Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

The thought makes me shiver.

Here we are, unable to get the many shifters Romulus has actively saved to come help us … but Remus can call on other packs and they answer. It’s twisted. It’s unfair.

“He’s close to being ready, but not so ready that he’ll attack in the next few days. That should buy us some time since he won’t strike until the next full moon,” Romulus says, nodding at his middle child. “But he won’t wait long. Certainly not long enough for Sabrina to give birth … but lucky for us, he thinks that’s still months away.”

Here, he eyes me a second from beneath his hooded lashes.

“For once, it seems your little early transgression is going to work to our advantage.”

Kaleb just winks at me. “If only we’d known what we were up against, we would have made sure to knock you up sooner.”

Across from us at the table, Lydia nearly spews her tea across the table.

Romulus continues as if he’s heard nothing.

“Remus will be under the assumption that Sabrina will still be extremely weak and that we will exhaust ourselves and our resources to protect her and save the unborn pups. What he doesn’t know is that by that time, Sabrina should have already given birth.”

“Then our only hope is to use that bit of secret knowledge to our advantage,” Rory says. “At the very least, we should be able to get the pups to safety.”

My heart sinks as I listen to them talk.

I know what he means. It’s plain on his face.

Despite everything, all this careful planning, all this time … they aren’t preparing to win.

They are preparing to die.

Lydia sees my face and reaches across the table to grab hold of my hand.

“It’s not over yet,” she says as she tries to reassure me. Her voice is low and calm as ever, but it does nothing to still my racing heart.

“I can’t lose you,” I say to each and every one of them gathered around the table, my eyes resting a moment longer on Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb. “I won’t.”

No one says anything else reassuring to me about it, because there really isn’t anything reassuring to say. This will be a losing battle. The boys, and even Romulus and Lydia, all know it. They are all preparing to sacrifice their lives to save the unborn babies. But I can’t live without any of them.

During the next several days, everyone is busy preparing not only for the big battle, but also for the birth. Keeping busy seems to help all of us not become paralyzed by fear and worry. When I hear Romulus walking down the hall with someone, I pop my head out of the bedroom door to see who it is.

“Vivian?”

r /> Her face lights up as soon as she sees me, then just as quickly, her face takes on a shocked expression as she takes in the rest of me. After a second, she’s able to compose her face and reach for me with a wan, if a little mischievous smile, in its place.

“Hello Sabrina,” she says, her arms barely able to reach all the way around me now. When she draws back, a new look has taken over expression briefly—and though she tries to hide it from me, I catch the flicker of sadness there before she’s managed to conceal it.

I follow them as they walk into the kitchen where Lydia and the boys are making food.

“Vivian, good to see you,” Lydia says with a smile as she looks up from cutting vegetables against the wooden cutting board slab.

The boys all give her a quick hug and then gather around me. I notice that as the time gets nearer to the birth of the pups, all three of them are growing increasingly protective, even amongst people that they consider to be friends. Even amongst themselves at times.

“Are more coming?” Lydia asks as Vivian sits down and picks up one of the carrots from the table to snap between her jaw. Though she tries to keep her tone as light as ever, her eyes flicker up towards Vivian in a way that betrays the desperation we all feel.

But even before Vivian speaks, the purse of her lips tells us what we already feared.

“I know it’s too early to tell, really … but I don’t think so,” she says, carefully. “I think they might be, delayed.”

Vivian doesn’t really say that the other packs aren’t coming to help at all, but she didn’t really need to. It’s implied in her voice.

Just as we’ve suspected, there’s no one else coming to help.