Elena)
It happened on a Sunday.
She’d been working toward it for two weeks — pulling herself up, standing, the specific focused expression she wore when she was calculating something that her body hadn’t figured out yet. She’d fall and she’d get up and she’d stand and she’d fall again, and every time she fell she made the sound that meant she was reassessing, not defeated.
She got that from Rhydian.
reassessing without defeat thing. The way of approaching a physical problem as information rather than failure. I’d watched it arrive in her at four months when she’d been trying to figure out tummy time and at six months when sitting had been the project and now at thirteen months, standing at the edge of the low table in our room, she had that expression.
I was at the desk.
Rhydian was by the fire, cross-legged on the floor the way he sometimes sat — he’d never fully taken to chairs, I’d noticed, he used them when he needed to be professional but in the room he ended up on the floor with something to hold, usually a report or a piece of wood or now Luna, who regarded the floor as the correct level for everything interesting.
She was standing at the table.
Both hands on the edge. Testing her weight.
I kept my eyes on my report but I wasn’t reading it.
Rhydian had stopped reading the border document twenty seconds ago. He was watching her the way he watched things he needed to see — steadily, without making it obvious, the four-years-alone habit that had become the habit of a father in the same way it had become the habit of a co-Alpha. He noticed everything.
Luna made the sound.
The new one. The one that had come in the last few weeks and that I’d been trying to identify and had finally placed. It was the sound she made right before she decided to do something. Not the wondering sound, not the recognition sound. The *I’ve decided* sound.
She’d gotten that from me.
She looked at Rhydian.
Not approximately in his direction — actually at him. Her eyes had developed the specificity of someone who knew exactly where to look, and she looked at him the way she looked at the wolf toy, with the full gravity of a person who has decided something is hers and is prepared to go get it.
She let go of the table.
The first step was more of a controlled fall in the right direction. I saw Rhydian’s hands come up slightly — not reaching, just ready — and then she caught herself, both feet planted, still upright.
She made the sound.
The *I’ve decided* one.
Second step.
More deliberate. Her arms were out at her sides the way they’d been when she’d first started pulling herself up, the balancing instinct arriving before the technique.
Third step.
Rhydian had lowered himself — not moving toward her, just lower, bringing himself to a level she could reach, his hands still not out but his whole body oriented toward her.
Fourth step.
She was going to make it.
I put my pen down.
Fifth step and she was close enough that her hands went out and found his shirt and she grabbed it with both fists and stood there with the complete satisfaction of someone who had gone exactly where she intended.
He caught her.
Both hands, the lifting position, the one he’d perfected in those early weeks when picking her up required all his concentration and was now just the motion of it, and he lifted her and she went up and she was at his eye level and his face was doing everything at once.
"That’s my girl," he said.
His voice broke on the last word.
Just slightly. Just the edge of it.
Luna looked at him with the frank assessment of someone who had done what she set out to do and found the reception satisfactory.
She grabbed his nose.
He made a sound that was half-laugh and entirely helpless and she held on with the grip that had been testing my hair for three months and he let her because that was the arrangement, that had always been the arrangement with Luna — she held what she wanted to hold and we let her because the things she wanted to hold were always exactly the things that mattered.
"She walked," I said. From the desk.
"She walked," he said. His voice still had that quality. "Five steps."
"Four steps and a controlled fall in the right direction," I said.
"That’s walking," he said.
Luna released his nose and grabbed his jaw instead, which was her jaw, which she had been discovering the connection of for three months.
"She knows," he said. "She’s been planning this."
"She’s been practicing for two weeks," I said. "I wouldn’t call it planning."
"I would," he said. "She watched you walk down the corridor twelve times yesterday. I counted."
I stared at him.
"She was studying the footwork," he said.
"She’s thirteen months old."
"She’s your daughter," he said. "She was studying the footwork."
Luna made the *I’ve decided* sound.
We both looked at her.
She was looking at me.
The specific look — the one she gave things she was going to go toward next.
"No," I said.
She made the sound again.
"Luna," I said.
She looked at Rhydian. Then back at me. Then she pushed at his chest with both hands, which was the signal she’d developed for *I want to be on the floor now*, which he’d learned to respond to before she escalated.
He put her down.
She stood.
Made the sound.
Looked at me.
