Page 81 of WitchBorn

A baby cried, and I leapt to the porch, needing entrance. Oberon caught me, moving faster than any wolves should, buthe wasn’t any wolf. My monster snarled at him and I fought to tamp it down.

“Not until you’re called,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest and became a brick wall in front of the door. I could kill him if I shifted to my darkest form, but my human heart didn’t want to destroy my brother. My wolf agreed with Oberon’s protectiveness.

“I need to see her.”

“Hmm,” Oberon said.

Another ten lifetimes passed in the moments I paced waiting for approval to enter. The midwife spoke to Oberon and he stepped aside. I ran past him and into the small cabin set aside for the birth. Cassa sat up, holding a swaddled baby, her face tense with exhaustion, and the room smelled of blood and afterbirth, pain and sorrow. The last made my heart flip over. Had the baby passed? Cassa wanted it desperately, and I’d done everything I could to ensure her dream came true, even if that meant suppressing her wolf with my magic to keep the baby from being lost.

I tiptoed to her side and heard a racing heartbeat, not hers, the baby’s. It lived. I sighed with relief as I sat down on the bed beside her. She opened her eyes to gaze watery eyes at me.

“Cassa, what’s wrong?” I whispered, touching her carefully, fearing causing her more pain. Oberon ushered the midwife and her assistant out, whispering to them, though I couldn’t hear what they said.

Cassa pulled the blanket back from the baby’s face as he suckled her breast for food, and I recoiled as a ripple of dark magic briefly turned it from cute baby cheeks to a gaunt monster, not unlike my beast. I gasped and reached for him.

“No,” Cassa said.

“He shouldn’t be touched by the dark already.”

“You were, and you’re okay.”

The darkness hadn’t awakened in me until my mother had been murdered. Before that nightmare I’d been a glorious thing like my mother, filled with fire and light. How had it spread to the baby? My wolf breathed in the baby’s scent, finding the musk of wolf strong, the curse already in his blood, but beneath the heavy aroma of the beast, something was missing. That couldn’t be right.

“I need to hold him,” I said, reaching for the baby again.

Cassa tightened her grip. “No.”

“I won’t hurt him, I promise.”

Still she refused. I sat at her side as she nursed the baby, my heart hammering with worry. Oberon kept his distance, and once Cassa tired, he called for one of the packmates to come help with the baby. When Marina arrived, Cassa handed the baby off to her with strict instructions that I was not to be alone with the boy.

“That’s not right, Cassa,” Marina said. “The babe is his too, and he’s Alpha.”

I kept my distance, heartbroken by the accusations in Cassa’s eyes, though I hadn’t done anything other than sire the next monster. Perhaps that was enough to lose her love.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Cassa is just protective.”

“What’s his name?” Marina asked, gaze going from me to Cassa.

“Felix,” Cassa answered. It was one of a handful we’d agreed on.

“Felix it is,” Marina said as she rocked him. He slept and with it the touch of darkness with him buried itself deep. “Lucky, indeed. He’s adorable.”

Cassa curled up on her side, exhausted. I wanted desperately to hold her, but when I reached for her, she shook her head. “No.”

My wolf whined inside my soul, the rejection nearly bringing me to my knees. “Cassa.”

“Give her some time,” Oberon said. He gently touched my shoulder, careful to not show aggression. “You can rest at my place. It’s been a long day for all of us.”

“Always the voice of reason,” Marina said as she held Felix. “Let Cassa rest.”

The effort it took to leave the cabin made my wolf howl. I knew if I changed in that moment, the darkness would rise. Would anything be left of the little pack of broken wolves I’d built?

“Xander,” Oberon said.

“There’s no human in that baby,” I whispered, hands clenched at my sides as I followed him toward his home on our pack lands. Every step away crumbling more of my resolve to leave her with the baby. “No human soul, just a monster in human skin.”

“He has a wolf soul. It will have to be enough.”