Moonbright Bonus Scene

Small Wolf-Baby

A Moonbright bonus scene. Read after finishing the book.

Keer

The beam settles into the notch.

I keep one hand under it while one of the crew pulls the lashing tight. The new dwelling is too close to the trees and not close enough to the fire, but it’ll hold through winter. That matters more.

There are six more to raise.

Twenty new mouths in the clearing. Twelve without blankets. Three children sharing one pallet. Food stores that were thin before the humans came and will be gone before the first hard freeze if Melori can’t convince Idris to part with the cow.

Problems.

Problems have edges. Weight. Solutions.

The thread under my ribs jerks.

Not pain.

Wrong.

I turn.

Melori is crossing the clearing toward me. Too fast. One hand pressed to her stomach, the other fisted in the front of my shirt. Her face is pale. Bram follows several paces behind her, in no hurry to catch up. Whatever this is, he has decided it belongs to someone else.

Mine.

I let go of the beam.

“Hold it.”

Four sets of hands take the weight. I’m already moving.

She reaches me near the third post.

“Keer—”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. Well, something happened. Obviously something happened at some point or we wouldn’t be having this particular conversation, but nothing happened just now except I puked, and I never puke.”

My hand is already on her face. Cool skin. Sweat at her temple.

“You puked.”

“Yes. Very observant. That’s the first piece of evidence.”

“Evidence.”

She nods once.

The thread is everywhere. Her pulse under mine. Fast. Her breath moving too high in her chest.

Fear.

Hers or mine, I can’t tell.

“Melori.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

The clearing stops.

It doesn’t. Hammers keep striking. A goat screams from the pen. One of the children laughs, and Keer Jr. answers with a sound that shouldn’t come from any living animal.

But the clearing stops.

Her face stays under my hand.

Pregnant.

A pup.

Hers.

Mine.

“Say something,” she says.

I can’t.

The wolf rises so fast my teeth ache. Not violent. Not hunting.

Guarding.

Mine, the animal thinks.

Both.

“Keer.”

“How do you know?”

“I said I think. I don’t know. It’s too soon for me to know, which I’m aware of, but ordinary human timing stopped being useful when your body decided to keep mine for a couple hours in the interest of reproductive efficiency.”

Someone behind me coughs.

I look over my shoulder.

The whole building crew is staring at the beam with the rigid concentration of men who have heard nothing.

“Leave,” I say.

They leave.

The beam stays where it is. Already lashed tight. Good.

Melori watches them scatter.

“Subtle.”

“You were speaking about the lock.”

“I was using medically relevant context.”

“You were speaking about the lock in the middle of the clearing.”

“That’s not the important part of what I just said.”

No.

It isn’t.

I look at her again.

White hair, pink at the ends, escaping her braid. Dirt on her knees. Sawdust on my shirt where it hangs from her shoulders. A damp spot near the hem where she must have wiped her mouth.

Under the wood and sweat and herbs, her scent is the same.

Almost.

I bend closer.

“Are you smelling me?”

“Yeah.”

“Without warning?”

“Yeah.”

“That feels invasive.”

“Be quiet.”

She does. That frightens me more than the vomiting.

I breathe her in again.

Her. The bond. My skin on hers. And beneath it, so faint I would have missed it if the wolf weren’t pressing hard against my ribs—something warm. New. Not a separate scent. A change in hers.

The wolf goes still.

Oh.

My knees almost give.

“Keer?”

I put both hands on her.

Shoulders. Arms. Waist. Checking for something I don’t have a name for. She lets me do it for three breaths before catching my wrists.

“I’m not injured.”

“Dara.”

“Keer—”

“Dara needs to examine you.”

“Dara was elbow-deep in a boil the last time I looked, and I’m not interrupting that so she can examine a pregnancy that’s approximately the size of a determined thought.”

“Now, Melori.”

“No.”

Before her, no one said it to me like that. Without challenge. Without fear. A fact placed on the ground.

No.

The wolf doesn’t like it.

The man knows better.

I breathe once.

“Are you bleeding?”

“No.”

“Pain?”

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“Before I puked. Not now.”

“You sit. You eat. Dara examines you when she’s finished.”

“That was three orders.”

“Requests.”

Her eyebrows rise.

“Poorly phrased requests,” I say.

“Very poorly phrased.”

“Will you sit?”

She studies me.

“Yes.”

I pick her up.

“KEER.”

“You said yes.”

“To sitting. I can transport myself to the sitting.”

“You were sick in the dirt.”

“I got better.”

She’s still arguing when I carry her into the unfinished dwelling and lower her onto a stack of folded hides. No roof. Three walls. One beam. It’s the closest shade.

She crosses her arms.

I crouch in front of her.

“Do you think I’m fragile now?”

“No.”

“That answer was too fast.”

“You’re not fragile.”

