Chapter 15
Killlian
Months later…
The wood shavings fell away in delicate curls as I worked the plane across the cradle's headboard, revealing the grain beneath. Cherry wood, smooth and warm under my hands. I'd chosen it specifically for this, spent weeks selecting the perfect piece from the lumber yard two towns over.
Nothing but the best for my child.
My workshop was quiet except for the rhythmic scrape of the tool and the distant sound of birds calling to each other in the trees. Sunlight filtered through the single window, illuminating the dust motes that danced in the air.
I paused, running my fingers over the carved design I'd been working on for the past month. A woman with antlers, delicate and dreamlike, surrounded by forest creatures. The same image Lena had drawn all those months ago, the sketch I'd stolen from her cabin before she even knew my name.
It felt right, somehow. Full circle.
The cradle was nearly finished now. Just a few more details to carve, some sanding, then the finish I'd mix myself from linseed oil and beeswax. It would be perfect. Had to be perfect.
I set down the plane and stretched, my back protesting slightly. I'd been out here since dawn, lost in the meditative rhythm of the work.
Through the workshop window, I could see our cabin, smoke curling lazily from the chimney even though it was late spring. Lena liked the fire going. Said it made the place feel cozy.
And there, in the front yard, was my wife.
The word still sent a thrill through me even six months after the wedding. My wife. Mine in every legal, binding, permanent way.
She was sitting in the Adirondack chair I'd built last summer, an easel set up in front of her, barefoot with her sundress stretched over her heavily pregnant belly. Her hair was pulled up in a messy knot, and she had that concentrated expression she always got when she was painting.
Beautiful.
Absolutely fucking beautiful.
I watched her for a moment, just drinking in the sight. The way her hand moved across the canvas with confident strokes. The way she paused occasionally to rest her palm on her stomach, talking to the baby like it could already hear her.
It probably could.
We were due in three weeks, give or take. A girl. Our daughter.
Lena had cried when we found out. Happy tears, she'd insisted, but I'd seen the fear underneath. Fear that our daughter would grow up in this isolated place. Fear that I'd be too controlling, too possessive.
Fear that she'd made a mistake.
But that fear had faded over the months.
As her belly grew and the reality of our child became undeniable, something had shifted in her.
She'd nested, made the cabin truly ours with her art on the walls and her books on the shelves.
She'd even started a garden, planting vegetables and herbs with an intensity that made me smile.
She was building a life here.
With me.
I turned back to the cradle, running my hand along the smooth rails. Every joint was tight, every surface baby safe. No sharp edges, no toxic finishes. I'd researched everything obsessively, same way I did everything when it came to Lena.
When it came to protecting what was mine.
The door to the workshop creaked open and I looked up to find Lena standing there, one hand braced against the doorframe, the other supporting her lower back.
"You've been out here for hours," she said, but there was no accusation in her tone. Just observation.
"Lost track of time." I set down the sandpaper I'd picked up. "You should be resting."
"I've been resting. I got bored." She waddled over, that particular pregnant woman walk that made my chest tight with something I couldn't quite name. "Is that it?"
"Yeah." I stepped aside so she could see the cradle fully.
Her breath caught. "Killian."
"You like it?"
"Like it?" She reached out, fingers tracing the carved antlered woman. "It's perfect. It's... is this my drawing?"
"The one from your sketchbook. The page I took." I wasn't ashamed of it anymore. We'd moved past shame months ago.
Tears filled her eyes. Pregnancy hormones made her cry at everything these days, but I still hated seeing it.
"Hey." I pulled her against me, or as against me as her belly would allow. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." She laughed wetly. "I just... I can't believe you remembered. That you'd put it on our daughter's cradle."
"I remember everything about you, Lena. You know that."
She did. She knew exactly how deep my obsession went, how I'd catalogued every detail of her life before we even spoke. And she'd married me anyway.
"I love you," she said, looking up at me with those dark eyes that had haunted me from the first moment I saw her on that trail cam.
"I love you too." I kissed her forehead, breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with paint and sunshine. "Both of you."
My hand found her belly, and right on cue, the baby kicked against my palm. Strong, insistent. Just like her mother.
"She's going to be stubborn," Lena said.
"Good. She'll need to be, growing up with us."
Lena laughed, the sound filling my chest with warmth. "We're really doing this, aren't we? Bringing a baby into our... situation."
"Our situation is called a marriage, baby. A perfectly normal marriage."
"There's nothing normal about us."
"No." I pulled her closer, one hand still on her belly, feeling our daughter move beneath my palm. "But it's ours. And it's real. And it's forever."
She tilted her head back to look at me. "Promise?"
"I've never let you go yet, have I?"
"No." A smile tugged at her lips. "You really haven't."
"And I never will."
It wasn't a threat anymore. Just a fact. A truth we'd both accepted and built our lives around.
She turned in my arms, carefully, and kissed me. Soft and sweet and full of all the complicated love we'd created out of obsession and fear and desperate need.
When she pulled back, her eyes were bright. "Come inside. I made lunch."
"In a minute. I want to finish sanding this rail."
"Killian." Her tone was patient but firm. "The cradle will still be here after you eat. But your pregnant wife who made you a sandwich might eat it herself if you make her wait too long."
I smiled despite myself. "Can't have that."
I took one last look at the cradle, at the carved image of the antlered woman who'd started all of this, and followed my wife back to our cabin.
The cradle could wait.
My family couldn't.
And as I watched Lena waddle ahead of me, one hand on her belly and the other reaching back for mine, I felt something settle deep in my chest.
Contentment.
This was everything I'd wanted from the moment I first saw her. Everything I'd manipulated and orchestrated and fought for.
A life with her.
A family.
Forever.
She was mine.
Our daughter would be mine.
And I would spend the rest of my life protecting them both with the same obsessive intensity that had brought us together in the first place. It wasn't normal.
It wasn't conventional.
But it was ours.
And that was all that mattered.
THE END