Chapter 15
IRIS
Three months ago, I was dragged to this mountain to pay a debt I didn't owe. Now I stand at its peak, wolf beneath my skin, alpha at my side, and I understand that the blood pact wasn't a prison. It was a path home.
The morning sun crests the eastern ridge and spills golden light across the training yard where I've spent the last hour running drills with the younger wolves.
My muscles burn in that satisfying way that tells me I've pushed hard enough, and sweat dampens the hair at my temples despite the mountain cold.
"Again," I call out, watching as two adolescent wolves circle each other in the sparring ring. "Mira, you're telegraphing your left. Kael sees it coming before you've even committed to the strike."
Mira growls in frustration but adjusts her stance, tucking her shoulder in tighter. The next time she lunges, Kael barely manages to dodge. Progress.
I remember Helena's training yard in the South, the endless hours of combat drills she forced on me before I understood why.
She was preparing me for this, though neither of us knew it at the time.
Every lesson she taught me has found new purpose here in the North, where the wolves respect strength above almost everything else.
My human combat training combined with wolf instincts has made me a luna who can hold her own on the battlefield rather than hiding behind her alpha's protection.
The pack noticed. The whispers that once questioned Stellan's choice have faded, replaced by a grudging respect that grows stronger with each passing week.
"Take five," I tell the sparring wolves, then turn toward the fortress where Stellan waits in his study.
Pack business calls, as it always does, and I've taken to sitting beside him during morning meetings.
At first the advisors resisted my presence, but Stellan made clear that his mate speaks with his authority.
Now they address their concerns to both of us, and more than once my perspective as an outsider has illuminated solutions they couldn't see from inside their centuries of tradition.
The halls of the fortress have become familiar territory. I know which stones creak underfoot, which corridors catch the afternoon light, which corners hold drafts that whisper secrets to wolf ears. The place that once felt like a gilded cage has settled into my bones as home.
I find Stellan at his desk, surrounded by maps and correspondence. The bond hums with his awareness of me as I enter, and he looks up with an expression that softens the hard lines of the alpha into the man I've come to know.
"The merchants from the Eastern Valley want to renegotiate their timber contract," he says, pushing a letter across the desk. "They claim the war disrupted their supply lines."
"The war disrupted everyone's supply lines. That's not a reason to give them better terms." I settle into the chair beside him and scan the letter. "They're testing you. Testing us. Korren's defeat created a power vacuum and everyone's scrambling to see where the new lines will fall."
"What do you suggest?"
"Hold firm on the original terms but offer them priority status for the reconstruction contracts. They get something, we get loyalty, and it costs us nothing we weren't already planning to spend."
Stellan considers this for a moment, then nods. "Draft the response. Sign it with both our seals."
Both our seals. Three months ago I didn't even have a seal. Now my signature carries the weight of the Northern Pack behind it, and the strangeness of that still catches me off guard when I pause to consider it.
The morning passes in a rhythm of decisions and compromises.
A boundary dispute between two hunting parties.
A request from Korren's surviving wolves to establish their own training rotation.
A report from the southern scouts about unusual activity near the border.
Each issue requires attention, consideration, and resolution.
By midday my head aches from the effort, but it's a productive ache.
The kind that tells me I'm building rather than simply enduring.
Signe arrives as we're finishing the last of the correspondence, her healer's bag slung over one shoulder. "Iris, you missed your appointment this morning."
I wince. The routine health check I've been putting off, always finding something more urgent to attend to. "I've been busy."
"You've been avoiding." Signe's pale eyes miss nothing, and the faint smile on her lips tells me she's not fooled by my excuses. "The conversion left traces that need monitoring. I won't have you collapsing in the middle of a pack meeting because you couldn't spare an hour for your healer."
Stellan's attention sharpens. "Go," he says. "I'll handle the rest."
I want to argue, but Signe is already gesturing toward the door with the implacable patience of someone who has waited out far more stubborn patients than me. With a sigh, I rise and follow her to the healing chambers on the fortress's lower level.
The room smells of dried herbs and clean linen, scents I've come to associate with Signe's particular brand of no-nonsense care.
She's become a true friend over these months, the politics that once defined our relationship giving way to genuine trust. One born wolf and one converted human, and instead of competing we've learned to complement each other.
She handles the healing arts and the subtle social navigation of pack dynamics.
I handle the combat training and the strategic planning that comes naturally after a lifetime of Helena's tutelage.
Together we've carved out a partnership that serves the pack far better than rivalry ever could.
"Sit," Signe commands, pointing to the examination table. "And don't give me that look. This will go faster if you cooperate."
I cooperate, mostly because resistance would be futile anyway.
Signe works with quiet efficiency, checking pulse and temperature and a dozen other markers that wolf healers track in ways human medicine never considered.
Her hands are cool and professional as they press against my abdomen, my throat, the pulse points at my wrists.
Then she goes very still.
Her fingers linger on my belly, pressing gently, and her expression changes into careful neutrality. When she looks up at me, her pale eyes hold a question.
"When was your last heat?"
The question catches me off guard. I calculate backwards, trying to remember through the haze of pack business and training rotations.
The conversion disrupted my cycles. Signe warned me it might take months to stabilize, and I've been so focused on everything else that I hadn't noticed the absence.
"I don't know," I admit. "The cycles have been irregular since I became wolf. I assumed they were still settling."
Signe's hand moves to a different spot on my abdomen, pressing with deliberate precision. Her eyes flutter closed for a moment, and when they open again, wonder breaks through her professional mask.
"Iris." Her voice drops to something gentler than I've ever heard from her. "You're pregnant."
The world tilts.
I hear the words but they refuse to assemble themselves into meaning. Pregnant. The concept bounces off me like a stone skipping across water, refusing to sink. I open my mouth to respond, to ask if she's certain, to demand an explanation for how this could have happened so quickly.
Stellan's response hits me before I can form words.
His joy crashes through our connection, overwhelming and immediate and wild. Somewhere in the fortress above, I feel him moving. Running. Coming.
The door bursts open and there he is, breathing hard like he's sprinted through every corridor between his study and this room. His gaze finds mine and holds, and in that moment I see years of waiting collide with a future neither of us dared to expect.
"Pregnant?" The word comes out rough, almost reverent.
"Apparently your swimmers are extremely motivated," I manage, and the absurdity of the response in this moment makes hysterical laughter bubble up in my chest.
He doesn't laugh. He crosses the room in three strides and drops to his knees before me, his hands bracketing my hips, his face pressing against my belly where nothing yet shows but everything has already changed.
His joy pours through the bond, and beneath it I taste the shape of his hope, his fear, his desperate relief.
The weight of leadership without heirs. The fear of what happens to a pack when its Alpha falls without succession.
All of it crashing against this single impossible truth.
"Stellan." His name comes out broken, my fingers threading through his hair. "I didn't know. I should have noticed, should have been paying attention."
He looks up at me, and his eyes burn with an intensity that steals my breath. The alpha of the Northern Pack, the man who conquered armies and faced down his greatest enemy without flinching, kneeling before me with his hands trembling against my hips.
"You have given me everything," he says, voice cracking on the last word.
Signe slips quietly from the room. I cup Stellan's face in my hands, feeling the tension in his jaw, the raw emotion he's holding in check through sheer force of will.
"We gave each other this," I correct him. "That's how we work."
He rises and pulls me into his arms, holding me with a tenderness that makes my throat ache. I breathe him in and let myself believe that this is real. That the path that brought me here, through blood and anger and reluctant surrender, has led somewhere worth the journey.
That night, we climb to the Overlook.