Page 18 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

Chapter 13 - Rhietta

Rhietta was genuinely surprising herself with how much patience she was exhibiting. It had never been a strong suit of hers, especially when it came to waiting for people to come to conclusions she had already reached, but she hadn’t encountered many subjects as sensitive or important or this one. In many ways, Laurent was an aggravating old man who was stuck so deeply in his ways that it would likely take a crowbar to pry him out. But at the same time, she couldn’t just force him to accept that they were soulmates. No matter how long it took, the shoe was going to drop eventually. She just had to wait until he got out of his own way long enough to let it happen.

All well and good, she thought crossly, but her pregnancy put something of a time limit on the subject. The packs had adjusted reasonably well to their strange new setup, all things considered—two Alphas leading two intermingled, but still distinct, groups of wolves. But sooner or later, her pregnancy was going to start to show. Laurent was going to put the pieces together; he was hardly a man who had difficulty working out timelines. And the whole pack was going to find out exactly what had happened between them. What would happen then, she wondered? It all depended on how Laurent reacted, and try as she might, she simply couldn’t come to any solid conclusions about how that was going to go.

Still, they had a little time. She was grateful, at least, that her body was on her side—curvy as she was, the faint swell of her pregnancy would take a good while to become undeniable. She remembered when the slender, willowy Cadia had fallen pregnant how obvious it had been, even in the early days. By the time she and Rovell had announced that they were expecting to the pack, a good half of the wolves present had had to feign surprise over news they’d known for weeks. Yet another reason she wished Laurent would just hurry up and sort out his stupid feelings, she thought resentfully. This was the best news she’d ever had, and every second that passed she felt more wretched about not being able to share it with the people she loved.

It was a shame he hadn’t picked up the knack for spotting pregnancies when he was training as a Lorekeeper. Dasha had mentioned that possibility at her last checkup, after she’d confirmed that so far, everything seemed to be progressing well. Some lorekeepers, it seemed, had the ability to look at auras—including the auras of the unborn. But Dasha had also been fairly certain that Laurent didn’t have that particular gift. It tended to go hand in hand with empathy, which the two of them agreed, through their laughter, wasn’t exactly one of the other Alpha’s signature strengths. It would have caused a great deal of chaos, Laurent spotting her pregnancy—she was grateful, really, that he lacked that ability. But at least it would have moved things along a little faster.

And so the days dragged by, turning sluggishly into weeks. She had to admit, given the rather dire circumstances, things were going remarkably well. The enmity that Laurent had been so convinced would be evident between the packs failed entirely to materialize; she had a feeling he’d underestimated the power of gratitude running both ways. Her pack hadn’t forgotten that Laurent’s pack had taken them in, however grudgingly, when their home had been destroyed, and they’d promptly done the same for Laurent’s when the roles were reversed. Not to mention the bond of their shared trauma. Both groups had lost their hard-won homes, and both groups were facing the wearying prospect of a whole new start. It had been obvious to Rhietta that they’d lean on each other.

The only thing she was worried about was how it was going to feel when Laurent’s pack finally decided on a location for their own new home. She knew that day wouldn’t come for a while, but she was already dreading the renewed feeling of separation. There was an obvious solution to that looming problem, of course. But she wasn’t going to be the first one to say it aloud. She wasn’t willing to risk the fragile peace that had built up between her and Laurent, the slow thawing of his icy attitude. She was reluctant to make too big a deal of it, mindful of her tendency towards wishful thinking, but Rhietta had observed more than a few pieces of evidence that Laurent’s attitude toward her leadership skills was changing. Not that there wasn’t still a huge amount of tension between them—despite her best efforts, their meetings were often fraught with barbed comments and arguments that bordered on petty—but there was definitely progress. Glacially slow, maybe…but progress.

The two packs had been cohabitating for a month when Rhietta finally succumbed to the temptation of a reckless idea. She waited until she knew that Laurent was well and truly occupied with his favorite activity, which was making fussy comments about impossibly minor construction methodologies, then wandered past the mess tent, where she knew Reade and Camus would be preparing the game that the hunting party had brought home that morning. Wrinkling her nose a little at the carnage, she stepped inside. Unpleasant as the task was to witness, she knew that it meant the pack would be steering clear of the area for the next little while, meaning their conversation would be unlikely to be overheard by curious onlookers. She’d been surprising herself lately with a hitherto-undiscovered gift for keeping secrets. Nobody but Dasha even suspected her pregnancy, including her closest friends. Was that Laurent’s bad influence, she wondered? For all that he cloaked it in boring language about discretion and information being shared on a need-to-know basis, he was an adept liar.

Reade and Camus were wrist-deep in entrails, but happy enough to see her. The three of them chatted for a while, the subject moving naturally towards the half-built cottages that were rapidly approaching completion, thanks in no small part to Laurent’s contributions. Insufferable as his conduct had no doubt been, the advice he shared with the construction crews had been undeniably valuable.