"She’s going to walk to you," Rhydian said.
"I can see that," I said.
"You should probably come closer," he said.
"She walked to you first," I said. "She should walk to me from the same distance."
He looked at me.
"You’re not going to make it easier for her," he said.
"She didn’t make it easier for herself," I said. "She let go of the table and walked."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She really is your daughter," he said.
"Yes," I said.
Luna made the *I’ve decided* sound a third time, which was the version that meant she was running out of patience with the deliberation phase.
I stayed at the desk.
She let go.
Step one — more confident than the first sequence, she’d already done this, she knew what the sensation was, her body had the first information from the five steps to Rhydian and was applying it.
Step two.
Three.
She was three steps away when she looked at my face and made the recognition sound — the one from the window, the one that meant something familiar, and I felt it in the same place it always landed, the specific location in my chest where the things that mattered lived.
Four steps.
Five.
Her hands grabbed my knees and she held on and looked up at me and the look on her face was completely, entirely satisfied.
I picked her up.
Not with the lifting position — I brought her to my chest and held her close, her face against my neck, and she grabbed a fistful of my hair with the proprietary confidence of someone who has decided ownership of this particular thing.
I pressed my lips to her head.
She smelled like the specific smell of Luna, which was hers and nobody else’s, which I would know in a dark room at any distance, which I’d been cataloguing without meaning to since the moment Senna placed her in my arms in the infirmary.
"Hi," I said into her hair.
She made the wondering sound. The one that meant she was processing.
"You walked," I said.
She grabbed harder.
"To both of us," I said.
Rhydian had come to stand beside me. Not too close — he was reading the moment, which he was good at, which he’d gotten better at, the specific skill of knowing when to be present and when to give space. He was at the edge of present.
"She walked to me first," he said.
"She walked to me five steps," I said. "You were closer."
"Significantly closer," he said. "By several feet."
"She still walked."
"She did," he said. Something in his voice.
I looked at him.
He was looking at Luna, and the expression on his face was the one I’d been watching arrive over thirteen months, the one that had started as stunned and become specific and was now just — his. The face he wore when he looked at her. The one that had no armor in it.
"Five steps," I said.
"Five steps," he said.
"She’s going to be running by month fifteen," I said.
"She’s going to be running before that," he said.
"Senna said—"
"She walked at thirteen months," he said. "She’s ahead of Senna’s timeline already."
I looked at Luna.
She was looking at Rhydian. She’d turned in my arms to look at him, which was the thing she did when she wanted both of us in her field of vision, which happened with increasing frequency as she’d developed the understanding that there were two specific people who were different from all the other people.
"She knows," I said.
"She’s known for months," he said.
"Before that," I said.
He looked at me.
"She heard your voice," I said. "Before she was born. In the yard and the hall and the corridor outside the infirmary at four in the morning." I paused. "She already knew who you were."
He was quiet.
"You’re going to—" I started.
"I know," he said.
"I’m not going to say anything," I said.
"You don’t have to," he said.
Luna made the *I’ve decided* sound.
We both looked at her.
She was reaching toward Rhydian.
Both arms out, the specific gesture — the one that had developed at three months and had been the first gesture that was clearly directed at a specific person, the one that had arrived two weeks before the equivalent gesture toward me, which I had noted and processed and decided was not a competition and was also very slightly a competition.
He took her.
She settled immediately in the way she settled with him — the specific relaxation that happened when she was in the right place. She grabbed his collar.
"We should tell Cade," Rhydian said.
"Absolutely not," I said.
"Why—"
"Because if we tell Cade he’ll want to—"
"Start teaching her footwork," he said.
"Immediately," I said. "Today. He’ll have opinions about her stance."
Rhydian looked at Luna.
Luna was looking at the door.
"She’ll have opinions about his opinions," he said.
"She will," I said.
"She’s going to argue with him," he said.
"She’s going to be right," I said. "And he’s going to know she’s right and it’s going to take him weeks to admit it."
Rhydian looked at me.
"Just like—" he started.
"Don’t," I said.
"I wasn’t going to say it," he said.
"You were," I said.
"I was, yes," he said.
Luna grabbed his ear.
He let her.
