Astrid spent the rest of the night in the tent, no longer certain that she was dreaming. Sabine sat outside, and Astrid knew why the wolf wasn’t attacking. It felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest, she was sobbing so hard that she could barely breathe, and all she wanted was for Sabine to come in and tear out her neck so that she could either wake up or just be dead, because anything would be better than this.
When she finally did wake up, she wasn’t greeted with relief. The awful feeling still clung to her bones, and now it was accompanied by the worst nausea of her life. She was already throwing up as she pushed aside her covers and sat up. Her sweat-drenched clothes stung her skin as they hit the cold air.
Tears had clogged her eyes, and it wasn’t until she’d emptied the contents of her stomach that she realized she’d thrown up all over the front of Halley’s nightdress. If being covered in vomit bothered Halley, she didn’t show it. She had her small hands on Astrid’s shoulders, her knuckles white as she shook them back and forth with surprising strength.
Astrid was dimly aware of Halley crying her name. She pulled Halley’s hands back from her shoulders and patted them, trying to reassure the little girl.
“I’m okay,” Astrid said, but it was punctuated with another retch. She tried to collect herself, but instead devolved into a fit of dry heaving that left her feeling as though she’d been punched in the gut.
While she struggled to breathe, in a manner that was frighteningly reminiscent of her dream, Halley shifted, her dress tearing off as she dashed from the room. When her fit subsided, Astrid called out for her, but the small wolf was gone.
She lay back down in bed, not because she wanted to go back to sleep, but because she didn’t have the strength to sit up. Not even during the thrall had she felt so drained, and the only time she could remember being so sick was when she’d gotten food poisoning after comfort binging at a questionable buffet. She tried to think of what she’d eaten last, but even as she contemplated the tender slices of only semi-cooked meat she’d eaten for dinner, an insidious little voice in the back of her mind was chanting “morning sickness.”
Astrid curled up into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut. She knew that even if she were pregnant, it wouldn’t already be affecting her like this. Doing a mental count in her head, she determined that it had only been nine days since Erik had left. She probably couldn’t have even gotten a blue line on a home pregnancy test, there was no way she was already having morning sickness.
“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself, but just the act of opening her mouth spawned another wave of heaving, this one not so dry. From some god-awful place in her body, yellow, foul-tasting bile shot up to decorate her pillow. The next wave hit her almost immediately, and she was too worn out to look around for something besides bedding to vomit in.
She had no idea how long it lasted, but when it was finally over, she wasn’t alone in the room. Halley had returned, bringing Ila and Snow White with her. They were all naked, and Astrid could tell from the fine mist that rolled off their flesh that they’d recently shifted.
“Is she going to die?” Ila asked Snow White, sounding more curious than anything else.
Halley started to whimper and Snow White patted her on the head.
“I’m fine,” Astrid grumbled, casting Ila a dour look. She caught a flash of disappointment on Ila’s china doll face.
“You’re not fine at all,” Snow White said as she thrust a cup at Astrid. Water sloshed noisily. “You’re dehydrated. It smells like you sweat a lot.”
“And she threw up,” Halley offered, gnawing at her lip.
Ila grimaced. “We can smell that, too.”
Ignoring her, Astrid took the cup, downing its contents in three big gulps. She set it down beside her and then put her hand to her head.
“I also have a horrible headache.”
Astrid started a little as Snow White flung her arms around her, scooping her up in a big hug.
“Aw, it’ll be all right,” Snow White said, petting the back of Astrid’s head.
Astrid was tense for a moment, feeling rather uncomfortable, particularly when Snow White began slowly rocking her back and forth, and humming softly. Halley was quick to pile on, the little girl wrapped her arms around Astrid’s midsection and repeated, “It’ll be all right, Astrid” although she didn’t sound as confident as the older woman.
The weirdness of it all soon faded after that, mostly because Astrid still didn’t have the energy to hold herself up. She leaned into Snow White—no, Malina, that was her name—Malina’s embrace and let herself relax. Once she felt comfortable enough, she allowed herself to ask the question that had been on her mind since she’d woken up.
“Do I… Do I still smell pregnant?”
She had only just barely began to accept that she could be pregnant, and no matter how many times she told herself that things would be much better if she weren’t, Astrid was desperately hoping that the dream had not be prophetic.
It was Ila who answered first, her nose wrinkled. “Of course. You smell even worse today.”
“She doesn’t smell bad,” Halley said. “Well, accept for the sweat and the throw up.”
Astrid hid her smile behind Malina’s shoulders.
I’m pregnant.
The thought was accompanied by minimal excitement, and not because she wasn’t thrilled. The awareness had been bouncing around inside of her for a while, but she was finally allowing her mind to accept what her body had already known.
CHAPTER SIX
Two. Fucking. Weeks.
Erik should have been glad to see his brother’s silhouette on the horizon, but he knew his aggravation would not even begin to wane until he was back at his den—which was still a fucking hour away.
