by V. K. Ludwig
“Are you pregnant?” I whispered into her ear. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll love you no matter what and I would love the child as my own, but —”
“I didn’t go through with it.” She cupped my face in her hands and looked deep into my eyes. “What you said is admirable; nobody knows that better than me. I want you to place our child in my belly, and I will love him or her no matter what. If our child only turns out half as perfect as you, I will have nothing to fear. I love you, River, with all your imperfections.”
She sealed her words with another heated kiss, and a tear eventually made it out from behind her eyes. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I belonged.
“Alright, alright,” Rowan clapped into his hands. “You’re not married yet so don’t overdo it, or I’ll throw both of you in jail. You guys can leave soon and hide out in River’s cabin until we can have the hand binding. But I am afraid everyone has to step outside now, except for you two, and our new arrivals.”
It took the villagers a few minutes to clear the longhouse, and the mood turned from ecstatic to hostile at the sigh of Rowan. He stepped up to Ayanna and pointed at a baby in Autumn’s arms, its skin speckled in red and lips rooting for a breast to suck on. “I released your future husband from jail, and now I want you to stick to your end of the bargain. My sister refuses to tell me, and I want to hear right now whose baby this is.”
A guy with buttery-soft face stood behind Autumn, his hands fumbling in front of his chest. He looked as out of place here as a knife in a soup bowl, and his rounded shoulders told me he had met Rowan. Autumn handed the baby to Ayanna and crossed her arms in front of her chest, tapping up a wild beat with her foot while shaking her head repeatedly.
Ayanna tugged the fluffy yellow blanket underneath the infant’s shoulder and held her out to Rowan. “She is Darya’s daughter, Rose. After your mother, I believe?”
Now I’ve seen and heard it all. Rowan held his breath, his face petrified, yet his eyes turned into a furious fire threatened to lose its life to the tears which built up at the corners. His lips parted and closed in a game of uncertainty, and his head shook faster and faster with each toss.
“She is telling you the truth,” Autumn said, “because I have seen her too. She wanted to escape the Districts with us, but twisted her ankle and had —”
“No!” Rowan's shout shook my spine, and Rose screamed as if someone had just dropped her onto her head.
Ayanna placed a kiss on Rose’s forehead and rocked her. “Please, Rowan, she asked me to give her to you.”
“I want nothing to do with this child.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head once more without a break. “I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to hear her and whoever speaks my wife’s name again will be executed and thrown into the fire. Do with her whatever you want, but leave me out.”
He jumped off the pedestal, rammed through my shoulder and stormed off towards the door. His face crimson red he turned around once more, pointing at his sister. “And if you think I will allow you to marry him, then you have no idea whom you’re dealing with. You fucked everything up, and to top it off, brought that shaved pussy here to our clan. The last thing we need is more men, especially not one of those who doesn’t even know where his tiny cock is.”
The door whammed like it had never before, sending a foreboding breeze through the longhouse which sparked the flames in the pit sky-high. All the while, Rose continued to scream, putting hairline cracks into my heart and soul.
“That baby is hungry,” I said. “Uncle Peter told me Bry gave birth to a son this morning. Maybe she can nurse her. Tomorrow we can see if we can scavenge for formula and bottles and… whatever a baby needs. I’m not really sure.”
The scientist walked over to me and shook my hand. “I am Max, by the way. Sorry, I couldn’t introduce myself earlier, but things were a bit, um, heated.”
“River,” I said. “Thank you for bringing my wife back to me. That includes you too, Autumn. But I would really like to know what we will do with this little girl now. You can’t keep her in your room, Autumn, or I fear Rowan might totally snap.”
Ayanna pressed herself into my chest. “Then we will keep her. After all, it will be good practice for when we have our own one. Rowan will come around, I believe in it.”
Autumn nodded and walked over to Max, leaning her head against his shoulder. “You need to help him, River. Rowan will never accept him unless he can prove himself around here. There is so much we wanted to tell him, about the council and some horrifying shit they’re working on, but he won’t have any of it. Please?”
Max placed his hand around Autumn’s waist and pulled her into a hug, pressing his groins against hers. And just for a moment, I was pretty sure Rowan had it all wrong, and Max knew precisely where his cock was.
This concludes Clan of the Woodlands - The Bastard #1. Want to keep reading? Don’t worry, we will meet the couple again, but first let’s take a closer look at the Districts where Max discovered a terrible complication. As a scientist, it’s his job to find a solution, and Autumn comes in quite handy! But how can you control your experiment, when the test subject won’t play by your rules?
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