All Chapters of PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

110 Chapters

Bastien's POV

"She took a step," Soren says.He says it from the kitchen doorway at nine months and three weeks into Lyra's life, and he says it the way Soren says things that genuinely move him, which is with complete composure and the specific look of a man holding something carefully so it does not spill.I am in the hall.I was on my way to a call that can wait."Where," I say."Library," he says. Ivy put her down and she took one step toward the bookshelf and then sat down and looked at what she had done as if she was filing the information.I go to the library.Ivy is on the floor.Lyra is on the floor.They are three feet apart and Lyra is looking at the gap between them with the expression she has been developing since month six, which is the expression of a person who has identified a problem and is applying their full capacity to the solution.She looks at me when I come in.She says: Da.She has been saying it for six weeks with the specific directness that means she is using it as both

Ivy's wolf

"I am ready," Ivy says.She says it on a Tuesday morning in September, standing in Nadia's doorway with her jacket on and her hands at her sides and the specific composure of a person who has been making a decision for six months and has arrived at the end of the decision.Lyra is ten months old.I am in the chair beside Nadia's desk.Ivy looks at me."Today," she says. Not a question. The statement of someone who has set a date with themselves and kept it."Today," Nadia says. If you are certain."I have been certain for three months," Ivy says. I was waiting to feel ready on top of certain things. I feel ready today. She sits down in the examination chair. Tell me what happens.Nadia tells her.The process for Ivy's reversal is not the same as my emergence. Mine was a containment that reached critical pressure and released all at once. Ivy's is a suppression performed in infancy on a wolf that has never developed presence, which requires a different methodology. Nadia calls it a str

The conference

"You do not have to speak," Bastien says.He says it in the car on the way to the inter-pack governance conference, which is the one the Northern Highland Alpha invited me to in April when Lyra was two months old and which I said I would consider after she was born.She is eleven months old.I considered it.I am speaking."I know I do not have to," I say. That is why I am doing it.He looks at me with the particular expression he uses when I have said something that confirms a decision he was already comfortable with. He is not worried. He has not been worried since I told him two months ago that I wanted to go.Thirty-minute slot, he says. Followed by a twenty-minute open question session.I know, I say.You wrote the speech in two days, he says."I write quickly when I know what I want to say," I say.You always know what you want to say, he says."I know what I want to say now," I say. A year ago I knew what I needed to say. Those are different registers and require different prep

Ivy's emergence

"She is here," Ivy says. She says it on the sixth Tuesday after the first session, standing in Nadia's medical room with her hand pressed flat against her sternum and her eyes very bright and her voice doing the thing it never does, which is being completely unsteady. Ivy does not cry in front of people either. She is her father's daughter in that one way. But her eyes are bright and her hand is against her chest and she is standing in the medical room at the end of the sixth session and she is saying: she is here. Nadia is watching her with the monitors and the focused professional attention and also, underneath it, the specific quality of someone witnessing something they have been building toward and are glad to see arrive. "Walk me through what you feel," Nadia says. "Like waking up," Ivy says. Not dramatic. Not like Lena described. More like. She pauses. More like remembering something I knew before. A fact that was always true and I just could not access it. She takes a br

One year

"She is standing," Soren says.He says it from the kitchen doorway at seven in the morning on the day Lyra turns one year old, and his voice has the quality of someone reporting something remarkable while pretending it is simply an update.Lyra is standing in the middle of the kitchen.Not holding the table. Not holding a chair. Not holding anyone.Just standing.She has been capable of this for three weeks in brief intervals. But this morning she is standing in the middle of the kitchen with the specific settled quality of someone who has decided that the floor is not the primary plane of operation anymore and is adjusting their relationship with gravity accordingly.She looks at me when I come in.She nods.The nod of a person who is noting that I have arrived and this is acceptable."Good morning," I say."Ma," she says.She has seven words now.Ma. Da. More. No, which she uses precisely and frequently. The Ivy sound, which has evolved into something close to Ivy itself. Hi, which

