Mara
Three Months Later—The Community Lands
Igive my father a nod as he hauls the last box off the bare floor. When I bend for the other one, his head snaps around and he roars at me, loud enough to rattle the empty window in its new frame.
“I’m three months, Dad.” I straighten up and spread my hand over the small swell under my dress, barely there yet. “I’m just starting to show. A box isn’t going to break me.”
He doesn’t bother with words. He just stares me down, the same hard amber look I’ve gotten every day, while one of my brothers slips in and lifts the box clean out of my reach.
Dayo gives me a sheepish look over the top of it, sorry but not about to cross the man who made us both, before he carries it out the door.
My father’s been like this for three months, hovering at my elbow, sniffing my food, listening at my door.
He stops in the doorway with the box on his shoulder and lifts his nose to the air. Whatever he catches there pulls his mouth into a flat line. “That dragon you’ve been waiting on is here.”
“Oh.” I cross to where we slept, stripped to the bare mattress now, the quilts and pillows already out in the wagon. I pull the cabin keys off the nightstand, close my fist around them, and head down the stairs.
Ezra’s waiting at the bottom of the porch steps, still as standing water, his hands folded in front of him. When I step into the doorway he drops his head to me, formal. I dip mine right back.
“It’s yours now.” I hold the key out flat on my hand.
He reaches for it. Right then my father comes down the steps behind me with a box on each shoulder, both my brothers on his heels. Ezra’s hand stalls, and he turns to watch them load the wagon. I watch him watch them.
“They’re aggressive,” he says under his breath, eyeing the three of them. They can hear him. “Real intense.”
“You’re the same way about the women in your clan, I’d bet.” I can’t help the grin.
He shrugs, sheepish. “Not this damn intense.”
A giggle gets loose out of me, and my hand finds my belly. His gaze drops to the swell of it, the careful sliding off his face, and he smiles.
“Thank you. For letting me take it over.” He glances back at the cabin. “I think I’m gonna need the room eventually.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Nah.” He looks off toward the wagon. “Nothing big. Just clan stuff.”
“Oh.”
His face goes gentle. “Is Aaron ever coming back?”
I open my mouth to give him a shrug, the only answer I’ve got for anybody these days. Then my ears swivel toward a sound that isn’t anywhere in this yard, and his voice slides into me, warm and close as a mouth against my ear.
I’m coming back to you, baby. Six months.
I give Ezra a wobbly smile.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I drag the word up from somewhere. “Just need some water.”
“Oh.” He’s already moving for the door. “I’ll grab you some.”
He disappears inside. I lower myself into one of the porch chairs. “I miss you, Aaron.”
I miss you more.
I roll my eyes up at the porch beams.
How are you feeling?
“Lonely.” My father’s shadow falls across the porch.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Myself.” I smooth my face out. “Just mumbling.”
He holds me in that stare, his nostrils working. I know he doesn’t believe a word of it. He shakes his head and shifts the box higher on his shoulder. “A couple more, and we’re taking you home. You need to rest.” He goes back inside.
He’s right. You do need to rest.
I hiss at the empty air. My lion hisses right along with me, her tail lashing.
The Glen’s coming along nicely. His voice warms, proud and fighting not to show it. I can’t wait for you to see it. Then it dips, careful now. But I’m afraid, Mara. Are you sure you’re willing to give up Wintermoon for a life with me?
“YES.” It tears out of me loud enough to startle a bird off the rail. I slap a hand over my mouth.
Aaron laughs, the sound rolling all the way through my head. I hate how much I love it.
Ezra comes back out with a pitcher and a glass, his eyebrows up. I wave off the glass and take the whole pitcher instead, gulping straight from the lip of it while my mate cackles.
I watch you every day, he says.
I know he does, and I can feel him right there with me. I don’t say it, not with Ezra standing right over me, but Aaron hears it anyway, and his quiet hum answers me.
I drink until the pitcher’s half gone and hand it back. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to walk a little.” I push up out of the chair. “Need to move my legs before they load me onto that wagon like a sack of grain.”
Ezra nods and watches me go down the steps.
Ezra’s grown into a fine man, Aaron says, soft. They all have.
“You’re better,” I tell him. I keep walking, knowing I won’t get far before my father comes to fetch me.
The community lands stretch out around me. I follow the worn path past the cabins. “I hate this. Waiting on you.”
The Glen needs a lot of work, baby.
“What about your father?” The question’s been sitting heavy in me for weeks. “Eric.”
He’s been dealt with. There’s a hardness under it I’ve never heard him aim at me before. You never have to worry about him again. I promise you that.
I smile down at the dirt. I don’t ask him for more than that.
“And Henry?”
I don’t know yet.
When I don’t answer, he fills the silence himself. You haven’t gone to see my mother. My sisters. Why not?
I stop walking. “It’s hard.” My hand curls into a fist at my side. “I look at them and all I see is you. And it hurts, Aaron. It hurts to be near them and not near you.”
Alright. His voice comes in close at my ear. Alright, baby. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
“I hate this separation.” The path goes blurry. “Can’t I just come now?”
We agreed on six months.
“Aaron—“
I won’t have you living in squalor. His voice goes immovable. The Glen needs its final touches, and then it’s yours. Ours. Not a day before it’s ready for you.
I cross my arms and huff at the trees.
When I look up, my father’s already rolling the wagon toward me. I groan. “I’ve gotta go. My own warden’s here to collect me.”
I have to go too. More king work.
That word still gets me—king. This man who clawed his way up out of nothing, wearing it now like he was born to it. I smile in spite of myself.
I’ll come back to you tonight, he says. Read you and our cub a story, same as every night.
