Page 210 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

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In the morning, Night wasn’t in bed with me. His absence didn’t alarm or bother me as much as it used to because that usually meant he was with our daughter. My suspicions were confirmed when I got up to brush my teeth and heard shrieking giggles coming from her room.

I walked into our daughter’s room to see her cracking up as Night lifted her in the air.

I leaned against the doorframe, watching them.

Her face was red and still wet with tears, but she’d already forgotten about whatever had upset her.

She, I already knew, was going to be a daddy’s girl.

I used to be a bit jealous, but now I was happy about it.

Given how much Night had fretted over me during my pregnancy and how he fawned over Ember now that she was here, he’d earned that.

We named her Ember, in honor of all of the grit and fire it took to bring her here, as well as the fierce love we had for her.

I’d thought about naming her Blossom after my mother, but it didn’t feel necessary.

I didn’t feel that my mother’s spirit wanted that from me, and besides, I wasn’t sure if Blossom was even her real name.

It was better to give our baby a name that was completely her own so she could make herself into the person she wanted to be.

That’s not to say that little Ember didn’t love me. When she noticed I was standing in the doorway, she squealed with delight and reached her pudgy hands for me. And when Night looked my way, his face lit up with so much love, my heart swelled.

“Come here, love,” he said. “Let us hold you.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I went to my family and took our bundle of joy into my arms while Night held us against his chest. I buried my nose into Ember’s soft, curly hair and took a deep whiff of her sweet smell.

She was ours, and everything about her, from her raven-black hair to her bright aquamarine eyes, said as much.

Eight months had passed in a blink. Ember was already trying to walk and talk.

It seemed like it had just been the other day that Night and I were bickering about the stress of moving our things into our new cabin.

We moved within hours of my being discharged from the hospital because I refused to let my baby sleep under the alpha cabin’s roof.

Thankfully, everything in the house had been ready for us: linens on the bed and cribs, cookware and dinnerware, and a stocked fridge.

Night and I spent the first month of Ember’s life just figuring things out. It was harder back then to predict her mood and when she was hungry or tired. After those first weeks, however, we got the hang of it.

Night flourished as a father. I’d thought I’d seen every side of my mate, but he was so different with her.

He grew emotional at every milestone, whether it was when she started trying to talk or when she started rolling over, sitting up, and crawling on her own.

He doted on her and spoiled her even more than Violet and Glenda.

He insisted on carrying her everywhere we went.

I was sure that he’d have a tough time when she really started walking, but it was so special and so sweet.

Seeing him like that truly made my heart sing.

Having the baby had put me even more in touch with my pack mother blood.

I had a lot more knowledge about how not just my body worked but Ember’s and Night’s, too.

I started to know what was wrong with them just by looking at them and touching them.

My connection with my wolf was also stronger than ever.

She didn’t feel like a separate part of me anymore because I trusted her completely.

We were in sync, the way we ought to have been since I was a child.

Not just that, but the memory walks got easier and easier each time I did them.

I didn’t even need the elders there to do the ritual.

Lance stayed true to his promise, thanks to the builders who devoted their extra time to building the pack lands where the feral kids could stay.

It took them just two months to prepare basic housing cabins, a recreation hall, a cafeteria, and a small garden.

It was meant to be a place the kids could enjoy in either their wolf or human forms. We called it the Panacea Compound.

Their progress was helped by the presence of other kids who were going through the same thing, along with visits from Kings and Wargs pack members and their families.

With the help of the boys who could speak, we were slowly learning which boys had died or been killed, and we created a memorial plaque for them on Panacea.

Alpha Oakley had engraved their names in the limestone, and when we learned a batch of new names, he came back to update it.

Looking at the memorial almost every day was bittersweet. On the one hand, it was a gorgeous tribute to their lives. On the other, it was a reminder that we’d been unable to save all of them and that we were responsible for some of their deaths.

After playing with Night and Ember, I started my day.

We would leave her with the grandmas while we worked.

