Chapter 39 Andrea
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Andrea
I woke up alone in his bed.
Our bed, technically, since I’d stopped going back to the guest room a week ago and neither of us had acknowledged the shift out loud.
My clothes had migrated into his closet.
My books were on his nightstand. The peonies he kept replacing were on the dresser instead of down the hall.
We just let it happen, the way you let a river change course, not by deciding but by stopping pretending it wasn’t already going that way.
I could hear his voice from somewhere nearby, low and serious, and I lay there trying to figure out who he was on the phone with at seven in the morning. I got up, pulled on his shirt because mine didn’t fit over the belly anymore, and followed the voice down the hall to the nursery.
The door was open. Finneas was inside, standing in front of the crib we’d assembled last weekend, arms crossed, his tone the same one he used in council sessions. He wasn’t on the phone. He was talking to the crib.
“The northern border patrol needs restructuring,” he was saying. “Aldric wants to keep the rotation at two weeks but I think monthly is more efficient. Less strain on the patrol families.” He paused like he was waiting for a response. “Your thoughts?”
I leaned against the doorframe and pressed my hand over my mouth.
“And the housing allocation for the new families needs to be finalized before winter. Luca’s handling the paperwork but the council wants my sign-off, and Brennan has opinions about the western plots that I don’t agree with but he’s not entirely wrong. Which is annoying.”
I couldn’t hold it. A laugh escaped through my fingers.
He turned and saw me in the doorway, his shirt hanging to my thighs, my belly round underneath it. His face didn’t change, not even a flicker of embarrassment.
“I’m briefing Alex on pack business.”
“He’s not born yet.”
“He should be prepared.”
“He’s the size of a butternut squash.”
“A well-informed butternut squash.”
I walked over and his hand went to my belly automatically, palm flat, fingers spread. The baby kicked against his hand immediately, hard, the way he always did when Finneas was close.
“See?” Finneas said. “He agrees with me about the patrol rotation.”
“He kicked. That’s not agreement. That’s his foot.”
“It’s agreement.”
I shook my head and leaned back into him.
His arms came around me from behind, resting on the bump, his chin settling on the top of my head.
We stood in the nursery looking at the crib we’d built together, the walls I’d painted yellow because I refused to do blue or pink, the little wolf stuffed animal on the shelf that Luca sent with a card that said for the future king, from his favorite uncle (only uncle).
“You brief him every morning, don’t you?” I asked.
“He needs to know what’s happening.”
“He’s a fetus, Finneas.”
“He’s a fast learner.”
“What else do you tell him?”
“Pack updates. Security reports. Occasionally the weather.”
“You give our unborn child a weather report.”
“He should know what to expect when he arrives.”
I turned in his arms to face him, the belly bumping against his stomach as I shifted.
His hands settled on my hips, holding me in place, and I looked up at his face.
Sleep-rumpled, stubble darker than usual, amber eyes soft in the morning light.
He was beautiful like this, unguarded, before he put on the King face for the day.
“You’re going to be a good dad,” I said.
His throat moved. “I’m going to try.”
“You’re already trying. You’re giving strategy briefings to a butternut squash at seven in the morning. That’s commitment.”
He almost laughed, catching it behind his teeth, and I pressed up on my toes and kissed him. Brief, soft, just his mouth against mine for a second. When I pulled back his eyes were closed and his hands had tightened on my hips.
“I have to get ready for the council,” he said. His voice was rough.
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to cancel the council.”
“I’m considering it.”
“Go.” I pushed his chest. “Rule your kingdom. I’ll be here when you get back.”
He went. Slowly, looking over his shoulder once from the doorway.
I stood in the nursery with my hand on my belly, yellow walls around me, thinking about how two months ago I was sleeping in a guest room thirty feet from his door telling myself co-parenting only.
Now I was kissing him in the nursery wearing his shirt, and it felt like breathing.
Finneas left for a council meeting that afternoon. I went to the animal wing, settled into the reading nook with Buddy at my feet and tea on the windowsill. The afternoon light was warm through the glass, the baby was quiet for once, and I was three chapters in when a voice came from the doorway.
