Chapter 4

Chapter 4 ERIC The fight didn't last long. It never did when Aiden and I rode out together. We knew how the other moved without needing to look, knew when to press and when to pull back, and the enemy pack that thought they could push past our border learned that the hard way. I tore through two of them before my wolf even settled into the rhythm of it. Claws, teeth, the hot copper smell of blood in the air. It was ugly work, but it kept my pack safe, and that was the only thing that ever mattered to me. The last one came at me fast, low to the ground, and I didn't think. I just reacted the way years of training had carved into me. My jaw closed around her throat before my mind caught up to what my body had already done. She went still under me. I stepped back, breathing hard, my wolf already sliding away as the fight ended and my human mind came rushing back in. Aiden was a few feet off, checking the others, making sure nobody was still breathing that shouldn't be. I looked down at the she-wolf I'd killed. Something about her stomach caught my eye. Swollen in a way that didn't match the rest of her. I knelt down before I even decided to, my hand hovering over her without touching, and the scent hit me then, the one I should have caught earlier, the one my wolf should have flagged before my jaw ever closed around her throat. She was pregnant. My scalp went numb. My whole body went numb, actually, like someone had poured ice water straight into my veins and it hadn't reached my heart yet, but it was on its way. I hadn't known. I would have sworn on the Goddess herself that I hadn't known. The enemy pack sent her into a fight knowing what she carried, knowing what it meant, and I hadn't caught it in time to stop my own hands. "Eric?" Aiden's voice came from somewhere far away. I looked up at him and my face must have shown something, because his eyebrows pulled together, his whole posture shifting from soldier to something closer to worried friend. "You good?" he asked. I forced my mouth into something that might have passed for normal. "I'm fine." He didn't look convinced. Aiden had known me since we were pups, and he could read me better than most, but I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell anyone what I'd just felt kneeling over that body, the way my chest had caved in on itself, the way guilt had risen up my throat like bile. I was Gamma. I killed enemies. That was the job, and I'd never once flinched from it before. But she'd been pregnant. And I hadn't known. And now I did, and I couldn't unknow it. "We should head back," Aiden said, still watching me a beat too long before he turned to gather the rest of the men. I nodded and said nothing else the whole ride home. By the time we reached camp, the sun had dropped low and orange behind the tree line, and my legs felt like they belonged to someone else. I told Aiden I needed rest and peeled off toward my quarters before he could ask anything more. Inside, alone, I sat on the edge of my cot and stared at my own hands. They were clean. I'd washed them at the river on the way back, some instinct driving me to scrub until my skin went raw, but I could still feel her throat under my jaw, still smell that scent I should have caught, still see the way her stomach curved in a way I hadn't let myself notice until it was too late to matter. My heart started pounding. Not the good kind, not the kind from battle when adrenaline made you feel invincible. This was different. Wrong. It hammered too fast, too hard, like it was trying to climb straight out of my chest. A cold sweat broke out across my back. I told myself to breathe. I'd told a hundred warriors the same thing over the years, watched them struggle through it, watched some of them not make it through at all. I'd never once thought it would be me on the other side of that advice, shaking on my own cot in the dark, unable to get air into my lungs the way I needed to. My hands started trembling. I gripped the edge of the cot to steady them, but it didn't help. If anything, watching them shake made it worse, made the panic claw higher up my throat until I thought I might actually be sick. Panic Disorder. The words rose up in my mind before I could stop them, the same words I'd mocked out loud more times than I could count. A weak man's disease, I'd called it, more than once, loud enough for warriors to hear, loud enough for Flora to hear. I almost laughed. It came out more like a broken, strangled sound instead. If anyone found out, I was finished. Not dead, nothing that clean. Worse. I'd be the Gamma who broke down over one kill, the Gamma who needed hand-holding and lullabies like every soldier I'd sneered at for needing exactly that. My rank meant something because men trusted me not to crack. If I cracked, that trust went with it, and I couldn't afford that. The pack couldn't afford that. So I sat there, alone, and I endured it. Hour after hour, my heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out, sweat soaking through my shirt, my whole body shaking like a man twice my age. I bit down against the urge to call for anyone. I stared at the wall until the shapes on it blurred and reformed, until I lost track of how long I'd been sitting there. Somewhere around the deepest part of the night, I thought about her again. Not the she-wolf. Flora. I thought about the way she'd stood in front of me that morning, chin up, spine straight, refusing to back down even though I could see the fear in her eyes if I looked closely enough, which I had, more than once, more than I wanted to admit. Six out of every ten warriors, she'd said. Their hearts explode in their chests. I hadn't believed her. Or maybe I had, somewhere underneath all my pride, and I just hadn't wanted to. Now my own heart felt like it might actually do exactly that. I didn't sleep. Not really. I sat awake through the whole night, gripping the edge of my cot, forcing air into my lungs one ragged breath at a time, refusing to let this thing win even as it dragged its claws through every part of me. By the time the sun came up, I was hollowed out, exhausted in a way sleep wouldn't fix. But I was still standing. Still breathing. Still alone with a secret I had no intention of letting anyone near.