Ch. 41

The new city woke hungry and unpredictable, more wild animal than civilization—a fact underlined by the way it swelled and mutated every day. Carolina, who had never before craved steadiness, now found herself flinching from each new electric outburst, each mini-riot, each fevered celebration. She chalked it up to lack of sleep, the recent gunshot, maybe Lyme exposure. But the ache behind her eyes grew by the hour, and a sour lurch pulled at her belly most mornings until past noon, as if she’d swallowed something malignant.

The first time she woke up retching, Lyra glowered at her from the blanketless mattress and announced, “You’re falling apart, boss.”

“I’ll survive,” Carolina growled, flushing the stained water down the market-house drain. But after the third straight morning, Marcus—who had not forgotten his place as armchair medic—left a battered first-aid kit by her cot. Inside, alongside the standard pills and battered scissors, was a brightly colored box scavenged from somewhere arcane: an honest-to-god pregnancy test.

She stared at it for long minutes, then stuffed it to the bottom of the kit, and made a circuit of the city wall.

But the queasy drag only sharpened. The city throbbed in her blood. People expected her to fix it, to be the unbreakable legend. She did not want them to see her leaking weakness. She did not want to be seen at all.

On the fifth day, Lyra found her crouched beside the shallow river, knuckles white on the railing, sweat tangling her hair. Lyra knelt beside her, silent for a half-minute, which was the kindest thing she could have done. Then she said, “If you don’t piss on that stick by midnight, I’m telling Briony.”

Carolina rolled her eyes but took the test. She locked herself in the ruined upstairs lavatory, breathing the mildew and dust, and waited for the result. She thought about every time in the last year she’d let herself hope for more than survival. She thought about Xander—his smile, his laugh, the way he’d once called her Luna and made it sound both regal and ridiculous. They hadn’t slept together since the first wave of fighting, but the math checked out.

The result glowed positive—two lines. She looked away, then back again. The lines persisted, irreversible as sunrise.

She slid to the floor, cold tiles through her thin shirt. Waited for terror or regret, but felt only a dull tidal pull. The inevitability of it. Like her body was just another city, slouching toward its next incarnation.

Lyra was waiting outside, legs braced and teeth bared in a nervous smile.

“Well?” she said.

Carolina handed her the stick. Lyra studied it, then slumped back against the wall. “Shit. You’re not going to tell him, are you.”

Carolina grunted, “Not unless you make me.”

Lyra turned the test over in her hands, flicking it lightly. “You can’t run a city on your own, you know. And you sure as hell can’t do—” she waved vaguely at Carolina’s abdomen “—that solo, either.”

Carolina closed her eyes, listening to her own pulse drum. “I wasn’t made for this,” she managed, her voice flat.

“No one was. But you do it anyway.” Lyra’s voice edged softer, almost sweet. “Let’s go see the pack doc, just to make sure. Then you can decide if you want to be the world’s most terrifying mother.”

The exam was held in the burnt-out shell of an old pharmacy, with Xander’s medical crew working around scavenged lamps and mismatched blankets. “For privacy,” they insisted, though everyone on the block could see Carolina arrive, flanked by Lyra.

The nurse—a genderless wonder named Jez—smiled gently and spoke in a hush. “Suppose you want to know if it’ll last,” Jez said, hands featherlight at Carolina’s pulse. “Suppose you want to know if it’ll change a damn thing.”

Carolina shook her head, then nodded, then buried her face in her hands. Lyra answered for her: “She wants to know when she can go back to work. And if there’s any shot in hell the kid comes out with fewer issues than us.”

They ran the tests, took the blood, and Jez patted her cheek before she left. “You did good.”

Outside, Lyra held her hand, awkward at first but then fiercely—like she was afraid Carolina would float off, now that there was more at stake.

“You should tell Xander,” Lyra said eventually, not as an order but as a fact that one day must happen.

Carolina kissed Lyra’s brow—quick, sharp—and said nothing all the way back to their headquarters.

That night, the city split itself open for one of its spontaneous celebrations. Someone had managed to restore power to the old stadium, and sudden floodlights carved the night; every balcony and rooftop poured out with dancers and laughers and, god help them, fireworks. Children traced sparklers on the abandoned field. The wolves ran in joyous chaos, chasing bursts of flame and hoarse-voiced songs.

Carolina stood at the edge of the crowd, watching the new future she’d broken into being. At her side, Lyra scanned for threats, her hand lingering at Carolina’s elbow.

For the first time, Carolina let herself see the whole city: the children who’d need schooling, the broken elders who’d need looking after, the markets and rivers and all the lives that didn’t fit into “survival” but maybe, one day, could be called living.

She pressed a palm to her stomach—just a flicker of warmth—and imagined a chain that stretched not only backward, but forward; not a shackle, but a lifeline, coiled around her and Lyra and Xander, and the accidental possibilities yet to come.

Tomorrow, she’d tell him. Tonight, she could allow herself a moment to dream.

And in the bomb-lit night, Carolina’s laughter joined the chorus, wolfish and wild, and nobody found it strange at all.