*
The words hung in the air. So great was the weight behind them that for a very long time after Alpha Clark said them, neither Sierra nor Shiela could do much as draw in a breath.
For the former, disbelief was written all over her face. She was staring directly at her father, and yet it was as if she wasn’t really seeing him. She felt like she was seeing a phantom, or perhaps she was dreaming and none of this would be real as soon as she woke up.
Or maybe her injuries were far greater than she herself had imagined, and they were causing her to hallucinate and hear things that hadn’t actually been said. That explanation would have actually made more sense to her than what she heard her father say.
A baby? Her father and Shiela?
Even the thought itself seemed so strange and unbelie
