Chapter 11: The Bench

"There's something I have to ask you," I said, "and I want you to answer before we get in."

It was Friday evening, and I stood in the doorway of the ground-floor bathroom with one hand on the frame.

The pain had dropped to a two.

I could walk the hall with my fingertips on the wall, and I felt almost like a person.

Roe stood by the new shower with a towel over his shoulder.

The bench was pale cedar, wide enough for two, bolted at hip height along the tile wall.

A handheld nozzle hung beside it on a hook.

The room smelled like fresh-cut wood and soap.

"Ask," he said.

"I called my doctor yesterday. About children."

His face went very still.

"She says it's possible," I said. "With a team."

"I'd have to come off my medication months before and go on a different one. I'd be watched like a hawk."

"There's a good chance the flares get worse. And she can't promise me I'd carry to term."

"Okay."

"That's all you say?"

"What else is there?"

"There's the fact that you're an Alpha, and your pack expects an heir, and I might not give you one."

Roe crossed the tile in two steps.

He took my face in both hands.

"I didn't ask for a pup," he said. "I asked for you."

"If there's a baby, we do it your way, with your doctor, on your schedule."

"If there isn't, there's the two of us and a ramp and a farm."

"I'm not waiting for you to be a different woman."

My throat closed.

"You keep saying that."

"I'm going to keep saying it until you believe it."

I put my forehead against his chest.

"I'm starting to," I said.

He undressed me in the bathroom, not fast.

I let him.

When I was bare, he helped me down onto the bench with his hands under my elbows.

I sat on the warm cedar with my feet on the tile.

He turned the water on and tested it against his wrist.

"Hot?"

"A little hotter."

He adjusted it, and then he stripped and stepped into the shower with me, and took the handheld nozzle off its hook.

Warm water ran over my shoulders.

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