Aviva
The first flakes of snow fall from the sky as I watch Ryan trying to herd everyone in position. Bundled against the cold in a wool coat Freya and I worked tirelessly on for the last three weeks, I step to the side, finding myself in the center of the crowd standing in the middle of the village of Silverhide. I watch my mate and his Beta, James, nudge families together and run back and forth toward a tripod where Ryan’s camera rests, facing us, to gauge whether all one-hundred and fifty people are in view of the lens.
Ryan stands behind the camera with his hands up, his hair dusted with snow. “Okay. Nobody move!”
A few excited giggles whisper through the front of the crowd where the numerous children are arranged. I glance around, watching as James joins Dahlia’s side, their baby on her hip. The baby girl finally has a name. Cosette, named after a friend of Dahlia, but they call her Cossie for short. Other babies coo and choke on soft cries throughout the crowd. All five women who were expected to have babies on Silverhide territory this summer had successful labors. I’d assisted a few, which had been healing in a way I hadn’t expected. Now, after the battle of Navvan, several new families have joined our pack. Mostly women and children whose fathers and brothers were lost when Hardan took over, but a few of the warriors from Navvan were able to get their families out in time, and now they’re here, living in cottages scattered across the farm lands and inner village.
I smile as I catch the eyes of one woman in particular. She lost her Navvan husband and has two young toddlers with her, but found her mate here, in Silverhide, within minutes of crossing the territories boundary.
The summer after the war was a rich, bountiful season in so many ways.
“Seriously, do not move!” Ryan rasps from the tripod, adjusting the setting on his camera.
“We’re freezing, Alpha. Hurry up!” Andrew’s voice echoes directly behind me where he’s standing with his arm roped around Freya’s shoulder. I glance to my right, finding Jacob and Mercy. He’s nuzzling her neck, and she’s blushing like mad, but the happiness in her eyes makes my heart melt.
Standing on my toes, I spot Lora and Shoshannah, who’re staying with our pack for the winter. They’ll return to Endova in the spring and currently live with Jacob and Mercy, but I see them every day.
Shoshannah is already participating in warrior training. I run my fingers over the moonstone necklace, wondering if one day she’ll have a necklace like this, too.
Ryan presses a button on the camera and sprints toward us. “Ten seconds! Okay? No one blink. I’m not doing this a second time. Three pictures back to back!”
A mumble of understanding passes through the crowd as they part to allow him to rush to the center, taking his position beside me, his Luna.
“Ready?” he asks, panting, his hand sliding across my back to rest on my hip.
“Eight, nine–” James shouts, and then a flash blinds everyone.
Several choruses of, “I blinked!” are shouted over the crowd, followed by laughs.
Ryan huffs a breath, counting to three before another flash lights the air in the center of the village. Lifted giggles break out through the crowd again.
“One more,” he says under his breath.
“You haven’t smiled,” I whisper to him.
“This is an impossible task.”
“Just smile once–for me.” I take his free hand in mine.
“I’m going to lift you up so we can get your belly in the picture,” Andrew says behind us. Freya squeals, telling him to stop.
They have a baby on the way, a baby that’ll be making its arrival this spring, within a few days of Mercy and Jacob’s baby.
And ours.
But Ryan doesn’t know that yet.
“Smile,” I whisper, resting his hand over my belly and covering it with my own.
He looks down at me in confusion. I smile up at him with a pleading look in my eyes. We’ve been trying unsuccessfully for months. I just found out. I haven’t told anyone yet.
“Aviva?” he says, his voice wobbling over my name. “Are you–are we–”
“Yes,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision just as the flash goes off for a third and final time.
While the rest of the crowd laughs and sighs in relief that this photoshoot is over, Ryan leans down, brushing his lips over mine before curling his body around me, kissing me deeply, a tear sliding down his cheek.
I reach up and cup his cheek, laughing as the snow falls around us. He rests his forehead against mine and laughs, pulling me close so I’m crushed to him.
“I love you so much,” he says into my hair.
I wrap my fingers into his jacket, looking over his shoulder at the two white wolves watching us from afar. They turn and disappear into puffs of mist in the snow, carried away by a phantom breeze.
* * *
“I don’t want you handling any of these chemicals anymore,” Ryan says with his back to me. He’s wearing the poorly knitted sweater I made for him that he refuses to let me unweave and start anew. It was my first attempt, in my defense. The navy blue wool brings out the blue in his stormy, dark eyes as he turns to look at me over his shoulder, hanging the three prints of our pack up to dry. He looks at me with so much love in his eyes that my body responds, my skin warming, and tingles ghost down my spine.
He looks me up and down, giving me his signature cocky smile. “The pictures turned out terrible.”
“You knew that was going to happen. Nobody in Silverhide takes anything seriously. It’s a pack trait, something their Alpha must have ingrained in them.”
He arches a brow. I smile, leaning on the doorframe. Our bedroom is mere steps away. Our bed. Our warm quilts. What do I have to do to get him there, preferably without clothes on?
His eyes drop from my face to my chest. It’s warm in our house with the fire raging in the living room, so I’m in a tank top, and his gaze makes my skin tingle and nipples harden under the fabric. His pupils expand as he slowly looks up at me again. “Go get in bed.”