The room was quiet in the specific way of Sunday mornings — the settlement gentler than weekday mornings, the pace different, the particular texture of a day that wasn’t built around the same urgency. The fire was warm. The crib in the corner still had the wolf toy in it from last night. The ceiling crack went northeast to southwest.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
He sat beside me, Luna between us in the configuration we’d found that first night home from the infirmary.
"She’s going to walk everywhere now," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"We’re going to have to rethink the lower shelves," he said.
"The ones in the study," I said. "She’s already been interested in those."
"The ones in the corridor too," he said. "The bracket that holds the lamp. She looked at it for five minutes last week."
"I saw that," I said.
"She was calculating," he said.
"She was eleven months old," I said.
"She was calculating," he said.
I looked at Luna.
Luna was looking at the wolf toy in the crib.
The *I’ve decided* sound.
"She wants the wolf," I said.
"She always wants the wolf," he said.
"She’s going to walk to it," I said.
He put her on the floor.
She stood.
Looked at the crib.
Made the sound.
Seven steps, steady, the technique visibly better than the first ten steps combined, the body already applying the information.
She grabbed the side of the crib.
Pulled herself up.
Reached for the wolf.
Got it.
Turned around with it in both hands and the expression of someone who had gone exactly where she intended and gotten exactly what she wanted.
Rhydian made a sound beside me.
The helpless one.
"I know," I said.
"She walked to the wolf," he said.
"Seven steps," I said. "Better than the five."
"She learned from the first two attempts," he said.
"She’s your daughter," I said.
He looked at me.
"She’s yours too," he said.
"I know," I said. "But the learning from the attempt without letting the attempt defeat you — that’s you."
He was quiet.
Luna sat down on the floor with the wolf and began her assessment of it, which happened every morning, which was the same assessment each time, which she did anyway because the wolf was hers and hers required daily verification.
"We should probably tell Brennan," Rhydian said. "He’ll want to update the — I don’t know, something. The settlement record."
"The settlement record doesn’t track first steps," I said.
"It should," he said.
"It absolutely shouldn’t," I said.
"She’s the heir," he said. "It seems relevant."
"Marta would have to add a section," I said.
"Marta would love to add a section," he said.
I looked at him.
He wasn’t wrong.
Marta would add the section and she would date it precisely and she would find the charter language that made first steps relevant to Pack succession and she would do it with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting for a reason.
"Don’t tell Marta," I said.
"I wasn’t going to," he said. "Yet."
"Rhydian."
"Eventually," he said. "When Luna is old enough that the story is funny."
"She’s thirteen months old," I said. "She’s not going to remember this."
"We’ll remember it," he said.
I looked at him.
"Yes," I said. "We will."
Luna made the recognition sound from the floor.
We both looked at her.
She was holding the wolf up. Not toward us specifically. Just holding it up, in the way she held things up to see them better, in the morning light.
"She’s showing it to the room," Rhydian said.
"She’s looking at it," I said.
"She’s showing it," he said. "She knows we’re watching."
I looked at Luna.
Luna held the wolf up a little higher.
And then from somewhere in the corridor, inevitable, completely predictable, Cade’s voice:
"Brennan. Brennan, I could hear — something happened. Was that a — Brennan, did someone—"
"Give them time," Brennan said.
"How much—"
"However much they need," Brennan said.
Luna lowered the wolf.
Made the *I’ve decided* sound.
Looked at the door.
"She’s going to walk to the door," Rhydian said.
"She’s not going to walk to the door," I said.
Luna walked to the door.
Eight steps. Best yet.
She put her hand flat on the wood and patted it twice.
Rhydian looked at me.
I looked at Rhydian.
"She knows Cade is out there," he said.
"She cannot know that," I said.
"She knows," he said.
Luna patted the door again.
From the corridor: "Was that—Brennan. Was that—"
"Yes," Brennan said.
"She walked?" Cade’s voice went up. "She walked to the—she walked? Can I—"
"Give them one more minute," Brennan said.
Luna turned from the door.
She looked at us.
The full, complete, entirely satisfied look of someone who had walked across the room, retrieved the wolf toy, walked to the door, confirmed the person outside, and returned her gaze to her parents.
Thirteen months.
I looked at Rhydian.
He looked at me.
"One more minute," I said.
He stood up.
He went to the door and opened it.
And Cade came through it at exactly the speed of someone who had been waiting politely for one minute and the minute was done.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter