Chapter 13: The Cost

"What cost?" I asked.

Torin looked at the eldest, and she gave him a small nod.

"A mate bond is how a pack feeds its unborn," he said. "Your son draws his wolf through the line from his father's blood."

My hand went to my stomach.

"If the line is cut, he keeps his body and his mind," Torin said. "His wolf is weaker. He may be slow to shift, or never shift at all."

"And me?" I said.

"You lose your protector. Every wolf bonded to a Luna feels it when she is in danger. After the cut, no Rowland will feel anything for you."

"Then we wait," Hazel said. "Joanna, we wait until the baby is born. I'll hold the seat and nobody touches you."

Caleb made a sound.

It was the first one he had made since his father's letter.

"Joanna," he said. "Please. She's right. Wait."

I looked at him.

He stood alone in the middle of the stone floor with no seat, no mother and no title.

I had loved him for six years. I had been his Luna for three.

"You counted on that," I said. "You counted on me waiting."

"That isn't..."

"You kept a woman on tuition for two years and told her I was a cage."

His mouth shut.

"I'm not waiting in a cage with the door open," I said.

I put both hands on my stomach and closed my eyes.

"Mom," the pup said in my head.

I breathed in.

"Mom, I heard all of it. I'm not scared."

"Your wolf," I whispered.

"I'd rather be small and have you than big and have him. He'd teach me to leave a room."

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