Chapter 21: The Birth

Lars's POV

The truck took forty minutes around the lake road, and Marit swore at me for every one of them.

I'd never heard a woman so inventive.

She gripped the dashboard with her good hand and told me what she thought of my driving, my suspension, my knee, and my entire pack.

Petra sat in the back seat with a watch and a very calm face.

"Closer together," she said, at the third curve. "Brandvold, faster."

"I'm going eighty."

"Then go eighty-five."

We reached the cabin at dusk.

The beta was already on the porch with six of my wolves and every blanket we owned.

I carried Marit up the steps and through the door, and she hissed at me the entire way.

"Put me down. I can walk. Put me down, Lars, I'm going to..."

The next contraction cut her off, and she bit down on my shoulder.

I didn't make a sound.

Petra took charge of the bed, and the stove, and the water, and me.

"Sit behind her," she said. "Let her lean. Don't talk."

I sat on the bed with my back against the headboard and Marit between my knees, and she took my hands.

She crushed them.

She said nothing for a while.

I felt every wave in her body through mine, and every one was harder than the last.

My wolf paced inside me, wild and useless.

There was nothing to fight.

There was only the girl I'd watched through a glass for three winters, gripping my fingers until the bones ground.

"I can't," she said, near midnight, with her head against my collarbone.

"You can."

"I can't do this. It's too much."

"You went into that lake with a broken hand, Marit," I said. "You held a dying boy for as long as a child could. You can do this."

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