Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

“And if you don’t let her, I’ll fight you for her,” Vivian adds. She sticks her tongue out at the boys and goes back to planning with Romulus. She’s beco

me a staple in this household as of late. I’m not about to complain.

Not when, more often than not, she’s on my side.

Rory extends his hand for me to take and I toss a smile back over my shoulder to her and Lydia as we walk out.

The forest is beautiful tonight.

It’s much too peaceful out to think that in a couple of days’ time there will be a violent battle on this very ground that now has a beautiful moonlight spilling over it.

Much too peaceful to mark the true passage of time these last few weeks.

“Are you thinking what I am?” Rory asks me, after a few minutes.

We stop together, our heads tilted back to face the silvery moon above us.

“They’re late,” I say, quietly. One hand flutters up to rest on my burgeoning stomach. I feel tiny feet press against my hand, but today it isn’t reassuring. It just makes my stomach churn.

What if the doctor was wrong? What if I’m nowhere near giving birth?

Rory stiffens a little at my side, but it’s Marlowe who sneaks up behind me and wraps his arms gently around my stomach.

“Or they’re just perfectly on time,” he says, quietly.

“That makes one of us!” Kaleb crows, appearing out of the darkness to strike a pose, one foot outstretched on a rock jutting from the forest floor.

I bark out a laugh, grateful once again for each one of my boys. Between the three of them, I am whole.

I tilt my face back up towards the sky, my nerves calmed.

The moon is bright and nearly full. In two more nights, it will be as plump as I am, and that is the night that Romulus is expecting Remus to attack.

Two nights left, and still no pups have arrived.

I’m beginning to worry that Remus’ plan will work perfectly, that I will still be pregnant and our unborn babies vulnerable at the very moment that he attacks. I’d hoped to have given birth by now, but I guess there’s no forcing nature. At this point it’s up to a greater force than me and there’s nothing that any of us can do aside from wait and prepare.

We’ve long since given up discussing the possibility of my leaving before the birth. It was Lydia who shied away from it … knowing that Remus’ pack likely has their eyes on us and would track me down in an instant. Even if they did, I’d be left without help in case something went wrong.

And the way things have been going lately, there’s almost inevitably going to be something wrong.

I just know it.

I won’t say it, because I don’t want to jinx it, but I feel it in my bones.

At least here, underneath the whisper of the trees overhead and the rustle of their fallen leaves now damp with spring rain underfoot, I find some peace.

We walk just deep enough into the forest to make sure our traps are hidden and then stop to set down the equipment so that we can rig them. The traps won’t do too much, they might stop a few of Remus’ pack members from reaching the house right away, but we need all of the help we can get.

As soon as we set everything down and the boys begin to unwind the cord and wire as I wait for them to give me something so I feel like I’m helping; I look up between the branches at the starry sky again. It shines like a million glittering diamonds against the midnight blue above us.

Something about it is both calm and dangerous.

Inviting, tempting, challenging.

Like the calm before the storm.

I feel myself getting lulled into the false sense of security that everything is going to be okay. I look up and take a big breath of the fresh, crisp night air … but when I go to let my breath out, a sharp pain cripples me once again.