My duties that day included checking on the health of the garden and our food stock; speaking with Jefferson, the head banker, to see what our finances looked like; and finally, completing at least three memory walks.

I preferred to do the rituals at the end of the day because I could finish my daily duties before then. The memory walks were less taxing on my body than before, but they could last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half per kid. I liked having as much time as possible to work.

The boys preferred their wolf forms even after they learned how to shift back, and they were more playful than when we first brought them to Panacea.

Lance usually helped me corral them because they were easily riled up.

I was there earlier than he was, so while I waited for them to arrive, I took a walk around Panacea.

While looking at the large cabins, I took inventory of myself.

Lately, I’d been waking up feeling that something was off about me.

It was like something was sapping the energy right out of my body, but that didn’t make sense.

As I’d said, memory walks were much easier now, and my work rehabilitating and speaking with the feral children and their families could be exhausting, but not enough to warrant my exhaustion at the end of the day.

“Bryn!”

Pax’s voice sounded seconds before he launched into my legs with a hug.

I laughed and bent to pat his head. Kids often hung around Panacea, both out of curiosity and to do what they could to help.

Their favorite ways of doing that were in the forms of arts and crafts, play, and talking with the feral kids—under close supervision, of course.

Pax was going on nine, and he’d had a bit of a growth spurt of a couple of inches. He now reached my hip and, as he liked to remind me, was a big boy.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“For now, I’m just taking a walk,” I said. “What about you?”

“I came here to play, but my friends are sleeping,” he said. “I don’t like waiting, so I was gonna come back later, but then I saw you.”

“Oh, I see!” I smiled at him as he continued to talk to me. Speaking to him and laughing with him reminded me of the vision I saw of my mother speaking to Night. It was like a flash of déjà vu.

Pax and I did two laps around Panacea. There had been a lot of changes since the boys started relearning their humanity.

With the help of Lance, myself, Mom, the builders, and the gardeners, they were learning the skills they needed to make the space their own.

Inside the cabins, those who were further along with their recovery were able to paint their rooms.

Samuel had helped them with that. He was a completely different person. No longer agoraphobic, he’d blossomed into a social butterfly. I think part of him wanted to atone for escaping without them—something he viewed as a betrayal—but more than that, he’d missed his friends.

I referred to the feral kids as “kids” and “boys,” but the oldest of them were only a little younger than me.

They were close to adulthood but knew nothing about how to function in a real pack.

There was a special school to teach them the basics of pack life and to continue—in some cases, re-teach them—their education.

Tanya and a few other women ran it. I’d sat in on some of these classes, and they were productive, lovely, non-judgmental sessions.

For Night’s part, he came as often as he could to lead the boys on a run through our territory.

For those who had a tougher time adjusting to their human forms or were acting out for any number of reasons, he talked them through it.

I hated what they’d had to endure because of Troy, but we’d proven that with time, patience, and love, they could be guided through their issues.

As Pax and I finished our second lap, Lance walked up to us. “Hey, sis.”

I made a face at him. “Hi, bro.”

He snickered at my annoyance. Currently, as my romance novels liked to say, he was the most “eligible bachelor” of both packs.

He had every unmated woman’s eye but didn’t seem interested in any of them.

If he wasn’t in a hurry to settle down, I wouldn’t push him to do that…

unless it was to tease him, of course. He had opened up more in the past few months, and we’d grown closer as siblings.

It hadn’t taken that long for me to be unable to imagine my life without him around.

I gave Pax a goodbye kiss on top of his head, along with the promise that I’d read with him again soon.

“Okay,” he said. “Can it be the one about the knight?”

The question made my eyes sting even as I smiled at him. He was still eager to be one of my personal guards. What a precious little boy.

Though the three rituals lasted only about half an hour each, and the sun was just beginning its descent, I was exhausted by the end of them.

I wanted to go to sleep, but when Lance and I arrived at our cabin, Night said Tavi and Dom wanted us to visit them.

