Chapter 2

The days blurred together. Meals in my room. Walks in the garden. Check on Milo. Repeat.

I found a dead patch behind the greenhouse and started planting. Wild mint, yarrow, things that grow without fussing. Something to do with my hands besides count the hours.

Next morning, someone had hammered a rough little fence around my patch. Fresh nails. No note.

I asked the gardener. He shrugged. "Wasn't me."

I ran my hand along one of the posts. Rough-cut, uneven, hammered in a hurry. But solid.

Serena had started bringing me to pack meetings. "So you feel included," she said. She always pointed me to the same chair — back row, near the door, where nobody had to look at me unless they turned around.

Most of the time I just sat there and listened. Reports on border patrols, supply runs, harvest rotation. Nothing that involved me.

Then one meeting, a gamma was reading off medical updates.

"—the carrier's blood work came back—"

"Briar." Cade didn't look up from his report. "Her name is Briar."

The gamma blinked. "...Briar's blood work came back normal."

Nobody else reacted. The meeting moved on.

I stared at the side of his face from my chair in the back row. Tried not to make it mean anything.

It didn't. He was correcting sloppy speech. That's what Alphas do.

Right?

After the meeting, Serena fell into step beside me. "He's very particular about protocol," she said lightly. "Don't read into it."

I found the nursery by accident. Wrong turn on the way back from visiting Milo — third floor, east wing. The door was half open. I pushed it the rest of the way.

The room smelled like fresh paint. Yellow walls. White crib with a canopy. A silver mobile hanging from the ceiling — tiny wolves chasing a crescent moon.

And on the far wall, in hand-painted script: Elowen.

Serena's color. Serena's crib. Serena's name. A card on the dresser in her handwriting: For our little one.

Our.

Nobody had asked me. Nobody was going to.

My hand went to my belly. The baby shifted under my palm, restless.

I shut the door and walked back to my wing.

Pack dinners happened weekly. I was allowed at those — Serena said it would look strange if I never showed up at all. She always sat me at the far end of the table, away from anyone important.

Most nights I kept my head down and ate quietly. That night, someone at the other end had been drinking too much.

"Careful with the good wine — save some for the Alpha's broodmare!"

Laughter. A couple of wolves had the decency to wince. I set my fork down.

I looked at Cade. Four seats away.

His jaw tightened. His mouth opened—

Serena's hand closed over his on the table. A gentle squeeze. He shut his mouth.

She leaned toward me, voice low and sweet. "Ignore them, sweetie. Wolves get stupid when they drink."

My nails dug crescents into my palms under the table.

He was going to say something. I saw it.

She stopped him. And he let her.

I didn't go to the next dinner. Or the one after that. Nobody asked why.

A few days later, I ran into Cade in the hallway outside the pack library. We both reached for the same book on the shelf — a beat-up field manual on territorial defense. His hand brushed mine and he pulled back fast, like he'd touched a hot stove.

"You read tactical manuals?" He was looking at me. Actually looking. "You know a lot for—" He stopped himself.

"For a surrogate?"

He didn't answer that.

"My old pack ran six wolves on forty miles of border. You learn terrain or you die." I pulled the book free. "Chapter nine's wrong, by the way. Pincer formations don't work in dense timber."

He stared at me. The look of a man who just realized the furniture could talk.

Then it was gone. His face closed back up.

"We should keep things simple. It'll be easier for you when this is over."

He walked away.

I stood in the hallway, hand on my belly. The baby kicked.

"Easier for me?" I said to the empty corridor. "Or for you?"