Free Web NovelChapter 42: Chapter 42: 9 Months Pregnant With Twins
We rode through the gates at first light, horses steaming, snow crusting every cloak. My thighs burned from the long hours in the saddle and my back felt like it had been hammered flat, but I kept my spine straight until the mare stopped in the bailey.
Darius swung down first and reached up for me. I let him lift me, eight months of twins making the drop feel heavier than it should. My boots hit the packed snow and my knees almost buckled. Kane steadied me with one scarred hand at my elbow. Rylan was already handing the reins to a waiting stable hand, axe still strapped across his back.
Garrick met us at the steps, breath fogging. "No trouble while you were gone. The lower patrols held. But the pack felt it. They knew you went out after those prints."
I nodded once and started up the stairs. Every step sent a fresh spike through my hips. The twins had been quiet on the ride back, as if they understood the tension riding with us, but now they rolled hard, one sharp elbow catching under my ribs.
I pressed my hand there and kept moving. Lila’s voice carried down from the nursery before I reached the door, high and demanding, the way it got when she knew something was off.
She spotted me the second I stepped inside and toddled straight across the furs, arms up. I dropped to one knee, belly crowding my thighs, and caught her against me.
She smelled like woodsmoke and milk. Her small hands patted my cheeks, then pressed flat to my belly like she was checking the twins were still there. "Mama back," she said, clear and proud.
"Yeah, little storm. Mama’s back." My voice came out rough from the cold. Darius crouched beside us and ruffled her hair. Kane closed the door behind us. Rylan paced once, then stopped by the window, staring out at the ridges we had just left.
We talked low while Lila played between us. Garrick had doubled the inner watches without being told. The new beta had also pulled in every outlying family from the lower slopes, bringing their stores and their hands with them.
The keep was fuller now, louder, the halls smelling of wet wool and baking bread instead of empty stone. The pack was bracing. They didn’t need speeches. They needed to see us here, solid, not chasing shadows across the snow.
I sat through the rest of the morning with my boots off and my feet in a basin of warm water Kane had brought. The swelling had gotten worse on the ride, veins standing blue under the skin, but the heat helped.
Darius laid out the new plan on the table: no more long chases. We would bait them instead. Small patrols that looked weak, supply runs that looked careless, all of it watched from the high ridges by our own hidden eyes. Let the eastern wolves think they were learning us. Then close the trap when they stepped inside it.
Rylan agreed with a short grunt. Kane sharpened his knife while he listened, the scrape of steel steady against the fire’s crackle. I added one rule. No one rides alone. Not even the kings. The pack needed to see us together, not scattered. The bond between the four of us pulled tighter at the words, a low hum that eased the ache in my back for a moment.
By midday Garrick brought the first reports from the lower halls. Two men had tried to hoard extra grain yesterday, thinking the eastern threat meant the rules were loosening.
Garrick had them stripped of their extra share and put on wall duty until the next full moon. The pack had watched him do it without complaint. One woman even nodded at me later in the corridor, her eyes steady. The new beta was earning their trust the way we needed him to.
I spent the afternoon in the nursery with Lila while the kings rotated through the walls. She had discovered the wooden blocks Rylan carved for her and was stacking them into crooked towers, knocking them down with a delighted shriek every time they fell.
I sat on the furs, belly resting on my thighs, and helped her balance the top piece. The twins kicked in slow, heavy waves, like they were trying to match her rhythm. My back protested every time I leaned forward, but I stayed there until her eyes grew heavy and she crawled into my lap, thumb in her mouth, head against my chest.
The keep kept turning around us. Supplies were tallied again. The new root cellar doors were reinforced with iron. Women brought in fresh bundles of herbs from the stores and hung them to dry along the upper corridors.
The air smelled of pine and thyme and the faint iron tang of snow melting off boots. Garrick moved through it all like he had been doing it for years, quiet orders, steady nods, never raising his voice. The pack was stronger under him. Not louder. Just solid.
That evening the four of us ate together in the chambers for the first time since the ride. Rylan had brought up a haunch of the buck the eastern team had taken, roasted slow with the last of the dried berries.
Lila sat between Darius and me, picking at her portion with sticky fingers and feeding bits to the carved wolf she refused to let go of. Kane ate in silence, eyes flicking to the window every few minutes. The bond felt heavier tonight, the curse testing the edges the way it always did when snow piled high and the moon edged closer.
I pushed my plate away when the twins gave a particularly hard roll that stole my breath. Rylan noticed and slid his hand under the table to rest on my knee, thumb tracing small circles against the ache there.
No one spoke about the eastern wolves again. We didn’t need to. The line had been drawn. Tomorrow we would start answering it with steel and eyes and the quiet strength of a keep that refused to break.
Lila fell asleep against my side, small snores puffing warm against my tunic. I looked at the three of them around the table and felt the weight of every mile we had ridden today settle into my bones alongside the pregnancy.
The eastern wolves had left their cold marker and walked away laughing. We had come home and kept the fires burning. The pack had watched us do it. Garrick had held the line. The keep was still ours.
But the snow kept falling outside, thick and silent, covering every track we had left behind.
And somewhere out on the ridges, three wolves were already moving again, testing the new shape of our defense.
The bond hummed low and fierce between the four of us.
We would be ready when they stepped closer.
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Weeks passed in the slow crush of winter and the keep kept its rhythm. Lila hit one and a half like a small storm that refused to slow down. She ran everywhere now, bare feet slapping stone, dark curls bouncing as she chased the carved wolf across the great hall or climbed onto benches to point at the rafters and demand "bird" even when there were none.
Her words came fast and clear, short sentences that made the pack grin behind their hands. "Mama sit," she ordered one morning when I tried to stand too quickly from the council bench. She planted her hands on my knees and pushed like she could hold me there herself.
I was almost 9 months pregnant with the twins and the weight sat low and heavy, pressing on my hips until every step felt like wading through deep water. My ankles had swollen into thick lines and my back burned in a constant low fire, but the latent alpha blood kept me moving.
I still walked the halls twice a day, one hand always on the small of my back, the other resting on the tight curve of my belly where the twins rolled and kicked like they were training for their own battles. The mark on my chest itched when the wind shifted, but the curse stayed quiet between moons. We were holding.
The kings had turned protective in a way that would have annoyed me a year ago. freēwēbnovel.com
Darius never let me climb the stairs alone anymore. He appeared at my elbow every time I left the chambers, ice-blue eyes scanning the corridors like the stone itself might turn on us.
Kane took to carrying anything heavier than a cup of water, his scarred hands gentle when he lifted the water bucket or the stack of fresh linens from the laundry.
Rylan refused to let me ride even the gentlest mare around the inner bailey. He walked beside me instead, axe on his shoulder, matching my slower pace without comment.
I let them do it because fighting them took more energy than I had, and because the bond felt steadier when they stayed close.