“But?”

Blood on packed earth.

A newborn screaming in another woman’s arms.

Kestria so small her whole hand closed around one of my fingers. My mother’s eyes open and unseeing. My father gone before the body was cold.

I learned to wrap a screaming infant against my chest before I learned how to lead a hunt.

I wanted my mother alive. She died anyway.

“My mother died having Kestria.”

Melori doesn’t move.

The noise of the clearing finds us again. Hammer. Goat. Rooster.

“I didn’t know,” she says.

“There was too much blood. The healer couldn’t stop it. My father left that night. I don’t know if he ran or died. I raised her.”

Her hands uncross.

“Keer.”

“I want this.”

I need the words out before she asks. Before the fear makes them sound like anything else.

“I want our pup. I want—”

My voice stops working.

She reaches for me. Both hands around mine.

“I want the mornings. I want you telling me everything I’m doing wrong while I do it wrong. I want to build the cradle. I want to teach them the territory. I want—”

All of it.

The wanting has no edges.

Nothing to grip. Nothing to control.

“I’m afraid,” I say.

Her thumbs move across my knuckles.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You’re allowed. This is objectively terrifying. There are at least nine hundred ways a pregnancy can become a problem, and that’s before we account for the fact that half the pregnancy is wolf and the other half is me.”

I let her finish.

“That wasn’t helpful.”

“No, wait, I had a direction.”

“Find it.”

“The direction is that I’m afraid too.”

I look at her.

“I know bodies. I know what can go wrong. I also know what to watch for. I know when to ask for help. Dara has delivered pups and babies, and now she gets the deeply inconvenient honor of learning whatever this is with me. We have food. We have shelter. We have thirty wolves who will probably start sleeping outside our door the second they find out.”

“They won’t.”

“Keer. You’re going to start sleeping outside the door, and you live inside it.”

I don’t answer.

“See?” she says. “The point is, I’m not alone. Neither are you.”

Her hand leaves mine and touches my face. The scar under my empty socket. The edge of my beard.

“You don’t have to keep me alive by yourself.”

I turn my face into her palm.

“But,” she says, “we need to establish rules before your protective instincts become a public nuisance.”

“No.”

“That was quick.”

“No rules.”

“Then I’ll make them without you. Rule one: you may not carry me unless I’m injured, unconscious, or I specifically request carrying.”

“You agreed to sit.”

“The transport method wasn’t specified. That’s a loophole, and you know it. Rule two: no wolves trailing me to the privy.”

I say nothing.

Her eyes narrow.

“Keer.”

“One. At a distance.”

“No wolves.”

“One.”

“You can stand at a distance if you feel the need to make terrible use of your time. Nobody else.”

“Fine.”

“Rule three: you ask. You don’t decide what my body can do without me.”

The old answer first. Alpha. Mate. Mine. Protect.

Then the one she taught me.

Trust.

“I ask,” I say.

“And if I say no?”

“We argue.”

“Like adults.”

“We’ve never argued like adults.”

She considers that.

“Fair. We argue like us.”

“Yeah.”

She smiles.

My eye stings.

I put my hand against her stomach.

There’s nothing to feel. Softness. Warmth. Melori breathing under my palm.

“It’s too early,” she says.

“I know.”

“And we’re not completely sure.”

“I know.”

“You smell something, though.”

“Yeah.”

“Something good?”

I look up at her.

“Ours.”

Her eyes fill.

“Oh, no. Don’t do that. I already cried about the hypothetical baby. I can’t start crying about the possible baby. There need to be categories. A system.”

“Mel.”

“And if I cry, Kestria will see, and if Kestria sees, the entire pack knows before supper, and I need at least one hour where no one is trying to knit something or feed me—”

“Melori.”

“What?”

I kiss her.

She makes a startled sound against my mouth, then catches my beard in both hands and kisses me back. Careful for half a breath. Not careful after.

The wolf presses close.

Mine.

Both.

When she pulls away, her forehead stays against mine.

“Happy?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“That sounded almost convincing.”

“Mel.”

“I need more than one syllable. This is a major life event.”

I stand. She watches me, suspicious, as I cross to the pile of cut boards beside the open wall.

The pine is wrong. Too soft. Cedar would be better. Smooth-grained. Strong without being heavy. A high rail, but not too high. No gaps wide enough for a small arm. Pegs, not nails. Rounded corners.

“Keer.”

I pick up the nearest board.

“What are you doing?”

I test the weight in my hand.

“Keer.”

“We need a cradle.”

Silence.

Then she laughs.

The sound fills the dwelling that has no roof yet. Carries into the clearing. Turns heads. Kestria looks down from the roof she’s thatching across the clearing, sees my hand on the board, sees Melori’s hand on her stomach, and nearly falls off the ladder.

So much for an hour.

⁂

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