Chapter 6: Walking Away

Tarran stared down at his wet knees like he couldn't work out what had happened to them.

Then the first real contraction hit me.

It started in my back and wrapped around to the front.

I grabbed the bandstand rail and breathed through my teeth.

Thane's hand was on my spine at once.

"I'll carry you."

"No."

"Ilsa."

"I said no." I straightened up as it let go. "I'm walking out of here."

He looked at me for one second.

Then he stepped aside.

I went down the bandstand steps on my own feet.

The pack was still on its knees in the grass, every one of them, because the King hadn't told them to get up.

I walked down the middle of them.

The fireworks had stopped.

All you could hear was the generator on the Ferris wheel and my own breathing.

Faces I'd fed.

Faces I'd stitched, and dosed, and sat up with through fevers.

Halfway across the field the second contraction came.

I stopped and held my belly and leaned into it with my eyes shut.

Nobody touched me.

Thane walked one step behind my left shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat off him, and didn't touch me either.

Behind us Tarran found his voice.

"Go on, then!" he shouted. "Take her! That pup's a rogue's whelp! She was out there in the snow with five of them!"

The field went still in a different way.

Thane stopped walking.

He turned his head, only his head.

"Say it again," he said, "and I'll come back."

Tarran didn't say it again.

The contraction let go.

I kept walking.

At the gate the laundry girl was waiting with my packed bag clutched in both arms, her face blotchy.

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