Chapter 39: Chapter 39: Mama, Dada
One evening the sickness hit harder than usual. I barely made it to the balcony before I was on my knees, retching into the snow that had started falling again.
Lila toddled out after me on unsteady legs, her small hand patting my shoulder the way she’d seen the brothers do. "Mama," she said, clear as a bell for the first time. The word cut through the nausea and left me shaking for a different reason. I pulled her into my lap, snow melting into my sleeves, and held her close while the twins kicked like they approved.
Darius came and found us there. He lifted Lila first, then me, carrying both of us back inside without asking. Kane had already stoked the fire and laid out furs. Rylan brought a bowl of broth he’d kept warm by the hearth. They didn’t hover. They simply stayed close, their presence steady while I sipped the broth and Lila played with a wooden wolf between us.
The bond hummed low and warm, the curse quiet for now, but I felt the weight of the coming full moon pressing closer. The mark on my chest itched when the wind shifted, a reminder that the witch’s price still waited.
Lila’s strength grew with every passing day. She discovered the stairs leading down to the lower hall and tried to climb them on her own until Rylan caught her halfway and carried her back up laughing.
She started pointing at things she wanted and saying single words with perfect certainty: "Up," "Dada," "Wolf." When Darius shifted one night to stretch his wolf form in the chamber, Lila crawled straight to him and buried her face in his dark fur, giggling when he licked her cheek.
Kane watched from the doorway, a rare smile cracking his face, and Rylan swore the bond felt brighter for a moment, like the children were anchoring something the curse couldn’t touch.
The pregnancy made simple things harder. I couldn’t lace my own boots anymore without stopping to catch my breath. The weight sat low and heavy, pressing on my hips, and I walked with a hand always on the small of my back.
Yet I still made rounds through the keep, checking the new storerooms, listening to the women talk about their training bruises, nodding when Garrick reported the eastern wall holding firm. The pack saw me moving slower but never weaker, and that seemed to matter more than any speech I could give.
One night the sickness came so hard I couldn’t keep even water down. I lay on the furs afterward, sweat cooling on my skin, while the brothers took turns holding Lila so she wouldn’t fuss.
Rylan sang some low, off-key song his mother used to hum, and Lila clapped along until her eyes grew heavy. Kane brought a damp cloth for my forehead. Darius stayed pressed against my back, his hand resting over the twins like he could will them to settle.
The bond thrummed between us, steady and fierce, and for the first time in weeks I let myself feel the fear underneath the exhaustion. Two more lives. Two more pieces of this fragile thing we were building. The curse had already taken enough.
Lila woke before dawn the next morning, standing at the side of the bed and shaking the furs until I opened my eyes. She grinned when she saw me, then let go of the bed and took three wobbly steps on her own before dropping into my arms.
I laughed even though my stomach still rolled. Darius woke and watched us, ice-blue eyes soft in the gray light. Kane and Rylan stirred a moment later, and the four of us stayed tangled together while the keep slowly woke around us.
The weeks kept moving. Lila grew bolder, climbing onto low benches and demanding to be lifted so she could see out the windows. The twins answered with kicks that sometimes left bruises on my ribs.
The morning sickness eased just enough that I could eat again, but the fatigue stayed, a constant companion that made every stair feel steeper. I pushed through it because the keep needed its queen steady, because Lila needed to see me moving, because the bond demanded we keep building no matter what the witch’s mark whispered in the dark.
The full moon was still two weeks away, but I already felt its pull in the way Darius’s claws twitched when he thought I wasn’t looking.
The eastern scouts had reported nothing new, but the quiet felt watchful. Lila crawled into my lap that evening and pressed her small hand to my belly right as the twins kicked together. She looked up at me with wide eyes, as if she understood something the rest of us were still learning.
The keep kept turning. The pack kept training. But in our chambers the world narrowed to the four of us and the two new lives rolling under my skin. Lila was nine months old and already running toward whatever came next.
The twins were fiercer with every passing day. And I was still here, still holding it all together, even as the sickness tried to pull me under and the bond tried to lift me higher.
The wind outside howled low across the ridges, carrying the first real bite of winter. I pressed my forehead to Lila’s and breathed in the scent of her hair. Whatever waited beyond the walls, whatever the eastern wolves or the full moon or the witch still wanted, it would have to come through us first.
*********************
Weeks ground past and the snow thickened until the keep sat buried to its knees. Lila was a little bit over ten months old now and walking everywhere like the floor owed her something. She tottered from the hearth to the door and back again, one small fist clutching a carved wolf Rylan had made her, the other waving at anyone who looked her way.
Her words came clearer now, short and demanding: "Milk," "Up," "Dada go." She said it to Kane while he sharpened blades at the table, and he actually paused mid-stroke to pick her up and settle her on his knee without a word.
The twins inside me had turned the pregnancy into a constant, low-grade war. I was seven months along, belly heavy and low, back aching every time I stood from the council bench. The nausea had mostly backed off, but the fatigue hit like a club. My legs felt swollen by midday, veins mapping blue under the skin, and I caught myself bracing a hand on walls more often than I liked.
The latent alpha blood helped me stay upright, but it didn’t stop the sharp twinges when one of the babies shifted wrong or the way my breath shortened on the stairs.
One morning I sat in council with the fire crackling and the smell of wet wool and pine smoke thick in the air. Garrick stood at my right, new beta cloak pinned tight at his shoulder.
A dispute had dragged on for an hour: two hunters arguing over who got the larger share of a fresh elk kill. The older one claimed seniority, the younger one said he’d made the actual shot.
I listened until my back protested, then cut them off.
"The law is simple," I said. "Every kill gets split by contribution and need. The man who made the shot takes the heart and liver for his family. The rest divides equal between both households and the nursery stores. No exceptions. Seniority doesn’t feed pups."
The older hunter opened his mouth. Darius leaned forward beside me, ice-blue eyes flat, and the man shut it again.
They left with the new split written down, and Garrick scratched a note for the record. I rubbed the small of my back under the table while the next complaint came forward, something about a broken fence on the lower pastures. The pack was learning the rules stuck, even when they pinched.
After council I walked the new development site with Kane. They’d started digging a deeper root cellar under the eastern wall, wide enough for two seasons of grain and salted meat. The ground was frozen hard, so the men used iron bars and fire to thaw sections before they dug.
I stood on the lip of the pit and watched steam rise where hot coals met snow. One of the workers wiped sweat from his face despite the cold and nodded at me.
"Another week and we’ll have the beams in," he said.
"Good," I told him. "Make the supports thick. We’re not losing stores to a bad thaw again."
Kane stayed at my elbow the whole time, hand hovering near my lower back without touching, ready in case the twins decided to roll and knock me off balance. He didn’t speak much, but his presence said enough. The bond thrummed steady between us, a low current that eased the ache in my spine a fraction.
