Page 21 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

“Nothing. Just—I don’t know. Weird hunch. Laurent’s the one who stitched my leg and brought me here, last night.” She gestured to her thoroughly bandaged leg. “I thought he’d come back today sometime to…I don’t know. Check on his handiwork. Brag about what a superior job he did. Tell me that I wouldn’t have gotten hurt by a demon if I’d exercised stronger control of my emotions—”

Silea was giggling. “With you bedbound and all! I’m shocked that he let such a golden opportunity pass him by.” She shrugged, swiping a bite of Rhietta’s meal. “Don’t know where he’s been, actually. Haven’t seen the man since Rovell went to fetch him last night, after that demon dropped you.”

She frowned. “Not at all? Not even at the construction sites? Or at dinner?”

“I guess I figured he was resting? He was doing that…weird magic thing they do, where the sword or staff or whatever lights up. Creepy, if you ask me.” Silea really was doubling down on her dislike for Laurent, Rhietta thought with some amusement. This was the first mention she’d made of this apparent dislike for lorekeepers. But it wasn’t long before the food had made Rhietta sleepy, and Silea slipped away with her half-empty plate to let her get some rest.

Still, her sleep was troubled by dreams. She’d been dreaming a lot since her pregnancy had been confirmed, especially about the baby—they were usually pleasant, fuzzy dreams in which she cradled a warm bundle against her chest, never quite managing to part the blankets long enough to actually see the child’s face. These dreams were different, though. The baby was there, strapped safely to her chest as she walked, but her focus was being drawn from the warmth of her child to the cold of the trees around her. She was searching for something. Something terribly important, something she’d realized was missing too late…something that would be in terrible danger if they didn’t find it soon. The low, seething anxiety of that dream stayed with her even after she’d woken up and realized it had all been in her head, which made her worry that perhaps it hadn’t.

A day had made all the difference when it came to her leg, at least. There was still pain when she put weight on it too hurriedly, and Dasha warned her in no uncertain terms that if she pushed herself too hard she’d tear the stitches and end up stuck in bed again, but at least she could walk—slowly and carefully—out into the morning air. It felt good to stretch her limbs in the sunshine, good to be outside again.

But that was when she found out that nobody had seen Laurent since the night of the attack. And all of a sudden, she was having a very hard time feeling good about anything.

He hadn’t been hurt in the battle, they knew that much. Rovell had said he wasn’t hurt when he went to fetch him to help with Rhietta, and Dasha remembered him carrying Rhietta into the hospital tent in his arms. By that time, the battle was mostly over, with only a few straggling demons beating a hasty retreat to the tree line. Even if he’d returned to the battlefield, it was almost impossible for any harm to have befallen him.

“Why did nobody tell me?” Rhietta demanded, doing her best to stay calm despite the pounding of her heart, the anger boiling in her chest that she knew wasn’t anger at all, but fear that something awful had happened while she’d been ignoring the instinct that had told her to investigate.

“Honestly, Alpha, we didn’t think anything of it.” That was Camus, still his usual calm, stoic self, though she could see a touch of concern around the edges of his eyes. “Alpha Laurent is a solitary man, and the pack had plenty to keep us busy with cleanup and the like.”

The pack, she thought faintly. Singular. She’d been hearing that more and more recently, from wolves of both allegiances. She usually made an effort to correct it, not wanting to tread on Laurent’s toes any more than necessary, but right now, she’d have declared herself the sole Alpha of the whole damned island if it meant Laurent would emerge from his hiding place to lecture her about it. A tear ran down her cheek, and she dashed it crossly away before making terse inquiries about which tent he’d been staying in. Whatever it took, she was going to get some answers.

He’d never been a man with many possessions, and the fire that had destroyed his office and home clearly hadn’t helped. It was easy to tell which cot was his, at least—the one that had been made with military precision, the sheets somehow so smooth and crisp that she briefly wondered if lorekeepers also studied the magical manipulation of fabric. There were only a few belongings in the small chest beneath the cot. A few books on magic, a comb, several nearly-identical dark shirts…no sign of either of his weapons, the most personal effects he owned. And when she looked in the bin by the door, she saw a torn, bloodstained shirt, and a worn rag that had clearly been used to wipe congealed demon blood from something. She’d have been willing to bet just about anything that something had been the world’s most fastidiously maintained longsword.

Wherever he’d gone, he’d gone there on purpose, with foresight and planning. The fact that he’d returned to his cot long enough to change his clothing and clean his weapons made that clear. She stood for a long time in the doorway of the tent, staring out into the middle distance, utterly at a loss for what to do next. She was no tracker, and even if she had been, the trail was ice-cold by now.

And was it even her business to go after a man who’d left no indication that he wanted to be found?