They were spending most of their time on Wargs’ territory, with Dom serving as a kind of beta/vice alpha and Tavi serving as vice den mother.

This was a better setup for the pack, and they were managing really well, even though they’d had to slow down with Tavi’s due date approaching.

According to Stan, her baby would be coming next month.

But if we were going there, that meant we’d have to go on a run.

The thought of it exhausted me, but it wouldn’t take long, and I really, really wanted to see them.

It’d been three days since I’d seen Dom and even longer since I’d set eyes on Tavi because she wasn’t feeling up to making the trip these days.

Lance hugged me. He used to be so awkward about it, but now he gave hugs freely to me, Tavi, Mom, and Violet. Sometimes, he even hugged Night. “Give them my best while you’re there,” he said. “And make sure not to drink too much.”

I raised a brow at him. “Is that a joke? You know they hardly have alcohol in their place these days.”

In response, he ruffled the hair on top of my head. “Don’t worry about it.”

He assured us that he’d keep an eye on the Kings and would let us know if anything came up.

Samara split her time between the Kings and the Camas compounds, but she was here for now. She was learning about what being a den mother was. She was such a quick study, she’d taken to it right away.

We asked Mom if it was okay to leave Ember with her for the night, and she didn’t seem at all upset about it.

“Of course!” she said, beaming. “I’ll have Stan and Violet over, and we’ll all have a good time.

” Ember was in my mom’s arms and chewing on the collar of her shirt, which was now full of little holes.

She was teething, and she often chewed holes in collars and necklines if we weren’t paying attention.

We ran to Wargs’ territory. When we arrived, Dom and Tavi met us at their temporary cabin. Their usual one was being renovated in preparation for their baby.

“How are things going with the cabin?” Night asked as we sat with them at the dining table.

“Ugh,” Tavi groaned. “Don’t even ask. Dom and I can’t agree on what color we want the baby’s room to be, and that’s slowing everything down.”

“Lemon is a better color for a newborn,” Dom piped up as Tavi paused to sip her water.

She snorted. Tavi was much more exuberant with her due date coming up. I wasn’t sure if it was more of her old self coming back or if her excitement just made her more likely to bounce around and joke. Either way, she seemed completely happy.

“Says the guy with absolutely zero sense of style.”

Dom snickered. I know my oldest brother wasn’t that married to his choice of color. He lived to mess with his mate, and he loved when Tavi gave it right back to him. She was at her sharpest and most vibrant when they bickered lovingly. They were a perfect match.

“Lilac is more flattering for a baby, but whatever. Anyway, we’re hoping to get this settled before the end of the month. I would hate for us to wait for renovations with a little one.”

Night and I chuckled. “I think we can relate,” I said. “I thought I’d never get out of the alpha cabin.”

Violet was making sure that the cabin became a preserved piece of history.

Alphas, betas, and notable wolves from both packs were honored there, and I couldn’t imagine a better use for it.

Besides being a respectful monument to our history, it was also a massive “fuck you” to Gregor and Troy’s memory.

If they were out in the ether somewhere, I sincerely hoped they were existing with their regrets.

A timer went off in the kitchen, and Dom hopped to his feet before Tavi could. “I’ll bring dinner,” he said, kissing her forehead.

He brought out poached salmon with roasted root vegetables and a cauliflower mash.

Tavi had used a recipe I’d given her from Mabel’s cookbook; I knew it the minute I caught a whiff of nutmeg in the mash.

The conversation was lovely, and the food looked gorgeous, but the pungent scent of lemon and herbs made my stomach turn, and I ended up pushing the salmon around instead of eating much of it.

I felt terrible for it…until a realization smacked me in the face. The nausea and the tiredness were both symptoms of the same thing. It should have been impossible, but I knew exactly what was going on with me.

I was pregnant.

What followed was a combination of excitement and joy, but honestly, I felt annoyed as I remembered my brother and his quip about not drinking alcohol. It didn’t matter how in touch I felt with my body these days, because Lance had realized my condition before me.