I close my eyes and let his voice hold me. I miss the weight of him at my back when I sleep, his warmth, his scent—that coffee and sandalwood my lion’s gone half-feral without.
I miss you too, he says. Of course he hears all of it.
I pout, even though he can see me.
I try to give you room. I do. His voice roughens. But I miss you so damn bad it’s a sickness in me, Mara. You’ve become my obsession. I want all of it—how you breathe, how you sleep, every thought that crosses behind those amber eyes.
I’m swooning right there in the middle of the path, my knees going soft, my lion purring like a fool. Then the world tips and I’m upside down, squealing, hauled up over my father’s shoulder.
“One more weird outburst,” he growls, already carrying me toward the wagon, “and I’m setting up a meeting with that spider therapist. Nicole.”
I love you, Aaron says, still laughing. Talk later.
Then he’s gone. I feel the moment the bond goes quiet and the warmth winks out, that small tearing loss hitting me every time he leaves. I breathe through it.
My father sets me down in the wagon bed and wedges a box in tight beside me so I won’t slide, gentle for all his roaring. Tunde tucks a blanket over my legs and kisses the top of my head before he heads up front to help pull. I settle back against my boxes and rest a hand on my belly.
Up on the porch, Ezra lifts a hand and waves. I wave back, and I hope he fills that small place with a better life than the one I’m leaving in it. Him and his Aya. The same thing Aaron did for me once, before he’d let himself bring me home.
I spend the rest of the day flat on my back in my childhood bed, staring up at the ceiling beams and counting down the minutes to the hour Aaron always comes.
Then something thumps inside me.
I freeze. It comes again, light and strange under my hand. I push up onto my elbows and spread my fingers wide over my belly, and there it is, thump, thump, thump—my cub, knocking from the inside.
A laugh breaks out of me and the tears come up right behind it. “Hi, baby. Hi. I’m here.”
The door bangs open and my father fills it, his chest heaving, braced for a threat that isn’t there. “I can feel my son,” I tell him, half-laughing, half-crying. “He’s kicking, Dad.”
The fear goes out of him all at once. He crosses the room and drops to his knees as I swing my legs over the side of the bed.
He lays his big scarred hand over the swell of me, gentle.
When the baby kicks against him, he pulls back like the touch burned, and turns his face clean away from me.
The grief that crosses it is a thing I’m not supposed to see.
“I know he comes to you,” he says. “That’s who you’re always talking to.”
I don’t answer him.
“He’s going to come for you. Isn’t he?”
I nod, even though he isn’t looking at me.
He pushes to his feet. “And you’re going to leave with him.”
I nod again.
“Then I might never see you again.” He turns to face me, his amber eyes wet and furious. “What about us, Mara? What about the people of Wintermoon? You’d just go?”
“Would you do it?” I meet him head-on. “If it were you. Could you let my mother walk away and build a whole life somewhere else, and just wait on her, the way Aaron’s waiting on me?”
The growl that comes up out of him has no answer in it. We both already know what it would be.
“Don’t miss dinner,” he says instead. He walks out and slams the door hard enough to jump the lamp on the dresser.
I sigh into the empty room.
I’m sorry, Aaron says. I’m causing you trouble.
“Can you do the thing?” I glance at the door and the thin walls, my whole nosy pride on the other side of them. “The spell. So they can’t hear me.”
He does it. Blue-gold sparks crackle up the walls and seal the two of us in, and for the first time all day, I can breathe out loud. I lie back on the quilt and close my eyes.
Eat dinner, he says. No skipping meals, baby.
“Oh, please.”
He chuckles, warm. Your father has a point.
“Talking me out of this will only piss me off.” I rest a hand on the baby. “If you’re going to reject me, Aaron, then just do it and get it over with. Don’t dangle it in front of me. I’m holding onto hope.”
Okay. Okay. The tease drops right out of him. I’m sorry.
“Stupid fucking six months. Should’ve given you a week, tops.”
He laughs again, warmer this time. You did the right thing, Mara, and I mean it. The more I watch this realm heal, the surer I am about bringing you into it.
“Shut up and read me my story.” I drag the blanket up over my legs. “Matter of fact, let’s finish Dorian Gray. I like where it’s going.”
Alright, baby. I can hear the smile sitting in it. He starts in on the next chapter, his voice settling into the even rhythm I fall asleep to. Then he stops. You’re going to eat dinner. Right?
I groan and sit up. “Eating cuts into my time with you.”
I can always leave and come back.
I’m up off the bed and at the door, his laugh trailing after me. Then it gentles, and the fight goes out of me.
I wish I could feel him move, Aaron says. I hate that I’m missing his first kicks while I’m a whole realm away from both of you.
I stop with my hand almost to the door. “You’re not missing it. You’re right here with me, Aaron. Just... in a different way than either of us planned.”
He’s quiet. Then, right as my fingers find the knob, his voice comes back thick. Thank you for loving me, Mara. Even when I don’t deserve it. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you know how grateful I am—for your patience, for your strength with me every time I keep testing it.
“Well, it’s thinning.” I smile. “Shut me out like you did before, Aaron Blackwood, and I’ll hunt you down and kill you the way Layla does Josiah.”
He bursts out laughing, ringing through the whole of my head.
“I don’t know what’s funny.” I pull the door open. “I mean it.”
He chokes on the laugh so fast I almost feel sorry for him.
I step out into the hall and hurry toward the noise of the table and the dinner I don’t want. The faster I eat, the faster I get back to him.
Only three months left, and I’m counting down every hour until the day there’s no more glass between us and he’s finally, finally mine to hold again.