RiverWatching his wife's abdomen continue to grow as she carried his child was an amazing feeling, something River never realized could be so enthralling. He had always wanted children, but he had never known how rewarding it would feel to see his baby growing every day and know that his wife was building that baby all by herself. It truly was a miracle, and he couldn't be prouder of Ellie than he was as he gazed at her on a daily basis as she progressed through the pregnancy.But he was also worried. Everything seemed like a threat now. Not only was he worried about the fact that he couldn't figure out how those rogues were getting over the chasm without leaving tracks that led right up to the ravine, but he hated that he couldn't track them. When he went all the way around to try to figure out where they had crossed the ravine and where they had disappeared to, he had had no luck, and River was starting to get frustrated."It's been two months, sir," Beta Andrew reminded him as the

EllieWhile she had to admit, she'd never tried carrying a bowling ball around in her shirt before, by the time she was seven months pregnant, Ellie had to imagine that that's what it felt like lugging the baby around wherever she went. It seemed like she must not have gained as much weight as many of the women in the pack expected her to as many of them made comments about how she still looked lovely and had, "kept her figure," but Ellie didn't feel that way. In fact, with every passing day, she felt more like a poofy marshmallow woman than a beautiful Luna who could easily wear high heels and fit into a little black dress. Not that she had even seen her feet recently to tell what she was wearing on them.Gone were her days of taking the other women out on patrol and practicing anything that meant shifting. Likewise, she wouldn't go outside in the late summer heat if it meant she would be first in line at an all-you-can-eat rocky road ice cream and sour dill pickle stand. No, she wa

EllieThe warm water of the birthing pool helped.It helped the same way that an aspirin helped when a person had their arm chopped off.Not that Ellie had ever had her arm chopped off, but she could imagine it was similar. Still, she was committed now, and she was going through with this despite the fact that she was seriously regretting her decision to have this baby this way. When the midwife had offered her drugs early on in the process, when they'd originally discussed the options and then again this afternoon when the question of "are you sure" had been posed to her, she should've been allowed a few moments to confer with a jury of her peers–other mothers who had gone through this before and knew better than she did. Practical women. Women with good memories. Women with low pain tolerances. Ellie had never thought of herself as having a low tolerance for pain, but then, she'd also never tried to drag a watermelon through her nostril.And if River told her she was doing great one

EllieHaving a baby was hard. Being a mother was harder.Ellie had known that it would be, but it wasn't until about two weeks in when she was running on empty, after only getting a minimum of four hours of sleep in a row per night, feeling like her brains were made of mashed potatoes, and her body still wasn't hers, that she suddenly realized that the hard part didn't end when she pushed the baby out. Her boobs were huge and they hurt like h*ll, regardless of whether or not there was a little glutton latched on to one of them. When her tiny daughter wasn't there filling herself up until she was so milk-drunk she looked like she was totally wasted, Ellie had to worry about leaking all over herself. But that wasn't the only bodily fluid she had to worry about. H*ll, it wasn't even the only one of her bodily fluids that might come out unexpectedly. Oh, no. Not everything snapped back right away. Sneezing was dangerous. And then… there was a reason those massive maxi pads came home with

RiverBeing away from Michaela was hard, but River had work to do. He had to continue his work as an Alpha because the rogues that they'd been sighting for weeks were being spotted more regularly now, and he was starting to get a little nervous."We saw them this morning," Andrew said while they were looking at a map in the office in the village before they went out on a patrol. "There were six of them, and they were over here." He pointed at a spot nearer the village than they had ever been. They were clearly inside of the pack territory now."Which way were they headed?" River asked, just wanting to make sure that he understood what he'd been told earlier."They were headed southeast," Andrew said. "We think they'd been even closer to the village earlier in the evening, but no one saw them until the patrol came by around five. By then, they were headed back out.""What do you think they were doing?" River couldn't quite understand what they were up to."We don't know, but they can't