Too Late, Alpha: I Died Carrying Your Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six Minutes

Marit wakes in Lars's cabin with a splinted hand, learns she was dead six minutes while her pup kept kicking, and asks him to tell no one; drums sound on the south shore for her funeral.

I woke up warm, and for a few seconds that was the only thing I understood.

There was a wood ceiling above me, a stove ticking somewhere to my left, and a wool blanket pulled up to my chin.

Then I tried to close my left hand, and the pain came up my arm so fast that I sat up and gasped.

"Easy," a man said.

He was sitting on a kitchen chair beside the bed with his elbows on his knees.

He was huge, with black hair still wet at the ends, a short beard, and a face weathered by years outdoors.

He wore a green warden's jacket with a patch on the sleeve, and he had not slept.

My fingers were wrapped in a splint of flat sticks and gauze.

I put my good hand on my belly and held my breath.

Nothing moved.

"She's fine," the man said quietly.

Under my palm, the pup kicked.

I put my head back against the pillow and cried for about a minute.

He let me, and he did not touch me, and he did not say a single useless thing.

When I stopped, he handed me a mug of broth.

"I'm Lars Brandvold," he said. "This is my cabin, on the north shore."

I knew the name.

He was the Alpha of the Northfork pack, the one Garrick called "the warden" with a curl in his lip.

"You're the other side of the lake," I said.

"I was on my dock with a spyglass when the hole opened. I ran across."

"With a spyglass," I said. "On Solstice night."

"It's the only night your whole pack stands in one place." He didn't blink. "Sometimes I like to know where they are."

It wasn't an answer, but it was all I was going to get.

"How long was I under?"

"I had you out in under two minutes. Your heart had stopped by then."

He rubbed his jaw.

"I breathed for you on the ice for six minutes before it started again. My own wolves held the shore so nobody from the south side could see."

Six minutes.

I looked at the splint, and then at his hands, which were scraped raw across the knuckles.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because a man was pushing a pregnant woman into a lake."

"That's the reason anyone would have. Why you?"

For a moment he looked toward the window.

"I've watched that walk three years," he said. "This year I decided not to watch."

I didn't ask what he meant.

I was too tired to, and I wasn't sure I'd like the answer.

"Does Garrick know I'm alive?"

"The whole south shore saw you go under. He had his men out on the ice by dawn with ropes and lamps." Lars's voice flattened. "They're dragging the hole now."

"And the pup?"

"If he finds out you're breathing, he finds out she is too." He leaned back. "Holmberg law says an Alpha's heir belongs to the pack. I can't think of a way that ends with her in your arms."

That was true.

It was the first true thing anyone had said to me in weeks.

I touched the mark on my throat.

It had been a burning silver brand for three years, and now it was dead skin that ached when I swallowed.

"Don't look at it," I said, when I saw him look.

"Fine."

"Don't touch it either."

"I wasn't going to."

"And the pup is mine," I said. "I don't care who your pack is or what your law says. Nobody gets to say 'mine' about her except me."

His mouth moved, very slightly.

"Understood."

"I want to be dead," I said. "Let them bury me. Let him think I drowned and kept his heir with me."

"That's a cruel thing to ask of a man who just lost his mate and his child."

"He didn't lose them," I said. "He gave them away."

Lars was quiet.

Then he said, "My roof until the ice goes out. After that you decide where you go, and I won't stop you. Does that suit you?"

"Yes."

"You can have the bed. I'll take the couch."

"I can do the couch."

"You're five months pregnant and you drowned today." He stood up and ducked under the low beam. "Take the bed."

I was about to argue when I heard it.

It came across the water, low and slow, thin with distance.

A drum.

Then a second, and a third, and three hundred voices rising on the south shore in the old Holmberg funeral call.

It was the call for a Luna.

They were singing my name.

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