It started the way Kira had said it would start — not with drama, not with the cinematic version of things, but with the specific, undeniable quality of something that had been building toward a point and had arrived at it.
I felt it at an hour that had no name.
Not pain exactly — or not only pain. Something more purposeful than pain. The body doing what it had been preparing to do for the entire length of the pregnancy, with the patient certainty that had characterized everything about Rowan from the beginning.
I lay still for a moment. Cataloguing. The quality of it — yes. The frequency — building. The duration — sustained and increasing.
Rowan had decided.
"Darius," I said.
He was awake before I finished saying his name. The Alpha's vigilance, the monitoring that never fully stopp
