Semua Bab CRAVING THE WRONG BLACKTHORNE BROTHER: Bab 141 - Bab 150

“The council finds in favour of the Alpha.” Six words. The head of the council delivered them the way he delivered everything, without drama, without ceremony, just the words placed in the air and left there for the room to do with what it needed to. Nate said nothing. Levi said nothing. I said nothing. The chamber behind the head of the council was still visible through the open doors and the twelve faces in it were arranged into the specific neutrality of people who had made a difficult decision and were comfortable with it, which was different from the neutrality of people who were uncertain, and I had learned the difference over the past months. They were comfortable. “The challenge is dismissed,” the head of the council said. “The Alpha’s household and its arrangement are a private matter outside the jurisdiction of this council provided the pack’s stability is maintained.” He paused. “The paternity question as it pertains to the Alpha title has been reviewed. The counci

Nobody had planned lunch. That was the thing. There was no staff instruction, no arranged menu, no Marcus coordination. Marguerite said she wanted something to eat and Nate said of course and then everyone looked at each other in the small sitting room for a moment and Levi stood up and said he would sort it and went to the kitchen. I followed him because I needed to move and because the small sitting room with Victor and Vivienne and Marguerite in it was a room that needed fewer people in it for a few minutes, not more. The kitchen was bright and ordinary. Levi stood in front of the open fridge looking at it with the focused consideration he gave to things that had straightforward solutions and were therefore restful. “What do we have,” I said. “Enough,” he said. “Sit down.” “I can help.” “Ella.” He looked at me. “Sit down.” I sat down. He cooked in the specific way he had, which was without consulting anyone or announcing what he was doing, just moving through the kitchen

The first ten minutes were fine. Productive, even, in the specific way Hayes used the word productive when she meant the body was doing what it was supposed to do and she was satisfied with the rate of it. The contractions were strong and close and I breathed through each one the way I had been shown and held Nate’s hand and focused on the ceiling and the specific point on it I had chosen to look at, a small imperfection in the plaster just to the left of the light fitting that nobody had ever noticed or bothered to fix and that was now the most important thing in the room. The second ten minutes were harder. The contractions changed quality somewhere in the middle of them, longer and less regular, and Hayes made a small sound that was not alarm and was not reassurance and I filed it without looking at her because looking at her would have made it into something and I had twenty minutes left and I was not going to make it into something yet. Nate’s hand was steady in mine. He di

I woke up and the room was different. Not dramatically. The medical wing was the same room it had always been, same walls, same light fitting, same monitors doing their steady work. But the people in it had rearranged themselves while I was asleep into a configuration I had not left them in and had not expected to find. Nate was in the chair by the window with Mara. She was asleep on his chest with her cheek against his collarbone and her mouth slightly open and her small hands loose at her sides, and he was not asleep. He was looking out the window at whatever the evening had done to the estate grounds while I slept, his hand curved around her back, his face doing the open unguarded thing it only did when he thought nobody was watching. I watched. Levi was on the sofa that someone had pulled into the room at some point, with Eli in the crook of his arm and a book open on his knee that he was not reading. He was looking at the top of Eli’s head with the expression he wore when h

Hayes discharged us at eight in the morning. She used that word, discharged, with the professional formality of someone who had decided to treat the medical wing like a proper facility and not like a room in a house she had been working in for six years, and I appreciated it because it gave the morning a shape, a beginning and an end, something to move through toward something else. She went through her list. Feeding, sleeping, weight checks, the appointment she had booked for three days from now, the things to watch for that required calling her immediately, the things to watch for that could wait until the appointment, the things that were normal and would feel alarming and were not. She looked at Nate while she said most of it and then at Levi and then at me and then at Nate again, which was her way of making sure the information went somewhere it would actually be used. Nate listened with the focused attention he gave to things that required it. Levi listened with one hand o