“He’s good like that,” Camus observed, easing meat from a bone with a rather nauseating squelching sound. “He’s always had a knack for seeing the best way of doing things. Been that way since he was a child,” he said, glancing up at Reade with a grin. “Remember?”

Rhietta had her own agenda here, but she couldn’t help but lean forward at this rare mention of a side of Laurent she’d heard very little about. “I can’t imagine him being a kid,” she said, trying and failing to picture that severe, fixed gaze and fastidiously neat hair on a small child.

“Kept to himself, mostly,” Reade said, looking thoughtful. “Though I think it had more to do with the other kids disliking him than his own preferences. He was always so…well, bossy’s not quite the right word for it. More…”

“Convinced that nobody had anything to teach him,” Camus supplied. Reade nodded fervent agreement. “The kids’d band together to build a little boat to get across the river, Laurent would start giving orders, then get frustrated and storm off the minute they didn’t listen to him. Eventually, he just started…keeping to his own company. It was enough to catch Lowell’s eye, though. He was always on the lookout for leadership potential.”

Rhietta leaned forward at the mention of her father. The three of them exchanged a glance, letting a brief silence mark their shared grief, before the conversation continued.

“He is a good Alpha,” Reade said, shaking his head. “He’s just—still making the same mistakes that isolated him as a kid.”

“Don’t we all,” Camus said, shaking his head with a brief little laugh. But when he looked up at Rhietta, there was a thoughtful look in his eye. “It’s been better with you around, Rhietta. He’s been better.”

For a moment, she wondered if Laurent’s stoic advisors knew more than they were letting on about her relationship with Laurent. But she resisted the temptation to follow that thread. If they knew, they knew, and there was precious little she could do about it. At least they were on the subject she’d come to ask them about. She listened to a few more of their stories about Laurent, intrigued by how much their perspective on the man differed from hers. Through their eyes, the Alpha seemed rather lonely.

“I always got the sense he just preferred his own company,” Rhietta said.

“No such thing as a lone wolf,” Camus said with a roll of his eyes. “He might let his ego and his perfectionism isolate him, but he needs community and family as much as any of us do. More, really. I don’t need to tell you about the pressures of leadership, Rhi.”

She nodded, thinking of her close friends, of how much she leaned on them when leadership got stressful. The thought of trying to do what she did in the kind of isolation that Laurent insisted on…it was unbearable.

“So you think…under all the layers of armor, he’s lonely?” She kept her voice deliberately casual, not wanting to tip Camus or Reade off, but the two of them were busy cleaning their tools and not subjecting her to particularly close scrutiny. “Just wants a mate and a cottage and a few pups rolling around on the rug?”

Camus snorted unexpected laughter. “The first two, maybe.”

“I wouldn’t wish kids on him in a fit,” Reade agreed, chuckling. “Nor would I wish him on kids, for that matter. Poor things.”

“He doesn’t like kids?” She tried to keep her voice light, but Rhietta could feel her heart sinking.

“That’s putting it lightly.” Reade was chuckling as he dried the long, serrated blade he’d been using, carefully studying its edge for any residual blood he’d missed. “I suppose you haven’t seen him around kids—makes sense, given how strenuously he avoids them. I’ve never seen a man so uncomfortable around babies in my life.”

“We used to think that half the reason he went off to lorekeeper training was because your father had started bringing you along to meetings,” Camus put in, glancing up at Rhietta, and he must have seem some sign of her discomfort in her face, because he hastened to add, “Of course, that was just a joke.”

“And he’s alright with kids once they’re old enough to reason,” Reade added with a shrug. “Still, there are some men who just aren’t cut out for fatherhood, and our Laurent is one of them, I’d say.”

She forced herself to stay a little longer, to talk and laugh along with the two men as the conversation moved to other subjects. As much as she’d have preferred to flee the tent in the wake of this revelation, she knew it would doubtless arouse suspicion. Still, she slipped away as soon as she could, hating the feeling of having to hide her feelings from the wolves she was closest to.

Rhietta knew she needed space. She slipped away from the camp, grateful that she didn’t run into anyone who might have questioned the tears rolling down her cheeks. She’d have liked nothing more than to talk all this through with someone, but that would have involved revealing the secret of her pregnancy, something she wasn’t ready to do with the situation as complicated as it was. And what Reade and Camus had told her was only making it worse.

Rhietta made her way some distance from camp to a secluded place beyond the bend in the river where she knew she was unlikely to be observed. There, she settled down in the shade of an old tree and let herself sob until she felt…well if not a little better, then at least less utterly choked with emotion. And in this slightly calmer frame of mind, she revisited the devastating revelation of her idle chat with Laurent’s closest advisors.

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