All Chapters of The Alpha's Cursed Bride : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

121 Chapters

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE — WHAT HE WAS PREPARED TO DO

ORIONSeraphel arrived on a grey morning in the eighth month.She came through the gate the way she always came — without announcement, with the particular certainty of someone who had decided when to come and needed no invitation. The garrison wolf at the gate sent word to the war room. He was already moving before the messenger arrived.She was in the outer courtyard.He stopped in the doorway and looked at her.She said: "I found what I was looking for."He said: "Come inside."She said: "Get Nyra."He got Nyra.She was in the records hall with Senna, who she dismissed with a look and a nod at the door when he appeared.They went to the outer courtyard.Seraphel stood where she always stood — near the wall, still, with the quality of someone who had walked a long distance and was resting without appearing to rest.She looked at both of them.She said: "I have spent weeks reviewing the full Covenant's deep records. Not just the three precedents I found initially. Everything older th

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO — WHAT SERAPHEL SAW

NYRAAfter the declaration in the outer yard, the household was different.Not dramatically — the Keep ran the same way it had always run and the dispatches went out the same and Senna's replacement from the Vane household arrived on schedule and the garrison logbook was still the garrison logbook. But the quality of the household was different in the small ways that matter.The household staff said her name when they came to the war room with messages. Not my lady or the Luna — her name. The garrison wolves who had been nodding acknowledgment since the war were now doing something more than nodding — a specific deferential attention that meant they had updated their understanding of what they owed her.Caius said, on the third morning after the declaration: "The household has decided."I said: "About what?"He said: "About you."I looked at him.He said: "They have been observing for ten months. Watching to see what you were. What you brought here. What you were going to do with what

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE — WHAT THE MOON GODDESS WITNESSED

ORIONEight months. He marked it the morning it arrived by writing the date in the small leather notebook at the top of a new page. She saw him do it. She did not say anything. He looked across the table. She looked up. He said: "Eight months." She said: "Yes." He said: "How do you feel?" She said: "Large." He almost smiled. She said: "Strong. Tired. Ready." He said: "Ready." She said: "I do not want to wait anymore. I am ready for it to happen." He said: "We still have—" She said: "I know. But I am ready." She looked at the table. "The waiting is the part I am not good at." He said: "You have been exceptional at the waiting." She said: "From the outside." He said: "Yes. From the outside." She looked at him. He said: "From the outside you have been the most composed person I have ever watched handle something impossible." She said: "I have been managing." He said: "Yes. And it has been extraordinary." She held his gaze. She said: "You have been managing too." He said: "Not as well." S

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR — EIGHT MONTHS

NYRAThe ninth month arrived the way the other months had arrived — the morning of it was an ordinary morning, the dispatches were on the table, the tea was there in two cups, the garrison report was on top of the pile.She was nine months pregnant.He looked at her across the table.She said: "Do not look at me like that."He said: "Like what."She said: "Like I might break."He said: "I am not looking at you like you might break."She said: "You are looking at me like you are memorizing something."He held that.He said: "Yes."She looked at him.He said: "I am memorizing you at the table with the tea and the morning dispatch. I am memorizing you reading with your pen in your hand and your attention entirely on the page." He paused. "I am memorizing this morning."She looked at him for a long moment.She said: "Don't."He said: "Nyra—"She said: "If you spend the ninth month memorizing things you will miss the things that are happening."He held that.She said: "Be here. In the morn

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE — WHAT HE HAD NEVER TOLD ANYONE

ORIONShe woke at the second hour with the specific awareness of her body telling her something was changing.Not the scare — not the preparation pains the healer had described. Something different. A deepening. A settling.She lay in the dark and breathed through it.It passed.She waited.It came again.She waited through it.It passed again.She sat up.She sat in the dark of the east wing and breathed carefully and waited for the next one and when it came she timed it in her head and when it passed she sat with the information.The intervals were irregular. Not labor. Not yet. But something had started that was moving toward labor and the question was when.She could wake him. He was in the west wing — he had stayed later than usual but had gone eventually — and she could wake him now.She decided to wait for the next one.It came at the fourth hour.Stronger.She got up.She lit the lamp.She dressed carefully and went to the war room and sat at the table and began making notes.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX — SHE PREPARES

