I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking about how much time Kaleb will need to heal, but more than that, how much time I have. The smile on her face has been replaced with a soft look of panic because she knows that we don’t stand a chance unless we have time.
Time.
The one thing never on our side.
“I don’t know.” Romulus looks at me for a moment, and his look is soft in contrast to the look of battle that wore just moments ago. “But I doubt he’ll wait the months Sabrina would need to give birth first.”
I look down at my swollen body and feel a heavy weight settle on me.
Months. Months more of this.
This is only the beginning, and I already feel like I’ve been used up. I won’t have the strength to run into battle again, not like this.
His thoughts already turned to the task ahead, Romulus doesn’t linger. He turns to leave so that he can begin reaching out to all of the other packs in the alliance that might give consideration to his call for help.
“Will they come?” Marlowe asks him, just as Romulus has reached the door.
Romulus turns to face him with a weary and uneasy expression on his face.
“Will the others in the alliance come to help us?” Marlowe asks again.
“I don’t know.”
At least he’s honest.
And at least this time while I am bedridden and healing, I have company. The wounds that Kaleb sustained put him off his feet for several days and as we lay there in the bed together, we try to talk about things that make us laugh instead of things that make us cry.
Unfortunately, anything that serves as a momentary distraction doesn’t last long. We spend most of the time just holding each other in silence as our bodies work to repair themselves.
There’s none of the usual joy that comes with news of a pregnancy, even an unexpected one.
As much as they boys try to hide it, I can’t hide from myself.
All I feel is dread.
Dread that I won’t make it, that I’m not physically capable. Dread that we’ll be interrupted before the baby is born. Dread that even after, I might still lose everything.
Once Kaleb has recovered enough to get up, I once again find myself feeling like I’m trapped to a state of feeling sick and weak and alone. As much as the boys try to dote on me, they are also trying to prepare to protect me.
That means that I find myself alone in my bed almost as often as I find myself throwing up or trying to stand unsuccessfully. Surely pregnancy isn’t supposed to feel this awful. And even with all of the other things going on that are quite literally life or death scenarios, I find myself struggling with something completely unexpected.
I find myself wanting my mother.
But every single time that I go to reach for the phone, I stop myself before I can dial the last digit.
I want my mother, a mother, to be here with me or at least to talk do while I am going through this. But I just can’t bring myself to complete the call knowing that she abandoned me to run back to my abusive father.
Again.
Never did I imagine that I would be turning into a wolf shifter and finding myself pregnant just weeks after my eighteenth birthday. Either one of those events would make any girl want her mom to be with her … and here I am, dealing with both at the same time, and I can’t even seem to bring myself to call her. She was the one person, the one parent that was supposed to always be there for me, and she wasn’t.
It seems a cruel twist of fate that I should want her now, that I should need her.
She never needed me.
She never put me first.
Or, at least, not long enough for it to