What Neve builds

"She called the border families to the compound," Ivy says.She says it at breakfast on a Monday in November, reading from a message on her phone, and she has the expression she gets when something Neve has done confirms a thing she already believed about her.Lyra is thirteen months old and is standing at the kitchen table holding the edge with one hand and eating with the other, which is her current preferred operating method."Why," I say."There is a water dispute starting again," Ivy says. Not Crest Pack's border families this time. Two packs further north who have been escalating for six months. She reads further. Neve contacted both Alphas through formal channels and they both declined mediation. She looks up. So she invited the community members from both sides, not the Alphas, the actual families who live on the border, to come to the compound for a meal. She pauses. She is not mediating a political dispute. She is making dinner.Bastien, at the other end of the table, looks

The second letter

"He wrote again," Ivy says.She says it on a December morning, standing in the library doorway with an envelope in her hand, and her voice is doing the careful even thing it does when she is managing something larger than it appears.My father.I look at the envelope.This one is addressed to both of us.He has never done that before."When did it arrive," I say."This morning," she says. Soren left it on the library desk.I look at Bastien.He is in his chair. He looks at me with the expression that means this is yours to decide and I am here either way."Sit down," I say to Ivy.She sits.I opened the envelope.Two pages this time. The same formal paper. The same handwriting. Slanted and deliberate and completely his.I read the first page.It is addressed to me.He says he has been watching the Inter-Pack Governance Network's published work. He says he read the proceedings from the April conference. He says the speech I gave, which was published in the network's formal record, is t

What the journal says

"She wrote about the garden," Ivy says.She says it three days after the journal arrives, on a Thursday evening, sitting in the library with the small notebook in her hands. She has read it twice alone. This is the third reading, the one she said would be for sharing.I am in my chair.Bastien is in his.Lyra is asleep upstairs.The building is at its nighttime quiet and the lamp is on."Tell me," I say.Ivy opens the journal to a page she has marked."She wrote this when I was six weeks old," she says. She says: I go to the garden before the house wakes up. The herbs are coming in and the morning is the only time I have that is completely mine. I go there and I breathe and I think about the two girls in the rooms above and I decide to stay one more day.The library is quiet."One more day," I say."Every entry starts the same," Ivy says. Not the words. The structure. She describes something real. The garden. The morning light. What the compound sounds like when it is waking up. And t

The sixth thing

"She put it on the shelf herself," Bastien says.He says it from the doorway of Lyra's room on the Saturday morning after the journal reading, and his voice has the quiet of someone who has witnessed something he was not expecting and is not sure yet how large it is.I am in the hallway."What did she put," I say.Come and see, he says.I go into the room.Lyra is standing at the shelf.She is fifteen months old and she can reach the lower section now, the section where the photograph is, the section that was always going to be hers when she was tall enough.She is not reaching for the photograph.She has placed something on the shelf in the gap to the left of the photograph.I look at it.It is a rock.A small, specific rock, pale grey with a faint rose vein through the center, rounded at one end, the kind of rock that is too particular to have been picked up without intention.I crouch down beside her.She looks at me."Where did you get this," I say.She looks at the rock.She look

What she carries

"She sang," Ivy says.She says it at breakfast on a Tuesday in January, quietly, the way she says things when she is not sure yet what they mean.Lyra is sixteen months old.She is in her chair at the kitchen table, eating with the focused efficiency she always brings to food, and she has been making sounds since she woke up. Not words. A sound that has a structure to it, the same sequence of notes repeated, different each time in a small way but recognizably the same underlying thing.I have been listening since seven.I knew what it was.I was waiting for someone else to name it."She is singing," I say."She has been doing it since she woke up," Ivy says. I heard it through the wall.Bastien comes in.He hears the sound Lyra is making and goes very still in the doorway for a moment.Then he looks at me."It is a song," he says.Yes, I say."It is the same song repeated," he says."Yes," I say.He listens for a moment. He is very good at listening, at the specific precision of someo

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