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Chapter Ninety-Six: The Proposal He Didn't Plan

Author: Author Rowan
last update publish date: 2026-05-25 03:42:44

April arrives.

Lucia is ten weeks old and she has opinions about almost everything.

This is not an exaggeration. She has an opinion about the angle of the morning light. She has an opinion about the blue blanket versus the green one, which she communicates through a very specific sound that Dominic identified before I did, which I have chosen not to mention because it clearly gives him disproportionate satisfaction. She has an opinion about which songs he plays on the piano and which ones she f
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  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter One Hundred: What Stays

    July arrives with the warmth and chill of a Chicago July that doesn't apologize for itself. The city at its most itself, outdoor everything and the lake and people moving through the heat with the determined enjoyment of people who endured five months of cold and are going to make the most of every degree above seventy.Lucia is five months old and she finally has the third word now.It arrived on a Tuesday morning and it was, as Dominic predicted, something she decided mattered."Li."Her version of her name.The first time she said it I was at the kitchen window watering the herbs and she said it from the bouncy seat with the specific satisfaction of someone who has been working toward something and has arrived.I turned around.She looked at me."Li."I looked at her for a moment.Then I said: "Yes. That's you."She said it again bouncing on the seat in joy. Smiling so wide I could see her toothless gum."Li."Three times. How establishing.Dominic came in from the hallway and she

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Night Before Everything Changes

    We fly home from Albuquerque on a Sunday.The flight is two hours and Lucia sleeps most of it the way she slept the last time, in the complete committed way of someone who has decided rest is worth taking seriously. Dominic is reading, I don't know what it's about thought. I look out the window.The three days of the council meeting settle into me on the flight home the way significant things settle. Not dramatically. As weight that becomes familiar. The kind you carry differently after it's been named.Twenty-two people in a room, the structure decided, the gathering place confirmed.The morning before we left I walked to the Mira Seca foundations one more time. Alone, at six a.m., while the others were still at the hotel and Dominic had Lucia and the June morning was doing the specific thing with light that makes New Mexico look like it was lit deliberately.I stood at the foundations and looked at the plants.At the stones, then at the flowers Elena leaves. I thought about what Ros

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Ninety-Eight: What We Are Building

    June.Lucia is now four months old.She has two things she says clearly now. "Ma" and "Da", both of which she deploys with the precision of someone who understands that specific sounds produce specific responses and is using this knowledge efficiently.Dominic responds to "Da" with the expression that has no name every single time without exception.I have stopped finding this remarkable and started finding it simply true. The way the morning light is true. The way the piano on Sundays is true. The way certain things settle into the fabric of a life and become part of its texture rather than events within it.He is a father.He is good at it in the ways I knew he would be and surprising in the ways I didn't predict. The thoroughness, the research, the deliberate preparation, all of that I expected. What I didn't expect was the sentimental gentleness. The way he holds her that is different from the way he holds anything else, not more careful, more present, as if she asks for a quality

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Ninety-Seven: Building the House

    May arrives warm.The kind of May that makes Chicago residents slightly suspicious because it keeps being nice and they know better than to fully trust it, but it keeps being nice anyway and eventually you stop waiting for the catch and just accept the warmth.I am now back at work full time.Dr. Vega cleared it at the twelve-week check and Diane organized my return with the efficiency of someone who has been waiting for a resource and is not going to underutilize it now that it's back. My patient load is full. My feet are mostly cooperating.It is good to be back. To work again.The ER asks for exactly what I have. The competence and the ability, both of them, applied in the space where they make the most difference. I walk in on my first full Monday and the floor has the specific smell and sound that I've known for twelve years and I think: this is also home. Not instead of. In addition to.Multiple things can be home at once. I learned that in the last eight months.The Internation

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Ninety-Six: The Proposal He Didn't Plan

    April arrives.Lucia is ten weeks old and she has opinions about almost everything.This is not an exaggeration. She has an opinion about the angle of the morning light. She has an opinion about the blue blanket versus the green one, which she communicates through a very specific sound that Dominic identified before I did, which I have chosen not to mention because it clearly gives him disproportionate satisfaction. She has an opinion about which songs he plays on the piano and which ones she finds merely acceptable.She is entirely her mother's daughter.He says this approximately once a day and I have started saying thank you instead of arguing because he means it as a compliment and I have decided to receive it as one.Life has the quality that I described to Petra in March. Settled. Like something that was moving has found its pace rather than stopping. The movement continues. Edinburgh continues. Pren and I have had three calls about the larger structure and Rosamund is drafting

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Ninety-Five: What Spring Feels Like This Year

    Spring arrives in Chicago the way it always does. Chipping in calmly.Not with announcement. Not on the calendar date. Just a Tuesday morning when you open the window and the air is different and something in your body recognizes it before your mind does.I open the kitchen window on a Tuesday in late March. Take in the atmosphere and a huge smile made it's way to my lips.Lucia is in the bouncy seat on the counter, which Dr. Vega approved and which I position so she can see the window because she watches what moves outside it with the focused attention of a researcher.She is seven weeks old.She sees the open window and the different air and she makes a sound.A different sound. The one that means she is registering something new and approves of it."Yes," I say. "Spring."She makes the sound again. Making irregular movements with her limbs while smiling I look at the street below while letting air pass through my hair making it wavy. I didn't put it up this time.The neighborhood

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