Chapter Seven: Borrowed Strength
1047 Words
The weakness started small.
A slight unsteadiness climbing the stairs that she attributed to nothing in particular. A tiredness in the afternoons that felt unfamiliar for someone whose body had operated at full vampire capacity for three centuries without complaint.
By the second week, it was impossible to ignore.
She found herself needing to sit after standing too long. Found her hands trembling slightly when she reached for things on high shelves. Found that the simple act of walking from the bedroom to the kitchen left her breathless in a way that frightened her more than she let Jace see.
He noticed anyway.
He always noticed.
"You're pale," he said one morning, watching her cross the kitchen slower than usual.
"I'm fine," she said.
"Elara."
"I'm tired," she admitted. "More tired than I should be. I don't understand it."
He was already reaching for his phone.
Malachar arrived that afternoon.
He examined her the way he had the first time — two fingers against her wrist, eyes closed, listening for something beneath the surface that only four thousand years of experience could interpret. This time his expression didn't smile.
It went careful.
"The child," he said slowly, "carries wolf blood. Significantly more of it than I initially expected."
"What does that mean," Jace said. His hand hadn't left Elara's since Malachar walked through the door.
"It means," Malachar said, "that the child is drawing strength from her in ways a purely vampire pregnancy never would. Wolf physiology demands more — more energy, more resource, more of the mother's own vitality to sustain its growth." He looked at Elara. "Your body is vampire. Extraordinarily resilient, ordinarily. But it was never built to carry something that requires this much from it."
Elara pressed a hand to her stomach.
"Is she in danger," she said quietly. "The baby—"
"The child is thriving," Malachar said. "That is not the concern. You are the one being drained."
The room went quiet.
"There's a solution," Jace said. It wasn't a question. "There has to be."
Malachar looked at him.
"There is," he said. "Proximity to wolves. Specifically, wolves bonded to her by loyalty and care — you, your family, anyone she trusts who carries that bloodline. A wolf's presence stabilizes what the pregnancy draws from her. It will not eliminate the drain entirely, but it will slow it. Significantly."
"How does that work," Elara said.
"I do not fully understand the mechanism," Malachar admitted. "This has never happened before. My best understanding is that the child, being part wolf, responds to wolf presence the way any wolf pup instinctively would — the pack, nearby, offering something the body recognises even before birth."
Jace's jaw tightened.
"So she needs to be near wolves," he said. "Constantly."
"Not constantly," Malachar said. "But regularly. And never for long stretches entirely alone. If the drain accelerates without that stabilising presence—" He stopped.
"What," Elara said. "Tell me."
"It could become dangerous," Malachar said quietly. "For you. Possibly for the child, if your body becomes too depleted to sustain the pregnancy properly."
The room absorbed that in silence.
"You should never be far from your husband," Malachar continued, looking at Elara directly. "Or from any wolf who is a true friend to him. His family, especially — Cole, Mason, even his father, should the relationship allow it. Their proximity to you carries weight now that it never did before."
"I can't just be surrounded by wolves every hour of every day," Elara said. "I have a life. I have things I do—"
"Elara," Jace said quietly.
"Jace, I'm not going to become someone who can't leave a house without an escort—"
"Elara." His voice was gentle but firm, the specific quality he used when something mattered too much to let her argue past it. "Listen to what he's telling you. This isn't about restriction. It's about keeping you and her safe."
She looked at him.
At the fear underneath the careful calm, the specific terror of a man who had already almost lost her once and was now being told there was a new, quieter way it could happen again.
"Okay," she said softly. "Okay. I'm listening."
Malachar nodded once.
"I will have my healers monitor her regularly," he said. "But the wolf proximity is not optional. I want to be clear about that. This is not a precaution. It is a requirement."
"Understood," Jace said.
After Malachar left, the house settled into a different rhythm than the one before.
Mason started coming by nearly every day — ostensibly for coffee, though everyone understood the real reason. Cole rearranged parts of his schedule without discussing it, simply appearing more often, sitting with Elara through afternoons while Jace handled things that required him elsewhere.
Even Nathan visited more.
He sat with her one Thursday while Jace was out, the two of them in careful, evolving conversation about nothing important, and at some point she realized she felt steadier than she had in days — the specific ease of pack proximity working exactly as Malachar had described, though she still didn't fully understand the mechanism of it.
"You don't have to keep me company," she told him.
"I want to," Nathan said. "I have two years of missed time to make up for. And a granddaughter to prepare for."
"You think it's a girl too," Elara said.
"Everyone seems to," Nathan said. "I've learned not to argue with instinct in this family. It's usually right."
She smiled.
Pressed a hand to her stomach.
Felt, for the first time in days, something that wasn't just weakness.
Something steadier.
That night, alone with Jace, she finally let herself say what she'd been holding back all day.
"I'm scared," she admitted.
He pulled her closer.
"I know," he said. "I am too. But we're not doing this alone. You heard him — the whole family, all of us, we're what keeps you steady now. That's not a burden, Elara. That's just what family means."
She pressed her face into his chest.
"Nine months," she said. "And I need to survive them without you ever being far."
"I'm not planning on being far," he said. "Not for one single day."
She believed him.
She always had.
- Writer
