supposed to be the most natural thing in the world and wasn’t. Not for me. Not right away.

Luna was hungry.

She made her needs known about this the way she made everything known — with complete commitment, no hedging, the full force of eight-week-early lungs that had apparently been storing capacity for exactly this purpose.

I tried.

I’d been trying since the second morning in the infirmary, with Senna coaching, with the specific positions Senna had shown me. Sometimes it worked for a few minutes and Luna settled and I thought: *okay, we have it now.* And then it didn’t work and she made the sound — not the wondering sound, not the agreeing sound, the other one, the one that meant she was unimpressed with the current situation and required immediate improvement.

Day four at home.

Four in the morning.

Luna was making the sound and I was sitting in the chair by the crib with my patience in a significantly worse state than I preferred to admit, and Rhydian was at the edge of the bed watching me with the expression he wore when he was deciding whether to speak.

"Don’t say you can help," I said.

"I wasn’t going to say that," he said.

"You were thinking it."

"I was thinking that you haven’t slept in—"

"I know how long I haven’t slept," I said.

Luna escalated.

I adjusted. Tried again. She latched for approximately three seconds, made a sound of assessment, and released.

"She has opinions," I said.

"She does," Rhydian said.

"About everything."

"Yes," he said.

I looked at Luna. Luna looked at me with the frank assessment of someone who has needs and is waiting to see if the relevant person is going to meet them.

"I’m trying," I said to her.

She made the sound.

"I know," I said.

"Elena," Rhydian said.

"What."

He got up from the bed. He came and crouched in front of me, at my level, the way he did when he was saying something he needed me to receive properly.

"Senna mentioned a wet nurse," he said. "She said there was a wolf in the settlement who has offered. She’s been nursing her own pup for three months."

I looked at him.

"I know you don’t want—" he started.

"It’s not that I don’t want," I said. "I want to be the one. I want it to work."

"It might still work," he said. "The first weeks can be—"

"Senna said that too," I said.

"So it’s not—"

"It’s not failure," I said. "I know it’s not failure. I know that." I looked at Luna. "Knowing it and feeling it are different."

"Yes," he said. "I know."

He sat on the floor in front of me. Just sat down, on the stone floor, at whatever hour this was. Not performing patience. Just present.

"Tell me what’s making it difficult," he said.

I looked at him.

"That’s—" I stopped. "Rhydian, I don’t think you can—"

"I know I can’t fix it," he said. "I’m asking because maybe saying it helps and also because I need to understand what’s happening so I can do the right thing instead of guessing."

I looked at Luna. At the way she was doing the sound with the specific quality of someone whose patience was finite.

"She’s not latching correctly," I said. "Or I’m not positioned correctly. Or both." I pressed my lips together. "Senna showed me four positions. I’ve tried all four of them in various combinations and sometimes it works and sometimes—" I gestured at the current situation.

"Senna showed you positions," he said.

"Yes."

"And you tried them."

"Yes."

He looked at Luna. Then at me. "Did Senna show you or tell you."

"Both," I said. "She demonstrated with her hands. She explained the angle."

He was quiet for a moment.

"When you showed me how to hold someone in a sparring position," he said, "you adjusted my grip yourself. You didn’t just tell me where to put my hands."

I looked at him.

"That’s different," I said.

"Is it."

"Yes," I said. "It’s significantly different."

He held my gaze.

"Let me help," he said.

"Rhydian—"

"Not the—" He stopped. Organized it. "Not the nursing itself. I understand the mechanics. But you’re tense." He looked at my shoulders. "You’ve been tense since yesterday. When you’re tense the position changes and when the position changes—" He paused. "The angle is wrong."

I stared at him.

"You’ve been watching for four days," I said.

"I’ve been watching for four days," he confirmed.

"And you’ve figured out—"

"I’ve figured out that it works better when you’re not thinking about whether it’s going to work," he said. "Which is the same thing you figured out about me and the sparring. When I stopped thinking about the technique and just moved, the technique happened."

I looked at him.

"You’re not wrong," I said.

"No," he said.

Luna made the sound.

"Okay," I said. "What do you want to do."

He got up from the floor. He moved behind me, which was the position that had worked in the early weeks when he was learning and I was teaching and everything was deliberate and careful. He put his hands on my shoulders.

"You’re holding everything up here," he said. The tension in my shoulders. "The whole thing. Since the labor."

"I know," I said.

"Let go of it," he said.

"I can’t just—"

"You can," he said. "You taught me that. The counting. The breathing."

"That was for pain."

"This is pain," he said. "Different kind."

I breathed.

He worked on my shoulders the way he’d learned — not the early clumsy way, the version that had developed over months of learning where the knots were and what they required. Slow. Deliberate. My shoulders dropped by a fraction.

Luna was still making the sound but it had moved from urgent to persistent, which was marginally better.

"She’s so loud," I said.

"She gets that from you," he said.

"She does not."

"The council hall," he said. "The roar."

"That was a completely different—"

"The barracks speech," he said.

