Chapter 16: The First Feed

Teagan's POV

We brought them home to my aunt's cabin at two in the morning.

The old elder came too, in the back of Devon's truck, with her cane across her knees.

"Neutral ground," she said at the gate, and tapped the sign with the cane.

"No pack business. Nobody can say a mother may not hold her own child here."

"And Orson?" I asked.

"Orson will be told in the morning, by me."

She looked at the pup in my arms.

"Hold her up to the lamp, girl."

I did.

The elder bent, and sniffed once, very slowly, at the silver down on my daughter's head.

"Hazel," she said. "Conall's chin. Well."

She went back to the truck, and I did not understand the look she gave me until much later.

Roz and I fed them at the kitchen table, side by side.

I had never done it before.

My daughter latched on the third try and made a furious little grunt.

My whole chest went hot and loose, and I cried so hard I had to put my forehead on the table.

"Don't," Roz said, in a thick voice. "You'll set mine off."

"I can't help it."

"I know. Me neither."

She was crying too, and her pup was nursing through it, loudly, with both fists.

We had a drawer from my aunt's dresser lined with a quilt for a cradle, and then we had a second drawer.

By three they were both asleep, and I stood and looked at them for a long time.

I could hear voices out on the porch.

Roz had gone out to give Devon an hour, which she said was the hour she would never get again.

I heard her say, "You can sleep in the truck."

I heard him say, "I'll sleep anywhere."

The back window looked down the path to the gate.

A man sat on a tailgate on the road side of the bar, with his elbows on his knees and his head down.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Day We Lost Our Pups, We Left Our Alphas from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.