Sylvestre shifted first. He wrapped himself in a pelt and then pulled Torok from Erik’s shoulder. Erik saw the younger male wince, and he didn’t fault him. While the bears hadn’t killed Torok, they hadn’t been inclined to part with any of their limited food for a prisoner. Torok had been severely malnourished, and despite receiving several good meals, often at the expense of Erik and Sten going hungry, the beta wolf’s strength had not returned enough to make the journey.
The practical thing would have been to stop somewhere safe and rest until Torok recovered. That had been Sylvestre’s idea, and in the past, Erik would have made a similar call. But Sylvestre wasn’t in charge, Erik’s wolf was, and the wolf wanted—needed—to get back to its mate.
And so, the trip back had involved trading Torok back and forth like a heavy carcass, all while barely eating and getting only minimal sleep. Erik was fucking exhausted.
But not too exhausted to fuck.
It was the one thing keeping him going, the thought of shoving her up against a wall and slamming into her until he didn’t know where he began and his mate ended. Then, they would collapse in his bed and he would sleep for a full day. And when he woke up, he’d eat, and then fuck her again. Perhaps not in that order.
A sneer was fixed on Erik’s face when he shifted. Sten approached them, flanked by Beau and Nasak. They regarded Torok with varying degrees of wonder.
“He’s alive,” Beau blurted.
Sylvestre grunted in response, before hefting Torok into Beau’s arms.
“What happened?” Sten asked his brother.
Erik didn’t particularly care to recount the details of their journey, or their encounter with Elena. Had they been alone, he would have told Sten as much, but with the expectant gazes of Sten and his pack mates, he couldn’t bring himself to admit that all he wanted to know was how his mate had fared in his absence.
He gave them the bare facts of what had happened, and grit his teeth each time one of them asked him a follow-up question. He couldn’t help noticing that Beau kept glancing back nervously at Sylvestre, or that Sten seemed to be making it a point to keep Erik talking.
“So what is your plan from here?” Sten asked. “Are we going to head to Silui
t to—”
Erik stopped walking. “What is it?”
“What are you talking about?” Sten asked, his expression guarded.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Sten cast a quick glance at Sylvestre, and then said, “We should talk about it back at the den.”
Erik folded his arms across his chest. “No, we’re going to talk now. What happened?”
“There was an…incident,” Sten said hesitantly.
Looking at Sylvestre, Beau said, “Your sister attacked the human.”
Something in Erik’s chest constricted, and before he could stop himself, he’d grabbed Sten. One large hand fisted the pelt at Sten’s neck, and the other remained clenched and ready to strike at his side.
“Why weren’t you with her? Tell me what happened, now.”
Sten arched his head away from Erik, but made no other effort to escape. “She’s fine,” he prefaced, as if he knew that that had been the first question Erik had wanted to ask.
Sabine was so strong, much stronger than Sten, and in some ways, a more capable fighter than even her brother. Where Sylvestre had brute strength on his side, Sabine was calculating. Unless she was toying with her prey, she didn’t make a move until she knew she’d make a kill. Meanwhile, Erik’s mate was woefully weak and he knew from experience that he could restrain her with a single well-placed hand. And so, from the instant he heard that Sabine had attacked her, his mind had drawn the only logical conclusion: his mate was dead.
He loosened his grip on Sten, but didn’t remove his hand until his brother finished speaking. He only half listened, as it took a significant portion of his focus to keep himself under control, to keep himself from showing how…not right he was.
“She got a bump on her head, but that’s all, and it’s already healed,” Sten continued. “And you have to realize the position you left me in. I couldn’t possibly have stayed with her all day when she was smelling like that, not unless you wanted your pups to have questionable paternity.”
Erik took a step back, even though he wanted to throttle his brother all over again. Even the insinuation that Sten would touch his mate made him sneer, but the others were looking at him speculatively. He shot a glare in their direction, and they averted their gazes, all except Sylvestre, whose face was lined with tension.
Sten said, “I didn’t think Sabine would hurt her. It’s one thing for me to not trust her with my kid. She was negligent, sure, but I never thought she would try to kill one of our own.”
Sylvestre stepped forward, arms open and palms upturned. “Erik, please, this had to be some sort of misunderstanding. You have to hear her out before you…” He trailed off as he saw Sten slowly shake his head.
“I’m sorry, Syl. She’s dead.”
Not since the death of his father had Erik processed so many strong emotions all at once. His first thought was ‘good riddance’ but it was immediately followed by a small pang of grief. Despite knowing that he would have killed Sabine himself, she had still been someone with whom he shared a companionship—something that was exceedingly rare for him.
For a few years, their relationship had been intense and highly sexual. But unlike the others, once lust had faded, something else had been left in its place, a sort of friendship. Sabine had always had an uncanny knack for reading Erik, and there was no one he’d ever enjoyed hunting with quite so much. There had been jokes that had been only theirs, and she had been a vault for their shared memories, oftentimes recalling and reminding him of things that had long since become hazy in his own mind. Now all of that was gone.
Why?
He didn’t realize he’d asked the question aloud until his brother answered. Scratching the back of his neck, Sten said, “I can only speculate. Astrid was as blindsided as I was, but she said that Sabine was ranting about, well, you. We think she was jealous.”