I turn and pad into the bedroom, my heart rate skyrocketing as I hear him close the door to his darkroom and follow after me. It’s dark in here, too, the light off, and through the window I see the snow piling thick, casting the village and fields beyond in white. In the darkness, he comes up behind me, pulling me against him with a hand splayed over my stomach.
His mouth finds my neck, kissing bruises onto my skin as I close my eyes and sink into his firm, heated touch.
He pushes me onto the bed where I watch him pull the terrible sweater off his frame and toss it in a corner. The dim, silver, snowy light plays over his broad muscles as he walks to me. My mate. My husband. The love of my life.
The father of my child.
It’s gentle and easy. We know each other now after months together. He knows where to kiss me, where to touch me, like my body is second nature to him and his to me. He doesn’t knot me this time. There’s no need for that now. This is just for us. A celebration, a reminder of peace, of a warm, happy home and a pack that’s thriving with us at helm.
Afterward, I lie beside him, running a finger around the tattooed moon on his ring finger. We haven’t questioned what the symbols mean yet. We haven’t talked about the necklace. We returned to Silverhide after the festival and acted like nothing had happened this summer. I’ve been grateful for it, honestly. If I’m ever called to be a warrior again, I will go, but for now, this is all that matters.
“Next spring I’ll start on adding two more rooms to the house.” He draws lazy circles on my lower back, which has been aching for weeks. I haven’t been sick yet, thankfully, but based on how Freya and Mercy are faring, I know it’s coming.
“What will the second room be for?”
“If we have twins,” he sighs, shaking his head. “I’m a twin, remember? We could end up with two pretty easily.”
I rest my hand on my still flat stomach. “I think it’s just her in there.”
“Her?” His touch halts on my spine. “How do you know?”
“I just feel it. It’s strange, but I just know that it’s a her, and she’s here with us. Tiny. Just a flicker of who she’ll be, but she’s there, and she’s safe and warm and really likes… chocolate.”
He chuckles. “I was wondering why you’d been spending so much time with Mrs. Craw in the kitchen. She makes the meanest chocolate muffins.”
I lick my lips at the thought, suddenly starving. “Are you disappointed?”
“About what?” He sounds sleepy as his fingers pick up their lazy exploration of my spine.
“That I think she’s a girl?”
“Oh, Aviva.” He rolls over from his back to his side to face me, pulling me close. “No. I’m not upset at all.”
“But you’re an Alpha. She won’t be your heir–”
“What are you talking about? Of course, she will be.” He runs his fingers through my hair. “She will be an Alpha, like her father. She’ll rule Silverhide, and one day, the Deadlands will be hers as well as Alpha King–Alpha Queen. She’ll be sweet and beautiful–like me–too.”
I wrinkle my nose at him, but he smiles, chuckling. He continues, “She’ll be headstrong and wild like her mother. She'll be a fearsome warrior. She’ll be brave, like you. Beautiful, like you. And we’ll love her.”
“We’ll love her,” I echo, closing my eyes. He rests his chin on the top of my head as my heartbeat begins to slow and sleep creeps through my body, dragging me under.
But I wake in the middle of the darkest night I can imagine to Ryan sitting up, still as a statue.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper into the snowy darkness.
Ryan looks around then slides out of bed, dressed in nothing but boxers as he pulls on a pair of pants and his discarded sweater. I follow, of course, not liking the tension I feel pouring off him through our bond.
I pull a robe over my nightdress and slip into my sherpa lined slippers at the front door, following him outside where he stands on the porch and looks up. A flash of black darker than the cloudy, socked-in night sky splits the air in two.
Ryan doesn’t look back at me as he heads down the steps with me following close behind him, unease tightening my chest to the point it’s hard to breathe.
Ryatt is walking toward us dressed in black armor–the kind with scales made of impenetrable leather. His face is cast in shadow and set in a serious, vengeful expression.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan asks with an edge to his voice.
There’s only one reason Ryatt would show up unannounced in Ryan’s territory.
Something’s wrong.
I pull my robe tighter around my middle to fight the cold creeping over my skin, and it’s not from the bitter late fall air, no.
Ryatt’s eyes sweep over Ryan’s face. “Alpha King Jaxon of Tarsian is dead.”
Ryan and I both jolt to full awareness.
Ryatt doesn’t give us a chance to react. “His son, Cole, has proclaimed himself the Alpha King.”
“Well, he’s the heir,” Ryan says slowly, but we can both tell, based on Ryatt’s expression, that there’s something sinister about this.
“He killed his own father,” Ryatt says like someone took a rake to his vocal cords. “Ryan–”
“Why are you here?” Ryan repeats, his hands curling into fists. “What happened?”
It’s the middle of the night. Ryatt is dressed in armor. And now, he’s looking right at me.
“Tarsian is at war. The Alphas loyal to King Jaxon are revolting against Cole. Cole has an army. How, we don’t know, but…” Ryatt’s expression shifts from serious to pained. “The University was attacked a few hours ago.”
My heart stops. I grope for Ryan’s arm and squeeze.
“Misty’s been taken,” Ryatt breathes.