“So you’re the human.”
My head snapped up. A woman was standing at the entrance to the reading nook. Dark hair with gray streaks, sharp face, elegant clothes, posture so perfect it looked painful. Mid-fifties, thin, watching me with an expression you’d use on something stuck to your shoe.
I’d never met Margaret Kingsley. Never seen her face. But the resemblance to Finneas was immediate, the same sharp bone structure, the same dark hair, the same commanding presence that filled a doorway. Except where his presence made me feel safe, hers made the hair on my arms stand up.
This was an Alpha shifter. A former Luna.
A woman who faked a terminal illness to control her own son.
She was standing ten feet from me with no security between us, Finneas in the council chamber on the other side of the estate, and I was thirty weeks pregnant in a window seat with a dog as my only backup.
My heart was going fast but I kept my voice flat. “How did you get in here?”
She didn’t answer. She walked into the reading nook like she owned it, her eyes moving across the bookshelves, the window seat, the dog at my feet. Her lip curled.
“He built all this for you. A shelter. In my son’s home.”
“Your son’s home. Not yours. But I’m guessing boundaries aren’t really your thing.”
Her eyes sharpened. Good. I wanted her to know I wasn’t going to sit here and let her monologue at me like a villain in a bad movie.
“It was mine before it was his. I was Luna of this estate for twenty years. I know every room, every hallway, every entrance.” Her eyes found mine. “Including the ones my son doesn’t know about.”
Shit. She’d broken in through a passage Finneas didn’t know existed.
I was alone with a woman who could shift into a wolf in the time it took me to stand up.
My hands were clammy and my pulse was hammering in my ears but I’d be damned before I let her see it.
Buddy pressed against my leg, sensing the tension, and I put my hand on his head as much for my own comfort as his.
“What do you want, Margaret? Because if you broke in just to give me a tour history, I’m going to be really disappointed.”
“I want you to understand what you’re doing.
” She clasped her hands in front of her, composed, controlled, delivering this like a rehearsed speech.
“You’re a human carrying a child that may or may not be a shifter, living in a pack estate, playing at being Luna.
You don’t belong here. You don’t understand our world, our traditions, our history.
My son is too blinded by this bond to see what everyone else can. ”
“And what can everyone else see?”
“That you’re weakening him. A human Luna is a liability. The pack needs strength at its center, not sentiment.”
“Strength.” I put my book down. “You want to talk to me about strength. That’s rich, coming from you.”
Her jaw tightened. I could feel the fear, the animal awareness of being in a room with a predator who could snap me in half.
But the anger was louder. This woman destroyed my relationship from a fake deathbed.
She broke her son’s heart and then mine and now she was standing in my reading nook telling me I didn’t belong.
And I was about to be a mother. In two months I was going to hold a baby, my baby, and the thought of ever doing to him what this woman did to Finneas made me physically sick.
I had my hand on my belly and I could feel Alex kicking against my palm, alive, mine, and the fury that rose in me wasn’t just for myself.
It was for the little boy Finneas used to be, eating dinner alone, raised by tutors and expectations, carrying a dead father’s legacy on shoulders that were never given a choice.
Getting out of a window seat at thirty weeks pregnant was a production that involved bracing both hands on the cushion, rocking forward twice, and accepting that grace was no longer part of my vocabulary. But I did it, and I stood, and I faced her even though my legs were shaking.
“Your son built a company from the ground up. He runs a pack of hundreds. He sat in my grandmother’s driveway for twelve hours in the rain because I told him to leave and he refused.
He gave up a wedding, cut off his own mother, moved to a town where the biggest excitement is a fence repair, and waited months for a woman who kept saying no.
” I held her gaze. “None of that is weakness. That’s the strongest man I’ve ever met.
He did all of it despite you, not because of you. ”
“A strong man wouldn’t choose a human over his own kind.”
“A strong man chooses for himself. You never let him do that. You chose his friends, his future wife, his career. You controlled every piece of his life and when he finally picked something on his own, you faked a goddamn terminal illness to take it away.”
Her composure cracked. The polished mask slipped, raw fury underneath.