Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

matter.

In her absence, I find myself growing increasingly close to Lydia. While not the mother that my biology calls out for, she’s the actual mother that I always wished that I had.

You’d think that would make me feel better, having Lydia here and by my side; treating me as if I were one of her own children. But ironically, all it does at first is make me miss my own mother more.

It’s funny how your brain tries to trick you into wanting things that you know are bad for you. Maybe that’s what happened to my mom. Maybe that’s why she went back to my dad.

It’s the only logical explanation.

A trick of the mind … when anyone on the outside could see him for what he was.

As the days pass by, I see less of the boys even as I hear their whispers through the walls. My wolfish senses are returning to me as the next full moon approaches. Though I can’t hear most of what they say, I know what’s happening.

They’re preparing for the inevitable. They’re preparing for the next onslaught—one where we won’t be gifted the element of surprise in which to slip away.

But all this planning leaves me alone, tucked way alone with only my own thoughts—and the growing life inside me.

It’s a strange sensation, this.

It’s not at all what I expected, not that motherhood was something I’d considered often. In the moments that I thought I’d lost this opportunity, this chance to rear children that would be born—I suppose—as shifters, I’d mourned that loss.

But even then, I’d abstained from the painful thought of what I’d lost. Of what it would have been like if that hadn’t been taken from me.

And now that I’m here, now, experiencing it … it doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.

In fact, as the days drag on one by one, I instead find myself filled with more and more dread.

I find myself slipping into a depression that exhausts even my own patience. Honestly, I don’t know how or why Lydia continues to be so wonderful with me, even when every visit turns sour—my own gloom overshadowing every kind gesture. I don’t know how she and the others haven’t grown so entirely sick of me, especially when I’ve long since grown sick of myself. I rub my swollen stomach as I lay in bed and think about what is inside there.

About who’s child it is.

We were only together once, that one single day, before everything else started going to hell. It could be any one of theirs.

It’s strange to think back on it now because I seem to recall somehow feeling that the day was a special one, besides the obvious reason of it being the first time I made love to the boys.

If that wolf-girl hadn’t howled and stopped the battle, we would have never known that I was pregnant at all. I wouldn’t have had the chance to bring this life into the world, to carry on Romulus’ line.

Or, at least, I wouldn’t have had the chance to. I very likely would have been slaughtered right there on the spot.

Now I find myself wondering how things will change, if things will change, depending on who the child is born to. Will Romulus recognize a son of Marlowe or Kaleb the same as a son by his blood descendent, Rory? Will the rest of the pack?

And ultimately, will it matter?

I don’t know enough about this life to reassure myself of anything.

Now, I have gone from feeling hopeless and grieving the fact that I could never mate with Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb; to carrying one of their precious babies within me. And the boys have gone from being distraught over never being able to breed, to being even more fiercely protective and driven to protect me and this unborn pup.

Even more so than me.

If only I could just get over how awful I feel, both mentally and physically, then I might be able to find some hope at the end of this and not be completely consumed with the fact that this is all likely going to end badly for everyone, including my unborn baby.

It’s thoughts like that which make me both pick up the phone again to call my mom, and then set it back down again without completing the dial.

Over and over it goes, even as I slip further away from myself.

19

Marlowe