NYRAThe child came at the seventh hour of the evening.She was small and certain and she came with the specific purposefulness of someone who had been making her presence known for months and had finally decided the time was right.The healer placed her in Nyra's arms.She was there.She was crying — the particular strong cry of a child who had arrived and was informing everyone present of the fact — and Nyra was looking at her with an expression he had never seen on her face before. Not the composure. Not the management. Something open and enormous that did not have a common name.He stood at the side of the room and watched.He had been there through the whole of it — through the long afternoon and the hours and the moments that had required him to be present and the moments that had required him to stay back. He had held her hand and he had breathed with her and he had been in the room because he had promised to be in the room.The child was here.He looked at the child.She was s

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN — HE READS IT ONE LAST TIME

ORIONShe did not know what was happening to her.That was the most frightening part — not the pain, which was present but not the overwhelming thing, not the fear, which she had decided not to have and mostly did not. The most frightening part was that she could not read what her body was doing and she had always been able to read things.She said: "The clause is not completing."She said it to the healer who was watching carefully and to Orion who was holding her hand and to the room in general because saying it out loud was how she verified information.The healer said: "Correct. The life force is not being drawn."She said: "Something is happening instead."The healer said: "Yes."She said: "What."The healer said: "I have never seen this before."She breathed through what was happening in her body and thought: that is not helpful and that is the most honest thing anyone has said in the past hour.She looked at Orion.He said: "I am here."She said: "I know." She breathed. "I need

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT — THE BIRTH BEGINS

She said: "I will not come again unless you call for me."She walked out.He heard her footsteps going through the corridor and the outer yard and then the sound of the gate.The east wing was quiet.He looked at Nyra.She looked at him.She said: "She said the wolf who loved the mountain became part of it."He said: "Yes."She said: "To Caele."He said: "Yes."She said: "She knows what Caele is going to be."He said: "Yes."She looked at the baby.She said: "So do I."She looked at him.She said: "Something new."He said: "Yes."She said: "This whole Keep has been building toward something new."He said: "Yes."She held the baby in the morning light.He sat beside her.The east wing was warm.The fire was burning.The child was here.After Seraphel left he sat beside Nyra in the east wing for a long time.Not working. Not discussing strategy or correspondence or the Varro monitoring or the allied pack communications. Just sitting.Caele was asleep.The morning was doing what mornings

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE — COME BACK

ORIONOn the fourteenth day after Caele's birth, Nyra came back to the war room.He was already there. He had been there since the sixth hour.She came in at the seventh hour with Caele in one arm and a morning dispatch in the other hand, set the dispatch on the table, set Caele in the chair beside her where a cushion had been placed at some point in the past two weeks, and sat down and opened the dispatch.He looked at her.She looked at the dispatch.She said: "Crest's response arrived."He said: "What does he say."She said: "That he congratulates the Fenwick Realm on the birth of an heir. That the eastern alliance is fully committed. That whatever Caele turns out to be the Crest Pack looks forward to knowing her." She turned the page. "And that the spring conference's agenda should include a formal announcement and a celebration and he would like to host it."He said: "That is a significant offer."She said: "Yes." She set the letter down. "He is committing his pack to the Fenwick

CHAPTER EIGHTY — HOLD ON

NYRAThe pain came in waves and between the waves I was still completely myself.That was the part Seraphel had not told me. That the clarity would be there even inside the worst of it, that the two things would sit alongside each other without canceling each other out. Pain and presence. Both at the same time.Lena was on my left. Seraphel was on my right. She had arrived at the Keep at the third hour of the night, coming through the gate before Orion's runner had reached her which meant she had felt something, or known something, or simply understood that tonight was the night and had come.She said: "I am here."I said: "Good."That had been four hours ago.Orion was in the corridor. I had sent word when I was ready for him to come inside and I was not yet ready. I needed to get through the first part alone. I had always gotten through the first part of things alone. It was how I was built.Between the fourth and fifth wave I said: "Tell him to come in."Lena went to the door.He c

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