THE ALPHA’S WET NURSE

Chapter Five

Twenty five women stood in the castle courtyard by early morning.

They had come from every quarter of the pack territory — some from the outer farms, some from the residential streets, two from the trading district who had arrived together and stood slightly apart from the rest with the careful distance of women who knew each other well enough to be competitive.

Luna Serene's head of household, a severe woman named Dara, moved down the line with a clipboard and eyes that missed nothing.

She stopped at the first woman."Hands." She said.The woman extended both hands.

Dara examined the fingernails — dirt under three of them, one broken to the skin — and made a mark on her clipboard.

"Step aside."

The woman blinked. "I haven't even —"

"Step aside please." Dara said, already moving to the next.

She worked through the line with the efficiency of someone who had done this before and had no patience for softening it.

A woman with a skin rash along her forearms was redirected before Dara had finished looking.

Another with hair so unwashed it had begun to mat was dismissed with a single glance. A third showed signs of malnutrition that made Dara pause and write something longer before sending her to the side with a gentler word and instructions to see the pack physician.

The line shortened steadily.

Three women were sent away for producing insufficient milk when questioned. Two more had infants of their own under three weeks old — too recent, too unstable.

One woman fainted in the morning heat before Dara reached her and was attended to immediately and crossed off without discussion.

By the time Dara reached the halfway point of the line there were eleven women left. She stopped in front of Mara. Mara stood with her hands at her sides and her eyes forward and let the examination happen the way she let most things happen — without resistance and without particular engagement.

Dara looked at her hair first. Brown, clean, properly braided. She looked at her hands — nails short and even, skin clear, no breaks or infections. She checked her forearms, asked two questions about her health and her infant and received two quiet answers.

She noted the fading bruise along Mara's cheekbone without commenting on it. She made a mark on her clipboard and moved on. When the screening finished three women remained standing in the courtyard.

Mara.

A tall woman named Britta who carried herself with the confidence of someone who had nursed before.

And a younger woman, barely twenty, named Sola, who kept pressing her hands together in front of her and stopping herself.

Dara looked at all three. "Follow me." She said quietly.

Luna Serene was in the main receiving room with Beren against her shoulder when they were brought in.

The baby was not crying at that exact moment but the recent evidence of crying was all over his face — red rimmed eyes, the hitched breathing that followed a long bout of it, one small fist still clenched at his cheek.

Serene looked at the three women and gave each of them a moment of direct attention before speaking.

“Thank you for coming." She said. "I'll keep this simple. My grandson needs milk that his body will accept. You will each go into the room at the end of this corridor, pump what you can and bring it back. That's all I'm asking today."She looked at Dara.

Dara gestured toward the corridor. "This way."

The room was small and warm with two chairs and a bench along the wall and a window that looked out over the castle's eastern grounds. Morning light came through it in a wide flat rectangle that fell across the stone floor.

Britta took the chair nearest the door.

Sola sat on the bench and immediately looked like she regretted not taking the other chair.

Mara moved to the far end of the bench, closer to the window, and sat. The morning air came through the open window and moved through her hair, pulling pieces of the braid loose and lifting them slightly.

She had pushed her sleeves up before sitting and the window was behind her, the light falling across her shoulders and the curve of her back above the dress line.

She sat with her hands in her lap and her face turned slightly toward the glass and was not thinking about how she looked or who might see her.

She was thinking about Beren. About what it meant that a six week old child was rejecting every formula they had tried.

About what it meant to be that hungry and that small and to have no way of explaining it to anyone.

She was thinking about that and not about the name she had heard in the market and not about Edna's face when she said we could use the income and not about any of the hundred things pulling at the edges of her attention.

She was just thinking about the baby.

🪝🪝🪝🪝.

Aldric was walking the east corridor with Hoger when he stopped. He stopped so abruptly that Hoger took two more steps before realising and turned back.

Aldric was looking through the open doorway on his left. Not into the room — at an angle, the way you catch something in your peripheral vision that your eyes then refuse to release.

Hoger followed his line of sight and saw a room with three women in it and looked back at Aldric with a carefully neutral expression. Aldric was looking at the woman by the window.

Her back was to the door, brown hair half undone from its braid, the morning light moving across her shoulders. She was sitting very still with her face turned slightly toward the glass. Something moved through him that he couldn't immediately name.

Not attraction.

Something older than that. Something that felt less like seeing someone new and more like recognising something he had been looking for without knowing what shape it would take when he found it.

His wolf went very still inside him.

"Who is that?" He said quietly.

Hoger looked. "The wet nurse candidates, Alpha. Luna Serene's screening — the three finalists."

Aldric looked a moment longer than he meant to.Then he turned and walked in the direction of his mother's rooms without explaining himself and Hoger, who had learned not to ask, followed at a respectful distance.

The milks were brought back in three small covered vessels, each one marked with the woman's name.Serene took them one at a time.

Pela warmed each one carefully and offered it to Beren in the small feeding cup the physician had recommended.He turned away from the first one. Pressed his lips together and turned his face into Serene's shoulder.

The second he took one pull of and stopped. His face scrunched. He made his opinion clear without words.

Serene picked up the third vessel.

Mara's.

She nodded at Pela. Beren took the first pull and paused. Then he took another. And another. His fist unclenched slowly against Serene's chest.

His breathing, which had been the jagged kind, evened out pull by pull until by the end of it he was the quietest he had been in six weeks.The room was silent.

Serene looked at Dara over the baby's head.Dara looked at Mara.

"Your pay will be five gold a month." Dara said. "Not three."

Britta's expression didn't change but something behind her eyes did. Sola looked at her own hands.

Mara nodded once.

"Go home and collect what you need." Dara said. "You're expected back by sundown."

Mara picked up her shawl from the bench and moved toward the corridor door. Her mind was already on what she would pack. How she would tell Edna. Whether Sefa would look after the garden while she was gone.

She stepped through the door and turned into the corridor and walked directly into something that didn't move.Warm. Solid. Immovable.

She stepped back, almost losing her footing and fell but a strong arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her into his embrace. Alpha Aldric’s gaze locked into hers. Neither of them spoke.

His eyes moved across her face with an expression she couldn't read — sharp and searching and then something else underneath it, something that didn't match the coldness everyone said he carried everywhere.

Her heart was doing something irregular in her chest. His eyes stayed on hers. And somewhere beneath the surface of everything, deep in the part of her that she had locked away six months ago and stopped visiting, something shifted.

Like a key turning in a lock she had forgotten existed.