His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 9 — Alone

The baby came early.

Not by much — three weeks, the doctor at the clinic later told me, though I wouldn't know that because I didn't go to a doctor. I couldn't. Hospitals asked questions. Questions required answers. Answers required a past, and my past was a territory three hundred miles away with a silver mark on my neck and an Alpha who didn't know he'd made me a mother.

I was five days short of my due date when the first contraction hit, and I was at work.

"Nova? You okay? You look like you're gonna —"

I didn't hear the rest of whatever Mabel said because the pain took my hearing. It came from the inside out, a cramping so intense it folded me in half, my hands gripping the edge of the prep counter hard enough to leave prints in the steel. The bowl of potato salad I'd been carrying hit the floor and exploded.

"Oh, honey," Mabel said, and then her hands were on my shoulders, steering me toward the back, calling out to Hector to cover the counter. "How far apart?"

"I don't — I don't know — this is the first —"

"First one hit you at work and you *stayed*?" She shook her head, but her voice was gentle. "Girl, you are a piece of work. Come on. I'm driving you to the hospital."

"No!" The word came out sharper than I meant it. "No hospital. I can't — I don't have insurance. I don't have —"

Mabel looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded. "Okay. No hospital. But I'm not leaving you alone for this."

"You can't — I need to — I need to go home."

"I'll drive you."

The drive took four minutes. It felt like four hours. Every bump in the road was a fresh assault, every traffic light a personal vendetta. I sat in the passenger seat of Mabel's ancient Buick, gripping the armrest so hard my knuckles were white, breathing through contractions the way the pregnancy book at the library had shown me — *hee-hee-hooo* — and trying not to scream.

We made it to the boarding house. I made it up the stairs, barely, my water breaking on the third step. Mabel didn't flinch. She just guided me to my room, helped me onto the bed, and started issuing orders like a field general.

"Towels. Hot water. Clean scissors — you got any? Good. Hector's wife had four kids, she told me enough. You just breathe."

* * *

The labor lasted nine hours.

Nine hours of pain that split me open from the inside, nine hours of pushing and screaming and biting down on a towel so hard my jaw ached for days afterward, nine hours of Mabel's steady hands and steady voice counting me through contractions like I was running a race I couldn't afford to lose.

"Come on, honey. One more. You can do one more."

"I *can't* —"

"You *are.*"

And I was. I was doing it. I was having a baby alone in a rented room with no doctor and no drugs and no one to hold my hand except a sixty-four-year-old diner owner who'd never delivered anything more complicated than a plate of eggs.

At 11:47 PM, the baby came.

The sound — that raw, furious, indignant scream of a human being being dragged unwillingly into the world — was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

Mabel put him on my chest, slippery and red-faced and perfect, and I held him while he screamed, and I screamed too, and for one infinite moment, the two of us were the only people in the universe.

A boy. My son.

"Oh," I whispered. "Oh, *there* you are."

He stopped crying when he heard my voice. Just stopped, like someone had flipped a switch. His eyes were squeezed shut, his tiny fists waving at nothing, his mouth working in a reflex he didn't understand yet. I touched his face — so soft, so impossibly soft — and he turned toward my finger, following the warmth.

Mabel cut the cord with the kitchen scissors I'd boiled on my hot plate, just like I'd told her to. She wrapped the baby in a clean towel and handed him back to me, and her eyes were bright with something I'd never seen in them before.

"He's beautiful, Nova."

He was. Dark hair, barely there, like someone had dusted his head with soot. A nose so small it didn't seem real. Fingers like pink grubs, already reaching.

And then he opened his eyes.

For one impossible moment — one flicker, there and gone — they flashed gold. Not yellow, not brown. *Gold.* The unmistakable, incandescent gold of an Alpha wolf.

My heart stopped.

Then the gold faded, settling into the cloudy, unfocused gray of every newborn, and he was just a baby again. My baby. Small and perfect and mine.

My son had his father's blood, and it was waking up.

I held him tighter.

* * *

Mabel stayed until three in the morning. She cleaned up — the towels, the mess, the evidence — and made me drink a cup of tea that was mostly honey and whiskey. She checked the baby's breathing, his temperature, his color. She told me what to watch for: fever, jaundice, not eating.

"You should see a doctor," she said.

"I will."

She looked at me like she knew I was lying and didn't have the energy to argue. "I'll check on you tomorrow. Bring food. Don't you dare try to go back to work."

"Mabel —"

She paused at the door.

"Thank you," I said. The words weren't enough. They were never going to be enough.

Mabel nodded once, like I'd given her something she hadn't expected. "Get some sleep, mama. You earned it."

The door closed. The room was quiet. The baby was quiet.

I looked down at him — my son, my impossible, terrifying, perfect son — and I made him a promise.

"I will never let anyone take you from me. Not the pack. Not the elders. Not him. *No one.* You are mine. Do you hear me? You are *mine.*"

He yawned — a huge, jaw-cracking yawn that scrunched his whole face — and fell asleep.

I didn't sleep. I sat in the narrow bed with my son on my chest, listening to his breathing, watching the gray light creep through the thin curtains, and I didn't let go until morning.

Kael,* I thought. *Your name is Kael. It means 'mighty warrior.' You're going to need to be.

* * *

He opened his eyes, and for one impossible moment, I saw them flash gold — Alpha gold. Then they settled into newborn gray. My heart stopped. My son had his father's blood, and it was waking up.