Chapter 182 Telling Ryder
Jolie POV
He's already alarmed before I say a word. That's the mate bond—he felt the overflow of emotion from across the garage and he's scanning me now the way he does when he's looking for injuries, hands coming up to frame my face, checking my eyes, my skin, the silver glow at my edges.
"What happened," he says, not quite a question, voice dropping into that low, controlled register that means he's holding the edges of his temper very carefully. "Who hurt you."
"Nobody hurt me." I catch his hands where they're cupped around my face, hold them there. "Nothing's wrong. Ryder, nothing is wrong."
He doesn't believe me yet. His eyes keep moving, cataloguing, looking for the source of what he felt through the bond, and I can feel Shadow close to the surface—massive and restless and already looking for something to be angry at on my behalf.
"Then why are you" he starts.
"Everything is perfect," I say, and my voice cracks embarrassingly on the last word, which probably isn't helping his alarm levels. I laugh, which comes out wet, and I watch the confusion deepen on his face. "I need to show you something. Can I show you something?"
"Jolie." His hands are still framing my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. "You're terrifying me right now."
"I know. I'm sorry." I pull one of his hands down, slowly, and press his palm flat against my stomach.
He goes completely still. His hand is warm through my shirt, his palm broad enough to cover most of my stomach, and I watch his face cycle through expressions too fast to name—shock first, then something that resists easy labeling, then a kind of wondering disbelief, then a brightness that starts in his eyes and keeps going until it's on his whole face.
"We're having a baby," I tell him, because he needs the words too, not just the feeling. "I'm pregnant. Eight weeks. Doc confirmed it an hour ago."
His eyes fill, and I've seen Ryder Kane carry grief that would have buckled most wolves, seen him stand in front of Council enforcers without flinching, seen him make brutal decisions without hesitation—but I have never seen him look like this. Like someone handed him something he'd stopped believing he was allowed to want.
He goes down to his knees. Both hands on my stomach now, grease-stained and careful, and his head bowed forward until his forehead nearly rests against my middle, and the sound he makes is low and wordless and raw in a way that goes straight to the center of me.
"Our child," he breathes. "Jolie, we made a child."
I put my hands in his hair, feeling him breathe, feeling Shadow surfacing the way he does when something is happening that's bigger than what Ryder can contain alone. I feel the wolf's presence through the bond, enormous and quiet and utterly certain, already claiming this tiny new thing as pack, as his, as something worth every war he's ever fought.
"Our child," I agree quietly.
He stays there for a long moment before he pulls me down with him, sitting on the garage floor in the grease and the sawdust and the permanent smell of oil and pine that lives in everything he is, holding me in his lap with both arms wrapped around me like I might evaporate. His face goes into my hair.
"I didn't think I'd have this again." His voice is low, meant only for me. "A family, a future that" He stops then starts again. "After Aria, I thought that part of me was done. That it was better done. I built the pack and I told myself that was enough."
"It is enough," I say. "It'll still be enough. This is just—more."
"Yeah." He exhales, and I feel the tension release from his shoulders, slow and real. "Yeah. It is."
We sit together on the garage floor while the light shifts outside. I tell him what Doc told me—eight weeks, healthy, uncharted territory since there's no precedent for divine wolf pregnancy, but uncharted in a way that feels like possibility rather than danger. He listens with the focused attention he gives to everything that matters to him, asking quiet, careful questions, and I can feel him building a map of it, the way he does with everything he intends to protect.
Then the questions shift and get less tactical and more real—names, he wants to talk about names, which surprises me and then doesn't, because of course he does. He's been deprived of futures for a long time and he wants to build this one out loud.
"Not anything too formal," I say. "Something that fits in both worlds. The pack and the" I gesture vaguely upward, because we still don't have good vocabulary for the divine side of things.
"Something that means something," Ryder agrees, his thumb drawing slow circles against my waist.
Ash surfaces inside me then, gentle and enormous, turning toward Shadow the way she does when she wants to show him something—and I feel it, the recognition that passes between our wolves, both of them perceiving the new presence in a way we can't quite reach yet. Shadow goes very quiet. Then a low, sustained rumble moves through the bond, the wolf-equivalent of something between awe and ferocious protectiveness, and Ash answers it with warmth.
"They know," I say.
Ryder presses his lips to my temple. "Shadow's going to be insufferable about this. He was already bad enough."
I laugh, and it sounds like myself—full and easy, without the tight edge I've been carrying for months. "I have fears," I admit after a moment, because I can say that to him now, in a way I couldn't in the early days. "About failing them. About the divine power—what if it affects the pregnancy in ways we can't predict? What if I do everything right and it still"
"Hey." He tilts my face up. Looks at me, direct and steady, the way he always does when he wants to make sure I'm actually hearing him. "You are the strongest person I have ever known. You rebuilt wolves who the Council spent years breaking. You moved the most powerful governing body in our world. You built a pack out of people everyone else threw away." His thumb traces my jaw. "Our child is going to have you for a mother. They're going to be fine. They're going to be extraordinary. And they're going to be loved so completely that they'll never need to doubt it."
I stay very still and let that land. Let it actually reach somewhere past the fear. "Okay," I say finally, and mean it.
He kisses me then—slow and claiming and entirely without urgency. We stay on the garage floor for another hour, talking and planning and dreaming, and the light outside shifts from gold to blue to the first deep dark of evening, and neither of us moves.
He's still holding me when I fall asleep that night, his hand warm against my stomach.