LOGINFIVE LONG YEARS LATER... "IT HAS BEEN five whole years, Silas. Five years!!" Iris was yelling at the top of her voice. "Leave me alone, woman," Silas snapped, nursing his bottle of beer. "You don't care for anything anymore," Iris was saying. “You do not perform your duties. You do not sit in the council. You do not even look at your son.” A small cough came from the hallway. “If you go on like this, this pack will be dust in a few years. And I will not be here to watch it. I will take our son and I will leave.” With that, she turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard that the shelves shook. Silas hurled the bottle after her. It burst against the wood, and beer ran down the grain in dark rivers. A moment later, the door opened again, and his Beta stepped carefully over the broken glass. “Do not say a word,” Silas growled. “The Luna is right.” “Luna.” Silas laughed, a short, ugly sound. "As if." “It is not noon,” Darius said, glancing at the floor. “That i
~ELARA~EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO fast that my fork was still in my hand when Jane pulled me up the stairs.One minute, I had been stuffing food into my mouth as Jane cooed over my sleeping daughter. The next, the door had banged open, and the pack’s elders had come for my head. Then Marcel had moved, and I had not known a man could move like that.“Upstairs,” Bruce said, hurrying after his alpha. “Now, Elara.”Jane did not wait for me to answer. She hustled me up the steps with the baby wailing in her arms, and she put us in a room with a window that looked out over the yard.I looked at the door where Tomas had crashed through, and shivered. I could not see what was going on outside, but I could still hear the sounds of heavy footsteps.I joined Jane upstairs, gratefully. A window faced the yard, and I looked through. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the multitude of people gathered there.Had they all been waiting for this?"Step away from the window," Jane said softly. My baby
~MARCEL~ELARA WAS DISCHARGED ten days after the birth, and I had spent more of those ten days at the medical center than I would ever admit to anyone.I found myself standing at the nursery glass at three in the morning, watching a very small chest rise and fall, watching her get stronger. "She is all set, sir," a nurse said. "Ready to go."I looked up. Elara was in a wheelchair, carrying the baby in her arms. She looked surprised to see me. She must have been expecting Bruce or someone else to come pick her up."Thank you," I smiled tightly as I signed off the documents.The nurse waved at us as I helped Elara into the back seat and pulled out of the parking lot.The car was quiet except for the small, soft sounds of the sleeping baby. I glanced at them via the rear-view mirror. Elara's gaze was pinned outside the window. I swallowed and asked, "Have you thought of a name?"She shook her head. "Not yet...""You should," I muttered, knowing it sounded foolish. After all, her executi
~MARCEL~THE HOSPITAL WAS a small grey building on the edge of the nearest town. I pulled up in front of the doors so hard the car rocked.I approached the desk nurse, who was an elderly Matron."Hello sir, can we help you?" She asked, flashing me a smile.I nodded. "A woman was brought in today. She was going into labor."The smile faded a degree. “Are you family? Her husband?”I began to shake my head but stopped myself. "I am her husband, yes. She was brought here by my sister.""You should have had her registered, sir," the nurse said. "We did not have any antenatal records or anything...""We only just moved into the area," I gave her a tight smile. "It happened by surprise..."“Your name, sir? Her date of birth? Insurance—”Bruce stepped up beside me. “I will handle the forms,” he said, in the calm Beta voice that could talk a river back uphill. He slid a card across the counter, the same company card that owned the land beneath our feet. Then he gestured to me with his head. “
~MARCEL~ "YOU DON'T HAVE to keep on being mean to her," Bruce said as we walked on. I gave my beta a look that said "drop it," and shook my head without responding. The thought had been bugging my mind as her due date drew closer. After her pregnancy, what next? I could see the impatience in the eyes of some of the elders, and I knew they were also counting down to when she gave birth so she could be executed accordingly, but... "You can not kill her," my beast growled. "Not now. Not ever." I chuffed and pushed him to the back of my head. This unreasonable bond he felt to her wolf... Over the past five months, I avoided any contact with Elara Grogel, but I kept my eyes on her. I would watch her from a distance, watching how she moved, how her eyes crinkled at the edges when she smiled. Once I stood behind a woodpile for twenty minutes while she sat on Jane’s porch and laughed at something my sister said, her head thrown back, one hand resting on the curve of her belly,
SIX MONTHS LATER ~ELARA~ THE LAST FEW months went by in a blur since I was pardoned by Marcel. The pack members did not change how they viewed or treated me. I was still a Grogel, their hated enemy—but what changed was the size of my stomach. It had gradually grown bigger, until now it was the size of a watermelon. "The scent of those might end up making you nauseous." A voice called out to me. I was crouched among the herbs behind the cabin, running my thumb over a blossom I could not name, when a voice came from behind me. I turned to see Jane walking towards me. I smiled warmly, but I still plucked the flower I had been caressing. Jane had been my only friend since the day I was abducted. She had taken me in against her brother's wishes, and she was the only person in this pack I could speak to freely. "I will try to keep my meals in my stomach," I smiled back at her as she linked an arm through mine, and we walked out into the street. The pack was settling here in the moun