"I wasn’t loud in the barracks speech."

"You were heard in the corridor," he said.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Luna made the sound.

"Focus," Rhydian said.

He moved his hands. Not toward anything inappropriate — just shifting, working the muscle along my upper back, the specific place that had been carrying tension since the labor that I hadn’t fully addressed.

Something released.

Not dramatically. Just — loosened. The way held breath releases when you’ve been holding it long enough that you stopped noticing.

"There," he said.

He moved back around and sat beside me. "Try again," he said. "But don’t think about the angle. Just—" He made a gesture. "Let it happen."

I looked at him.

"You sound very confident for someone who doesn’t—"

"Try," he said.

I tried.

Luna settled within thirty seconds.

We both went very still.

"Don’t say anything," I said.

"I’m not saying anything," he said.

I looked down at Luna.

She was making the small sound now, the wondering one, the one that meant she was satisfied and processing.

"The angle," I said.

"The shoulders," he said.

"Don’t," I said.

"I’m not saying anything," he said again.

I looked at him sideways.

He was looking at Luna with the face. The specific one. Gold eyes soft, jaw that matched hers, the expression of someone who would never get used to this and wasn’t trying to.

"You figured this out by watching for four days," I said.

"I watch things," he said.

"I know you watch things," I said. "I’m—" I stopped. "Thank you."

He looked at me.

"Don’t thank me," he said.

"I’m thanking you."

"You would have figured it out," he said. "You were already figuring it out. I just said the thing you already knew."

"You said it at four in the morning in a more useful way than I was managing to say it to myself," I said. "That counts."

He looked at Luna.

"She’s going to be insufferable," he said.

"Why."

"Because she already knows how to get what she needs," he said. "She’s four days old and she already knows. Give her ten years and she’s going to run this settlement better than both of us."

"She’s going to run it differently than us," I said.

"That’s what I said," he said.

"That’s not what you said."

"It’s what I meant," he said.

I looked at Luna.

She was quiet now, focused on the single most important thing in her world, which was the thing she’d been asking for since approximately midnight.

"I’m going to see if the wet nurse can come tomorrow," I said. "Not to replace this. Just—" I paused. "For the nights. So I can sleep some portion of the night."

"Yes," Rhydian said.

"Senna said—"

"I know what Senna said," he said. "I’ll go to her in the morning and arrange it."

"You don’t have to—"

"I’ll go in the morning," he said.

I looked at him.

"You’re going to do the thing," I said.

"What thing."

"Where you handle things before I can argue about them," I said.

"I learned that from you," he said.

I looked at the ceiling.

"Fair," I said.

Luna finished. She detached herself with the same decisive quality she brought to everything and looked at approximately where I was with the expression of someone who had accomplished what they set out to do and was satisfied with the outcome.

"She’s very pleased with herself," Rhydian said.

"She should be," I said.

He stood up. He held his hands out for her and I gave her to him and he held her in the position, the one that was already automatic now, the one he’d been practicing for four days until it stopped requiring thought.

He walked with her to the window. Not to show her anything — just moving, the specific motion that settled her. We’d discovered this on day two. She liked movement. She liked voices. She had, it turned out, very strong opinions about what she liked.

"Luna," he said to her. Low. Just for her. "It’s four in the morning. The settlement is asleep. In approximately two hours Cade is going to knock on the door with something urgent that isn’t urgent, and your mother is going to handle it and your mother needs to sleep before that happens."

Luna made the wondering sound.

"I know," he said. "I agree. She should have been sleeping for the last two hours but she was helping you figure something out." He looked at me over his shoulder. "Which she did. So we’re going to put her in the crib now and everyone is going to sleep."

"She’s not going to—" I started.

"She is," he said. "She just ate. She’s warm. She’s held." He looked at Luna. "Right?"

Luna looked at the window.

"Right," he said. He carried her to the crib. He placed her down with the hands that had figured out careful, that knew exactly where to be and what pressure to use.

She looked at the ceiling.

She made the sound.

"One," Rhydian said quietly. He put his hand flat on her chest, the way she’d shown him, the heartbeat position. "Ten seconds."

He counted.

On five she closed her eyes.

On eight she was breathing the even breath of sleep.

He stayed with his hand on her chest for the full ten.

Then he straightened. Turned back to me.

"Come to bed," he said.

"That was—" I started.

"I know," he said.

"How did you—"

"Because I’ve been watching for four days," he said. "Come to bed, Elena."

I got up.

I got into the bed.

He got in beside me.

He put his arm around me and I put my head on his chest and we lay there in the dark listening to Luna breathe in the crib across the room.

"She’s going to wake up in two hours," I said.

"I know," he said. "Sleep for two hours."

"The wet nurse tomorrow," I said.

"I’ll handle it," he said.

"And Brennan has—"

"Elena," he said.

"What."

"Sleep," he said.

I was asleep in four minutes.

He was awake for a while longer, I could tell by his breathing. Listening.

Making sure.

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