บททั้งหมดของ PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : บทที่ 111 - บทที่ 120

"I want to tell you something," Soren says.He says it on a Wednesday evening in February, standing in the library doorway with his jacket still on and his phone in his hand and the specific expression he uses when he has been holding something for a while and has decided tonight is the night.Lyra is asleep. Ivy is at the compound for three days working on the governance framework with Neve. Bastien is at the desk. I am in my chair.Soren comes in and sits on the sofa, which he almost never does. He is a hallway person, a doorway person, a table person. The sofa means he is staying."Tell me," I say."I am leaving Iron Fang," he says.The library is quiet."Not the building," he says immediately. Not you. Not Lyra. He holds my gaze and then Bastien's. "I am leaving the administrative role. The pack operations. The daily management function." He pauses. I have been thinking about this for six months and I have not known how to say it because it felt like abandoning something and then

Reva calls on a Thursday afternoon in March with a question instead of an announcement, which is unusual for her. "I want to bring something to Lyra myself," she says, "rather than sending it. Would that be alright with you both, and would Wednesday work?"I look at Bastien across the kitchen table, where we've been going through Lyra's spring wardrobe needs with the specific seriousness that two-year-old growth spurts require, and he nods before I've even finished relaying the question."Wednesday is fine," I say. What is it?"I'll show her when I get there," Reva says, and there's something in her voice, a careful lightness, that tells me she's been planning this for a while and doesn't want to spoil the unveiling with a phone description.Wednesday arrives grey and mild, the kind of early spring day that can't decide what season it belongs to, and Reva arrives at eleven with a wrapped object under one arm that is clearly not small and clearly not light, judging by how she shifts it

"She wants to name the baby," Ivy says.She says it at breakfast with the expression of someone reporting something she personally finds delightful, having just come from Lyra's room where Lyra apparently began the morning with a formal announcement about her intentions.Lyra is sitting at the kitchen table with the particular composure of someone who has already made her position clear and is waiting for the household to catch up."Tell me," I say to her directly."Baby needs a name," Lyra says. I will choose it.Bastien, pouring coffee at the counter, turns around with the expression that is one degree short of a smile and very deliberately does not say anything."We appreciate the offer," I say. "What name did you have in mind?"Lyra thinks about this with the thoroughness she brings to all decisions."River," she says. "Because water goes everywhere."The kitchen is quiet for a moment."That is a very good reason for a name," Ivy says, and she means it completely, which is one of

"Three weeks," Nadia says.She says it on a Tuesday in October at the thirty-seven week check, and she says it the way she says things that are close to certain but not entirely predictable, with the professional evenness of someone who has learned that timelines and children negotiate their own terms.I am at the examination table. Bastien is in his chair to my left, the chair that is simply his chair now, worn slightly in the specific way of something that has been used consistently and with intention."The river is lower than Lyra was at this stage," Nadia says. "The field activity has been increasing over the past week. The dispersed quality I have been documenting is beginning to concentrate, which in my observation is what happens just before this particular child decides to do something.""She concentrates before she acts," I say."Yes," Nadia says. "She has been spreading outward for thirty-seven weeks and now she is gathering inward. I think she is getting ready." She makes n

"The Iron Fang founding texts," Bastien says.He says it at seven in the morning, two and a half hours after River arrived, sitting at the library desk with three books open in front of him that he retrieved from the secondary archive on the fourth floor, the shelf where the oldest Iron Fang documents live in a row that I have walked past for three years without ever opening any of them.River is in my arms.Lyra is on the floor beside my chair with her back against the bookshelf and her morning book open on her lap, but she is not reading. She is watching her father with the attention she gives to things she has decided are important to track."What do the texts say," I say."I have been trying to remember since the birth room," he says. "I read them once, when I was seventeen, during the same period I drove three hours to the governance session no one invited me to." He turns a page carefully. "The Iron Fang founding records describe the original Alpha line. Not political records. B