Alpha, She Is Done With You

Chapter 06

Chapter 6

Sora’s POV

I'm drowning in the joy of being pregnant.

Then Ian pushes a second page in front of me.

Numbers, indicators, columns of values that I can read as well as he can. My iron levels. My vitamin D. The uterine wall thinning that never fully resolved after Yuki's delivery. The way my spine and pelvis have compensated for the leg for twenty years, what that compensation costs a body in pregnancy.

"I'm not an OB," Ian says. "But these numbers tell a story. Your body has been running on deficit for two years. Any significant physical or emotional stress could affect a pregnancy at this stage—any stage." He pauses. "The odds of carrying this child to term safely are not high."

"Is the baby all right right now?"

He doesn't hesitate. "Current indicators are normal."

I pick up the report. I fold it in half. I put it in my bag.

"Sora." He takes it back. He smooths it open on the desk again. "This is not your only option. You have the right to make a different choice. No one can take that from you."

"I know," I say.

"Do you?" He looks at me directly the way he's looked at me since the first year of medical school, when we were both too tired to be polite and politeness stopped being necessary. "Because I need you to hear me. The child matters. You matter more."

Ian does not say kind things. I've known him for fifteen years. He holds most of this Pack and its performances at arm's length with the flat affect of someone who has seen too many people perform for him to be impressed. When he says something real, I can hear the difference.

I hear it now.

I look at the desk. I don't answer.

He's called to theatre before either of us says anything else. A border wolf, silver injury, they need him now. He stops at the door.

"Keep that report safe. Come back before the week is out."

Then he's gone.

I sit alone in the exam room.

My hand rests on my stomach without my deciding to put it there.

I think about what a pregnant Luna represents in Pack law. I know the Blackwood statutes. I've had seven years to learn them. A mate carrying a Pack heir cannot be set aside without formal council review. Her housing, her resources, her position within the household—all of it becomes a matter of Pack governance, not personal preference.

And the will. Grandmother's own words: upon the production of a male heir, the personal fund is released and marital assets may be reviewed.

A pregnancy changes the arithmetic.

I think about Moonridge. That window I framed myself. The yard where Yuki learned to balance. Lyra's knee settling onto the passenger seat like she already lives there, like every space in my life has already quietly been measured and claimed.

If Lyra has the house, she has a reason to be there. She has a story: the grandmother left it to me, it's practically a second home, Yuki knows it so well. She has a thread into my daughter's life that has Grandmother's name attached to it. That thread will not come loose on its own.

I have something stronger than a thread.

I'm not going to use the other card yet. Not the one I've carried for nineteen years. That one is too heavy to play here—once it's in motion, it can't be taken back, and I want it in reserve for a moment where it will count for more than this.

But the pregnancy—that I can use now.

---

I was nine years old.

The Voss family told everyone I'd been wandering near the border and gotten caught in a trap. Careless child. Unlucky. Everyone believed it.

No one knew the trap was silver. No one knew what was inside it. No one was there except me and whoever had been caught—an old woman in her animal form, her flank pinned by the teeth of the device, the metal already working through her blood.

I crouched in the mud. I found the heaviest rock nearby. I hit the locking mechanism. Again. Again.

The trap released. The rebound caught my left leg.

The sound of the bone breaking came before the pain did.

She found me afterward. She shifted. She knelt down and took both my hands and held them, and her hands were large and steady and covered in blood that was both of ours.

"Tell me your name."

"Sora."

She reached to her wrist and removed a thin chain—silver, fine, with a small pendant: a wheel of moons, the lines engraved so precisely they looked printed rather than carved. She pressed it into my palm and closed my fingers around it.

"When you need me, show this to anyone wearing the same mark. I will know."

I have kept that chain for nineteen years. I have never worn it. I have never shown it.

Every few years someone comes to ask the same question. Are you ready?

Every time I said: not yet.

I thought I'd built something here. I thought I didn't need what she offered.

I take out my phone. I find the contact—no name, just the moon-wheel symbol copied as an icon. I type three words.

I'm ready.

The reply arrives almost immediately. Like the other side has had my number open for nineteen years.

It's been a long time, Sora. I'm glad you finally called.

I put my phone away. I button my coat, one button at a time. My fingers are steadier than I expect.

Outside the office the corridor goes on in both directions. Hospital sounds, shift change, wheels on a hard floor. Everything running exactly as it should.

I walk out.

My leg has hurt all day. I walk fast anyway. There is only one thought in my head right now and it is taking up all available space: go home. Tell him.

This child changes things. It has to. It will force a conversation that we have been not-having for three years. It will reframe every decision Grandmother's will put in motion. It will give me standing in this household that I haven't had since the night Yuki was born and Ethan was at a concert hall.

Ian is right about the risk. I know he's right. I heard every word he said.

But I also heard: current indicators are normal.

I press my hand against my stomach through my coat.

Stay with me, I tell whatever is inside. Just stay.

I come through the Packhouse door.

Ethan is on the main sofa, jacket off, sleeves rolled, the posture he only has at home. He's listening to something Lyra is saying. She's beside him—close, angled toward him, her knee almost against his thigh. She's holding a cup. From our set. The one I chose when I moved in as Luna seven years ago.

She holds it the way you hold something familiar.

They both look up.

Lyra doesn't straighten. Her knee stays where it is. My cup stays in her hand. The look at the corner of her mouth is perfectly weighted.

I open my mouth.

"Ethan. I have something to tell you—"

My lips move.

No sound comes out.

They're both still watching me. Waiting.

I look at Lyra's knee. I look at his rolled-up sleeves. I look at my cup in her hand.

I swallow the words back down.

Then I look at Ethan. Only Ethan.

I take one breath.

"Ethan," I say. "I need to speak with you. Now."