Chapter 35: Joel Waits

Joel had commanded two hundred wolves in a winter siege, and he could not get comfortable in a bed.

He lay on his side in the Tyros wing of the Hospice at one in the morning, with a pillow under his belly and another between his knees.

Neither helped.

The baby had been kicking since dusk.

It was a hard small heel, always in the same place under his ribs, and each time it landed Joel's stomach turned over.

He counted the roof beams.

There were fourteen.

He had counted them every night for a week, and the number never changed, which was why he had started to trust it.

The door opened without a sound.

"I knew you'd be awake," said Max.

He came across the room in his shirt with a candle in his fist and put it down on the chest by the bed.

His hair was flat on one side.

He had slept in the next wing, because the healers said the Luna should rotate between the three beds.

Joel had agreed to that with a face of stone.

He hated every night that wasn't his.

"Go back to sleep," Joel said.

"No."

"You'll be useless tomorrow."

"There isn't a tomorrow I plan to be useful in. The healer says any day now." Max sat on the bed. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What's the matter."

Joel looked at the ceiling.

It was easy to say a hard thing to a room of strangers.

It was nearly impossible to say it to the one person who might answer.

"My mother," he said.

Max waited.

"She died having my brother. I was seven.

"I sat on the stairs outside the room and counted the steps. It took her all night."

His voice was perfectly level.

"I've never told anyone I think about it. I'm the prime of Tyros. I take the salute.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Took His Inheritance, He Claimed Three Alpha Mates from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.