She spent the rest of the day feeling utterly useless and furious in turns, walking slowly and carefully around the camp, unable to shake the feeling that he might simply turn up if she turned enough corners. And at sunset, when he’d failed to reappear, she braced herself and updated the rest of the pack on what she’d found when she’d checked his belongings. They looked concerned, but she couldn’t see any signs of the same rising panic that she’d been struggling with all afternoon, and she had to struggle not to resent them for it. Rhietta took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and reminded herself, not for the first time that day, that there were more important things than her feelings involved with this situation.

“Who’s his second?” she asked, looking around the circle of gathered wolves with a faint frown as she realized the subject had never come up. “You’ll need an interim Alpha until—” She bit back on the urge to finish the sentence with ‘until he gets back’, knowing she wouldn’t be able to get to the end without bursting into tears. “Until we have more information,” she finished instead, drawing a phrase straight from Laurent’s phrasebook—which in itself was almost enough to make her cry anyway.

Camus and Reade exchanged glances, then Reade rose to his feet, clearing his throat a little awkwardly. “I mean, it’s me,” he said, but she could hear the hesitation in his voice. “But…”

“Is there a reason you don’t want the position?”

A faint smile twitched at Reade’s lips. “Alpha… really?” He gestured around at the circle of wolves. “Are we really still pretending there are two packs here?”

Rhietta looked at him for a long moment. Any fragile hope she’d had of getting through this conversation without crying was gone; she could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks already, but at least they were tears of joy. “Stop it,” she snapped breathlessly, dashing the tears away. “You stop. I’m not—we’ll not be conducting any sneaky business behind Laurent’s back. He’d never let me hear the end of it.”

A knowing laugh went up at that, tinged with affection. Rhietta took a deep breath. “As delighted as I am with the close bonds between our two packs, and as much as I appreciate your vote of confidence, Interim Alpha, there are two packs here.” She sucked in another breath. “And until we know more about Alpha Laurent’s disappearance, we will observe proper procedures.” Laurent would have been proud, she thought, feeling another tear start its journey down her face. He’d well and truly infected her with his absurd love for pomp and ceremony. If only he’d been here to see it.

“Very well, Alpha.” Reade coughed gently, then inclined his head. “I accept the role.”

Dinner was a subdued affair after that, save for Camus quietly but devotedly mocking his oldest friend’s new title. Grateful as she was that Laurent’s disappearance hadn’t plunged them into political chaos, one treacherous part of her didn’t give a damn what happened to the packs. They’d be fine without her. Deep down, all she really wanted was to get up right now, run into the forest, and scream for Laurent until he came back to her.

The only thing that stopped her was the deep, terrible fear that she’d call his name…and nobody would answer.

Chapter 16 - Laurent

Laurent wasn’t sure how far he’d traveled into the jungle when he finally stopped walking. A good distance, he knew that much. He was a tall man who took long, swift strides, and the sun that had only just risen when he’d started was now shining high overhead. If he’d thought about it a little harder, he would most likely have been able to calculate the exact distance he’d gotten from the camp, but what would be the point? He knew he was well outside of the pack’s usual hunting territory. It was possible a patrol might come his way, or one of the scouting parties he’d organized to search for new places for their settlement…but those would be easy enough to avoid, so long as he kept his wits about him. Maybe the pack would put a stop to the scouting parties now that he was gone. Maybe whoever took over from him would simply make the decision and be done with it. Laurent wondered briefly if he’d left his detailed notes on the pros and cons of each choice in an easily accessible place—and then caught himself, taking a deep, calming breath to push that thought away.

It was no longer any of his concern. He wasn’t Alpha, not anymore. Nor would they miss him, he was pretty sure. Sure, there might be a few attempts to look for him, a half-hearted search effort just to prove to themselves that they’d done everything that could be expected of them, but Laurent had always known deep down that the wolves who followed him didn’t do so because they loved him. Not the way they loved Rhietta.

Maybe she’d take over both packs, he thought, surprised by how little the thought bothered him now. He’d spent a whole year raging over the very idea that any percentage of the pack would prefer to follow her than to follow him…but out here in the wilds, with all of that far away from him, he could finally see how pointless that had been. How pointless all of it had been, in fact. Not just the past year, but all of it—his childhood spent trying to solve the riddle of why he never seemed to connect with his peers the way they connected with each other, his adolescence studying under the Alpha in the hopes that he might one day master the art of leadership, his long years studying the ways of magic while the infinitely more charismatic Lowell led the pack instead. Sure, he’d made himself useful as an advisor, but he’d been kidding himself to imagine that any of them actually wanted him as a leader.

How had he convinced himself that he alone was the one with the clear and perfect vision? What a profound and seductive delusion—the delusion that he alone was free from delusion.

Well, he could see it all clearly now. Out here, in true solitude at last, with every last binding tie severed—now he could see everything laid out before him. And he could see that this had been the answer all along. Wolves like him weren’t cut out for leadership. Wolves like him weren’t even cut out to be part of a pack, not truly. He’d been forcing it for a long time. It was time that he let it go—time that he accepted that it was his destiny to be alone.

---