Return of the Nameless Alpha
Wren's whole body goes still.
The spoon stops halfway to the pot, water hissing against the burner behind her, and for one full second she forgets to breathe at all.
"What pictures, baby?"
Fern doesn't answer right away. She opens the sketchbook instead, flips past pages of careful, precise drawings, houses and dogs and one recurring sketch of three stick figures holding hands under a tree, until she lands on a page near the back.
It's a face. A rough, five-year-old attempt at a face, dark hair, a hard line for a jaw, done in the same grey pencil Fern uses for everything she isn't sure how to name yet.