Sylvestre cursed and fell to his knees. Erik watched, feeling both disapproval and envy as Beau fell to the ground beside him and put an arm around his shoulder. He still had no idea what had transpired between Sabine and his mate, but he recognized how easily the tables could have been reversed. His mate could be dead in Sabine’s place, and if that had been the case, Erik would have either lashed out in a truly unpredictable way, or worse still, he might still be standing there, holding himself together by a tenuous thread while he watched his vision of the future fade to grey, and then turn to ashes.
Sabine was his past, and while a small part of him would now be gone from this world, Astrid was his future. He wasn’t sure exactly when, but at some point, even before he’d decided to make her his mate, he had stopped imagining a future in which she did not exist. Perhaps that was why he’d decided to make her his mate in the first place.
“Let’s go,” Erik said to his brother. “I want to run. We’ll discuss this further at the den.”
They shifted and bounded off in the direction of the den, leaving the others behind to deal with Sylvestre and Torok. While it felt wrong to leave them, the cold, logical part of his mind was back in control, and it reasoned that there was nothing he could do for them anyway.
Erik and Sten cleared the hour-long stretch in forty-minutes, both of them out of breath as they finally reached the ravine. Erik took his time going down the narrow pathway, and allowed his muscles to have a brief reprieve.
Once inside the den, they shifted back into human form. The air felt colder than usual, and Erik had to repress a shiver. Even in human form, their bodies were highly tempered against the harsh temperatures of the arctic, but when exhaustion and hunger had sunk its claws in, their bodies diverted resources to more essential functions.
“How is she still alive?” Erik asked.
Sten was cracking his neck. He looked over his shoulder, and then, in a lowered voice, he said, “You’re not going to believe this, but Ila saved her. She caught Sabine off-guard and managed to stake her on a stalagmite.”
It took Erik a moment to process his shock. He blinked at his brother, and then repeated, “Ila?”
“I know, I can still hardly believe it. But you should know, we’re letting the pack think it was Astrid. Then hopefully they’ll think twice before trying to attack her.”
“They shouldn’t even think once about attempting to harm her, because she is my mate,” Erik said darkly.
Sten lowered his head. “I know that, but they don’t, not really. They know you’re mating with her, but they don’t—”
“Where is she now?” Erik asked, cutting his brother off. He wasn’t particularly interested in what Sten was saying, and they had almost reached the main room and he’d yet to catch even the faintest whiff of his mate’s scent.
“She’s with Ila and Halley. Malina and Lusa might be there as well, they’ve been spending a lot of time with her…” Sten tapered off as he caught sight of his brother’s narrowed eyes. “I couldn’t stay with her all of the time, Erik. You left me in charge of the whole pack and with Sabine gone, I… I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your apology,” Erik said. “I need you to be better, because I can’t do everything that I used to. Not yet. The thrall threw me off, and it’s going to take a while before I can regain my equilibrium.”
Sten gave him a tight smile. “You’re not going to get it back. You’ll never be who you were before, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you will have to adapt to the new normal. In the meantime, I’ll do my best.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m so pretty!” Halley exclaimed, twirling in front of the mirror, much the way Ila often did. The only difference was that when Halley did it, it was cute.
“You certainly are, but don’t let it go to your head,” Astrid cautioned. “There are more important things than beauty, like intelligence, empathy—”
Halley piped, “Knowing how to hear a rabbit under the snow, and being able to track a caribou herd. My papa’s going to actually let me hunt one, once I lose my baby fangs.”
Astrid smile
d and shook her head. She’d been with Halley in Sten’s room all morning, working on what would probably be her final dress, at least for a few weeks. Her fingers were on the verge of blistering, but she still had every intention of sewing. Her hands were flat-out itching to cut up what was left of the fabrics she’d pilfered from Ila into small squares and begin making baby clothes.
She had no way of knowing what her baby’s sex would be, but she hoped like hell it would be a girl, because she’d accidentally used the very last of the blue fabric on Halley’s Cinderella dress. She still had a decent amount of green, but most of it was a heavy velvet texture that she thought probably wouldn’t be suitable for a baby.
“Do you think you can make me a tiara, too?” Halley asked.
“If your papa has any spare diamonds lying around,” Astrid said, still sifting through the fabrics. She found a plain but serviceable grey pillowcase and put it in her to-chop pile.
At first, it had seemed strange that within the span of a week, she’d gone from denying she was pregnant to feeling the obsessive need to prepare for what was, at present, still a little bundle of cells. But somehow she knew that making the clothes would help to make her impending motherhood seem more real. Because right now, aside from her violent morning sickness that was—thank God—completely isolated to only the hour before daybreak, she had no real evidence of the life that was growing inside of her.
“Papa, do you have any spare diamonds?”
Astrid smiled a little, but she didn’t turn around. She’d heard Sten approaching, but she’d been making it a point not to interact with him since the previous week when he’d stolen a kiss from her. He had insinuated that he’d only done it to make a point, but she had felt the purpose in the way his lips had moved, and she suspected that if she’d been more receptive, he might not have stopped.
Enslaved by the Alpha: Part Six Page 4
