Chapter 135 We're Expecting
LUCA
Arya came to find me in the library after dinner, which was where I’d been reading while giving her the space she needed to do whatever she’d been doing that the bond told me was significant without telling me the specific shape of it.
She stood in the doorway for a moment, and I looked up, and we looked at each other across the room.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“I know.” I put the book down and patted the space beside me. “Come here.”
She crossed the room and sat close so that our knees touched, and I turned to face her and she looked at me with the expression that was most completely hers.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
The word landed somewhere beyond my chest, in a register I didn’t have a word for. Eight hundred years of things I’d expected and things I hadn’t and nothing had produced this specific quality of simultaneous weight and lightness.
“Eight weeks,” I said. My voice came out roughly.
“Bardon confirmed it three days ago.” She was watching my face.
“I know.” I did know. I’d felt the shift in the bond without being able to identify it, the specific quality of something new that she was carrying in a way that was different from all the other things she’d carried. “Are you—”
“Terrified,” she said. “And certain.”
I took her face in my hands.
“Certain is enough,” I said.
“It’s what I’ve got.” Her hands came up to cover mine. “I don’t know what this looks like. For the work, for the Institute, for—”
“For us,” I said. “It looks like us. Which is always more complicated than anyone plans for and better than anyone expected.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I’m here. Whatever it looks like.”
She exhaled. Something releasing.
“You’ve been waiting for me to tell you,” she said.
“For three days.” I pulled back enough to look at her. “You needed the time.”
“You’re genuinely better at this than you used to be.”
“Incentivized improvement.” I kissed her. Softly, with everything. “Are you going to tell people at Sage’s wedding?”
“Sage already knows. She worked it out from context.” Her mouth curved. “She wants to be there when we tell Ryker.”
“Of course she does.” I thought about Ryker’s face receiving that information and felt something that was undeniably warm. “He’s going to be insufferable about it.”
“The good kind of insufferable.”
“Is there a good kind?”
“When it comes from genuine happiness.” She leaned into me. “Yes.”
I held her in the quiet library while the snow built outside and the fire settled into steady warmth and thought about a word, not extraordinary, not unprecedented, not something that required a new taxonomy.
The word was mine, worn smooth by use, entirely adequate.
Home.
\-----
ARYA
Sage and Ryker’s wedding was the first purely good day I could remember in longer than I wanted to calculate.
Silver Creek in winter was beautiful this time of year, stark and certain. The mountains close and clear in the cold air, the pack house grounds transformed by snow into something ceremonial without needing decoration.
Helena had outdone herself anyway.
White and silver and the warm gold of candlelight inside, because the outdoor ceremony had lasted exactly as long as it needed to before the temperature made everyone sensible.
Ryker cried. From the moment Sage appeared at the far end of the hall.
Sage did not cry. She looked at him with those amber eyes and she smiled the real smile, the one she saved for things she’d actually decided mattered, and she walked toward him.
I officiated. Sage had asked and I had said yes immediately and then spent two weeks writing something that was honest and specific to who they actually were rather than generic and inoffensive.
“You found each other in the middle of something difficult,” I said, looking at the two of them. “Which is either the best or worst time to find someone, depending on what you do with it. What you did with it—” I looked at Ryker. “You became someone you were capable of being, and I think you needed her to do that. Not because she saved you. She refused to let you be the diminished version of yourself you’d been settling for.”
Ryker’s jaw was working.
“And you—” I looked at Sage. “You decided that being someone’s second choice was something you could live with, and then you decided you were wrong, and you said so. And he heard you.” I paused. “That’s actually the whole thing. The rest is details.”
A sound from the congregation that was half laughter and half something warmer.
They said their vows. The words they’d written themselves, which were simple and direct and, from Sage, included a clause about violence that made everyone laugh and that was clearly entirely sincere.
Afterwards, Luca found me near the fireplace with a glass of wine I was drinking approximately two sips of for appearances and he stood beside me.
“Good speech,” he said.
“Thank you. I meant it.”
“I know. That’s what made it good.” He looked at the dancing, which had started with energy. “Jaime is behaving very well.”
I found him across the room. He was talking to Alpha Cyrus. He caught my eye briefly and raised his glass.
I raised mine.
“He really has changed,” I said.
“People do. Occasionally.” Luca looked at me sideways. “You look very happy.”
“I am very happy.” I looked around the room.
Bardon was sitting with Helena and apparently telling her something that was making her laugh. Caspian who had in fact arrived alone and was in fact being cornered near the drinks table by a Lycan woman from Drayven’s delegation who seemed unintimidated by the professional neutral expression. Mira, who’d been invited and had come, was standing near the edge of the dancing.
“We should tell Ryker,” I said.
“Now?”
“He’s going to be unbearable about it. Better to let him be unbearable at a wedding where it fits than at a council session where it doesn’t.” I handed Luca my wine glass. “Hold this.”
I crossed to where Ryker was standing with his new wife. They were both glowing with happiness.
“Congratulations,” I said. “Both of you.”
“Thank you for the speech,” Ryker said. His voice was still a little rough. “It was— you knew what to say.”
“I usually do. Eventually.” I looked at both of them. “I have something to tell you. I’m telling you now because Sage wanted to be here and because—” I met Ryker’s eyes. “Because you’re family. Both of you.”
He looked at me. The bond of years between us, all the complicated history and the finding-of-footing and the choosing of different things than had initially seemed like possibilities.
“Arya,” he said.
“We’re expecting,” I said.