The Wolf Queen & The Alpha Brat

( Elena)

I knew before I counted.

That was the thing — with Luna I’d counted carefully, three times, standing at the washroom basin in the early dark before I was ready to know. This time my body told me first, and the counting was just confirmation.

Fourteen days late.

I stood at the window in our room while Rhydian was in the morning briefing, while Luna was with Hanna, while the settlement was doing what settlements did at the second hour of the day. I stood there and I held the information and I let it settle.

Different from last time.

Not worse. Not better. Just — different. Last time there had been fear first. The specific fear of the wrong moment, the unsettled ground, the war still approaching. I’d carried it alone for a week and whispered it into his shoulder in the dark and he’d held very still and then covered my hands with his.

This time the fear wasn’t first.

Something warmer was first.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. The automatic gesture that had been Luna’s for thirteen months, that my body still reached for even when she was in the next room. Now it meant something else as well.

I stayed at the window for a while.

The training yard was visible. Cade was running the mid-morning sequence, the one Rhydian had designed last month, the one that built on the third-step variation Elena had used in the sparring session. Cade had modified it slightly. He’d come to Rhydian with the modification and Rhydian had looked at it for three minutes and said *yes, that’s better, use that.* Cade had done the thing where he tried not to show he was pleased.

I watched the drills.

I thought about timing. About what was different this time — the settlement was stable, the border was holding, the Ironmere inquiry was running quietly, the charter policy on heir arrangements had been distributed and received without incident. Luna was thirteen months old and walking everywhere and had opinions about everything and was going to have a sibling.

Two pups.

The phrase arrived fully formed, which was strange, which I let sit.

---

The briefing ran long.

I knew it would — Brennan had flagged three items the previous evening that had the quality of things that would require more discussion than the time allotted, and he’d been right about one of them, and the others had surfaced their own complications by midmorning. I tracked the time the way I tracked things, peripherally, aware of it without letting it run the day.

At the third hour Rhydian came back to the room.

I was at the desk.

He put his jacket on the chair and said, "The east fence repair is going to take longer than Brennan quoted. The stone work under the foundation is—" He stopped.

He looked at my face.

I hadn’t done anything with my face. Or I hadn’t thought I had. But he’d been reading me for over a year and a half and some information was past hiding at this point.

"What," he said.

"Sit down," I said.

He sat.

Not at the desk — on the edge of the bed, which was where he sat when he was receiving something, which he’d apparently already decided this was. He put both hands on his knees and he looked at me and he waited.

I’d thought about how to say it.

I’d had three hours to think about how to say it and I’d run through several versions and they all came out approximately the same.

"I’m pregnant," I said.

The room was quiet.

He looked at me.

Not the same as last time. Last time he’d gone completely still and said *okay* in a voice that meant the information was too large and he needed a minute. This time something moved through his face that was faster than that, that arrived and stayed rather than arrived and needing to be processed.

"How long," he said.

"I don’t know exactly," I said. "Senna will confirm. But — several weeks."

He breathed.

"Several weeks," he said.

"Yes."

"And you’re—" He stopped. "How are you."

"I’m fine," I said. Then, because this was us and the words meant different things now: "I mean it. I’m fine. Different from last time."

"Different how," he said.

I looked at the window.

"Last time I was scared first," I said. "This time—" I paused. "This time I stood at the window for an hour feeling something I don’t have a clean word for."

He was quiet.

"Something warm," I said.

He looked at me.

"Two," he said. Just that.

"Yes," I said.

"Luna," he said.

"She’ll have a sibling," I said.

"She’ll have opinions about that," he said.

"She has opinions about everything," I said. "Yes."

He stood up.

He came to where I was at the desk. He didn’t say anything. He just stood close, within the radius that was ours, and he put his hand on my face — the jaw, the way he held my face when he was saying something with his hands rather than his mouth.

I held his gaze.

"You’re not scared," he said.

"I didn’t say that," I said.

"You said scared wasn’t first."

"It’s not absent," I said. "It’s just—" I paused. "Smaller than the other thing."

He looked at me for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

"You too?" I said.

"Immediately," he said. "As soon as you started the sentence."

I looked at him.

"I didn’t start the sentence with the information," I said. "I told you to sit down first."

"I know," he said. "But you looked—" He paused. "You looked the way you looked the morning after Luna walked. When I came back from the briefing and you were at the window and your face was doing the thing it does when something has already arrived and you’ve been living with it for a few hours."

I stared at him.

"I looked at you for four seconds before I sat down," he said. "I knew before you said it."

"That’s—" I stopped.

"Accurate," he said.

"Unsettling," I said.

"Yes," he said. "Both."

I looked at his hand on my face.

At the ring. The co-Alpha ring that Marta had formally registered and that caught the morning light and that Luna had grabbed in the first week and regarded with the proprietary interest she gave anything that was attached to people she’d claimed.

"Two pups," he said.

"That phrase keeps arriving," I said.

"It’s accurate," he said.

"It’s very — wolf," I said.

