Chapter 183 Breaking the News
Ryder POV
Next morning
My first instinct is to keep it between us for a while. Just the two of us, and Doc, and Mara, and Luna, who already know—which I realize even as I think it means the window for privacy has approximately twelve hours before one of them breaks.
I find Jolie at the kitchen table before dawn with her tea, glow soft in the dark, and I sit across from her and say, "How long before Mara tells everyone?"
She considers this seriously. "She made it through last night. That's probably her limit."
So we called the meeting.
The common room fills up fast when word goes out that the Alpha and Luna want everyone gathered. Knox comes in still pulling on his jacket. Phoenix shows up three steps behind him with a tablet he immediately flips face-down when he reads the room. Mara is already there, stationed near the wall with the expression of someone who knows what's coming and is barely containing herself about it. Doc settles into a chair near the back, calm as always.
Cass and Celeste come in together—they've been together for months now. Celeste looks more like herself every week, more solid, more present. Cass looks at her the way I imagine I look at Jolie when I think no one's watching.
Gio comes in last, Luna at his shoulder. They stand close enough that their arms are almost touching and neither of them comments on it, which tells me everything about where that's going.
The room settles and everyone looks at me.
I open my mouth.
"Jolie and I" I start, and then I realize I don't have the next part ready, which has never happened to me in an addressed assembly in my life. I'm standing in front of my pack, wolves who have followed me through wars and losses and everything the Council threw at us, and I cannot locate a complete sentence. "We're—there's, uh. A"
"I'm pregnant," Jolie says from beside me, and I could kiss her for it.
The room processes this in two distinct beats—the first beat is stunned silence, absolute and complete, lasting about two seconds. Then the second beat arrives and everything happens simultaneously.
Knox makes a sound that I can only describe as a war cry and it echoes off the rafters. Mara shrieks—actually shrieks, in a pitch I didn't know she had—and launches herself at Jolie with both arms extended. Phoenix already has his tablet back out and appears to be calculating something, muttering numbers under his breath. Doc stands up from his chair with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had the answer before anyone asked the question.
Luna is crying. Real, honest, streaming tears, and she's crossing the room toward Jolie faster than I've seen her move in months, and the sound she makes when she pulls Jolie into her arms is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "A baby," she keeps saying, muffled against Jolie's shoulder. "A divine baby."
"What does that mean for security protocols?" Phoenix asks the room, then reads the room and puts the tablet away.
"We need to talk about the nursery." Mara has released Jolie and is now pacing with her hands clasped. "The cabin is big enough, but we should probably reinforce the—and the leather jacket, I've been thinking about the leather jacket for months, there's this pattern I've been holding onto for exactly this kind of"
"She's eight weeks along, Mara," I say.
"That's barely any time. Custom work takes time, Ryder."
Doc catches my eye across the room and his expression says congratulations and this is wonderful and I already have twelve monitoring protocols drafted all at once, which is quintessentially Doc.
I've been watching Gio. He went still when Jolie made the announcement.
I watch Jolie feel it too, the way she always does, the quiet attention shifting toward her brother like a compass needle. She crosses to him and, touches his arm lightly.
He looks at her and something moves in his face—the kind of movement that comes from things you can't say yet, grief and joy braided together in a way that makes both complicated.
"He'll never know them," Gio says quietly, low enough that only she can hear, though I'm close enough to catch it. He doesn't say the name. He doesn't need to. Their father died without reconciling with either of them, and that loss doesn't resolve neatly just because they've both built better lives on the other side of it.
"No," Jolie says. She doesn't soften it or argue with it. "He won't."
Gio breathes out slowly. Then, with the quiet deliberateness of someone choosing a future instead of a past: "I'm going to be an uncle."
"Yes," she says, and the word carries everything.
Luna steps up beside him then, her shoulder against his, and he doesn't move away from the contact—which, for Gio, is its own kind of language.
The celebration happens the way things always happen in the compound—without anyone organizing it, somehow completely organized, food appearing from every corner of the kitchen and music starting and wolves from three different packs who just happen to still be doing work around the territory wandering in because they heard the noise and wanted to understand it.
I stand at the edge of it and watch Jolie in the middle. Mara has one arm around her, describing the leather jacket in detail. Phoenix is showing Luna something on his tablet that's making Luna laugh. Knox has pulled three of the newer pack members into an impromptu toast that doesn't involve alcohol and somehow works anyway. Doc is already in quiet conversation with Celeste, who is nodding with professional interest.
Cass appears at my elbow. I've known Cass since we were both young making terrible decisions together, and I know the particular quality of his presence when he's carrying something he hasn't said. He stands beside me and watches the room for a minute before he speaks.
"I'm happy for you, brother." He means it completely—I can hear that. "You deserve this. Both of you."
"Thank you." I glance at him. Celeste is across the room, laughing at something Mara said, and Cass's eyes go to her the way mine go to Jolie. "How are you two?"
A pause. The weight of something specific settles in it. "We've been trying," he says. "To start a family. It hasn't—we're still hoping." His jaw works. "Seeing Jolie today... it gives us hope. That healed wolves can still have this."
I think about what it means—not just for Cass and Celeste, but for everyone in this compound who came to us already broken, everyone who lost years and connection and pieces of themselves to the Council's program. The hope that healing goes all the way. That you don't just recover enough to function but enough to build something new from the foundation.
I put my hand on his shoulder and hold it there. "She'll have this with you," I say. "I believe that."
He nods once, composing himself. Then he straightens and raises his cup toward the room.
Across the compound, Jolie looks up and finds me, the way she always does, and her light catches her eyes and makes them gleam. She smiles—just for me, just for a second—and I feel it in my chest like warmth.