The Lycans Voted Her Queen novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Midwinter
The first pup of the year came on the longest night.
The snow had been falling since noon.
It lay a foot deep on the roof of the birthing house, and the carved wolf over the door wore a white cap.
The call came at nine.
A young woman from Ridge Hold, a first-timer, her husband snowed in on the far side of the ridge.
She lay in the big bed under the lamp with her knuckles white on the rail, and she looked at me with enormous eyes.
"I'm not scared," she said.
"Good. I am a little."
She laughed in the middle of a pain.
"Tell me it's normal."
"It's normal. The first one scares everybody. Even the queen."
She stared at me.
"You're the queen," she said. "You're the one with the chair."
"I'm the one with the clogs," I said. "Breathe."
At eleven, I went to the door.
The porch light was lit, and the snow came down through it in slow flakes.
Garrick stood on the bottom step with his hat in his hands.
He had not asked to come in.
He had not asked anything.
He stood in the falling snow with his huge shoulders white, looking up at the door he had not crossed in twenty-four years.
"She's alone," I said. "Her husband's snowed in. She asked if the king would hold her hand."
"She asked if the king would hold her hand.
"I said I would ask him."
He stood very still.
"You said I could come in when you say so," he said.
"I did."
"You could say it."
I held out my hand.
He climbed the steps, one at a time.
On the top one he stopped, with the door in front of him and the lamplight spilling across his boots.
The room behind it was a plain room with a bed, a kettle and a stack of clean towels.
The window was bright.
Nobody was turning the lamp down.
He drew a breath that shook.
"Come in," I said.
He stepped over the sill.
That was all.
One step, on a plank floor, in a room that smelled of lavender and hot water.
He stood just inside with the snow melting on his shoulders, and his face did a hundred things.
"Oh," he said, very quietly.
"It's only a room."
"I know."
"It's a good one."
"I know that now."
I took him to the bed.
The young woman looked up and saw the king of the Range, with his hat in his fist and his eyes red.
"Your Majesty," she said, and began to laugh and to cry.
"Garrick," he said. "I'd like to hold your hand, if I may."
She took it.
Her fingers vanished in his.
Midnight came with a rush.
"Now," I said. "Here she comes. Push."
She pushed.
She screamed.
Garrick held her hand and told her she was doing it, steadily, over and over, in his low plain voice.
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