"We’re wolves," he said.

"I know," I said.

He looked at my face for another moment. Then he lowered himself — not crouching, kneeling, which was not something he did often, which had the specific quality of deliberateness.

He put both hands flat on my stomach.

I put my hands over his.

"Hi," he said. Quiet. To the general direction of wherever this was happening.

I pressed my lips together.

"Too early," I said.

"I know," he said.

"Much too early," I said. "Senna hasn’t even—"

"I know," he said.

He stayed.

His forehead came to rest against my stomach, which was nothing yet, which was several weeks of nothing, and he stayed there with his hands under mine and his eyes closed.

I kept my hands over his.

The room was doing what it always did — the fire, the ceiling crack, the light from the window at the morning angle. The wolf toy in the crib where Luna had put it last night before she’d gone to Hanna’s room, the small dark thing with the legs that were slightly uneven and the ears he hadn’t known he was making.

"We’ll need another one," he said.

"Another what."

"Toy," he said. "I’ll need to make another one."

"You have time," I said.

"Not as much as before," he said. "Luna was—" He paused. "I had more time with Luna. The crib took six weeks. If I start now—"

"Rhydian," I said.

"What."

"You have months," I said.

"The right side joint took four attempts," he said.

"And you fixed it," I said.

"Because I had six weeks," he said. "If I start now and the right side gives me trouble again—"

"Then it’ll give you trouble," I said. "And you’ll fix it."

He lifted his head.

He looked up at me from where he was, which was a specific angle, which was not a position I’d seen him in often.

"You’re very calm," he said.

"I’m not calm," I said.

"You seem calm," he said.

"I told you—" I paused. "The scared is there. I know what early birth looks like. I know what it costs. I know—" I stopped. "I know what the next nine months is going to require and I know what comes after and I’m—" I looked at the ceiling. "The warm thing is bigger than the scared thing. That’s all."

He stood up.

He was close. Too close for the desk to be anything but an obstacle, so I pushed the chair back and stood too and we were just — standing. Close. The way we ended up when there was nothing between us to manage.

"Come to bed," he said.

"It’s the third hour," I said.

"I know what hour it is," he said.

"Brennan needs—"

"Brennan has the east fence," he said. "And the morning reports and the border rotation and whatever the three items were that ran long." He held my gaze. "He has everything until I go back."

I looked at him.

"You want to lie down," I said. "In the middle of the day."

"I want to be here," he said. "With you. For a minute that isn’t moving."

I understood that.

I’d understood it since the first night he’d said *give me a minute* in the infirmary corridor and I’d given it to him, and since then we’d both learned that the minute wasn’t actually about rest, it was about the specific act of stopping and being where you were instead of moving toward the next thing.

We lay down.

On top of the covers, both of us, side by side, the way we’d lain that first infirmary morning after the battle. His arm around me. My head on his chest. The specific arrangement that had become — home, was the word, though I’d been reluctant to use it for longer than I should have been.

His hand found my stomach.

"Still saying hi," I said.

"Still too early," he said.

"And yet," I said.

"And yet," he agreed.

We lay there.

The fire was doing its thing. The ceiling crack went northeast to southwest. Somewhere in the settlement Cade was still running drills and Brennan was managing the east fence and Luna was probably investigating something she shouldn’t be investigating with the complete commitment she brought to all investigations.

"She’s going to be jealous," Rhydian said.

"Luna," I said.

"Yes."

"Initially," I said. "Then she’ll be fascinated. Then she’ll be—" I paused. "She’s going to try to carry the baby. When she’s big enough to try."

"She’s not going to be big enough for—"

"She’s going to try," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "She will."

I looked at the ceiling.

"We should tell Senna first," I said. "Before anyone else. Before Marta, before Brennan—"

"Before Cade," he said. "Yes."

"Before Cade specifically," I said.

"He’s going to knock on the door immediately," he said.

"He always knocks on the door immediately," I said.

"This will be worse," he said.

I breathed.

His hand was still on my stomach. Warm. Present.

"Two pups," he said. Low. Just for the room.

Something in my chest settled.

"Two pups," I said.

He pressed his lips to my hair.

"I’m going to start on the toy tonight," he said.

"You have months," I said.

"The right side joint took four attempts," he said.

I closed my eyes.

Outside the window the morning was doing what midmornings did — the light settling into its middle position, the settlement humming with its ordinary work, the world entirely unconcerned with what was happening in this room.

And in this room: his hand on my stomach. His heartbeat under my ear.

And the small warm certain thing that was going to be someone.

"Rhydian," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"The toy doesn’t need to match the first one," I said. "It should be different. It should be hers."

He was quiet.

"Hers," he said.

"She’s going to be her own person," I said. "Not Luna. Not us. Hers."

He thought about that.

"Different wood," he said. "Different animal, maybe."

"Maybe," I said.

"What animal," he said.

"I don’t know yet," I said.

He thought.

"I’ll figure it out," he said.

"You will," I said.

His hand pressed slightly against my stomach.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

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