I cross the room. Grace reads something in my face and comes up from the table, chin up, ready to fight me for it.
“I’m going, Decker. We can do this in front of everyone, or—”
“You can’t.”
“Give me one real reason.” Her eyes are bright and hard. “Not the bear. Not that you almost lost me. A reason I can use.”
We tell each other the truth now. I don’t get to stop because the room’s full.
“You’re—” It jams. I breathe, and it comes out in pieces anyway. “Grace. You’re pregnant.” Her face doesn’t move. “Our baby. You’re carrying our baby. That’s the reason.”
The room goes quiet enough that I can hear the coffee maker tick.
She stares at me. Then she laughs; one short breath that isn’t a laugh at all.
“That’s impossible.” Fast and flat. “Decker, I told you in the den. My line doesn’t cross with your kind. We only conceive with compatible bloodlines.”
“I know what you told me. And I’m telling you that I know my child is growing inside you.” The urge to reach out and rest my hand over her belly is overwhelming yet again.
“What… How—?” Her arms come around herself. “There’s no way you could know a thing like that. No way.”
“The bear knew.” Flat, because it’s true. “He’s known since the mountain.” I stop and make myself finish it. “He’s known the whole time, Grace. I only caught up today.”
“No.” She turns to the room, looking for one sane person. “Somebody tell him. It doesn’t happen. It can’t—”
Viktor sets his mug down.
“It happens more than your line would tell you.” He says it plainly, no weight on it. “I’ve run this place a long time, Grace. I’ve watched pairings that every rulebook swore were barren. Witch and wolf. Witch and dragon.” His eyes go to the mark on her neck. “A witch and a bear, now. The rules hold right up until a bond seals, and then they stop holding, and I’ve quit being surprised by it.”
He picks the mug back up. “If the bond decides which two people are fated to each other, it decides the rest too. You don’t get a say. Neither do I.”
“He’s right.” Jericho, quiet, one hand finding the back of Nadia’s neck without either of them making a thing of it. “Dragon and wolf. We were told we could never be together. Ask us how that went.”
Nadia doesn’t say anything. She just tips her head toward Jericho’s hand and lets it sit there, and that’s an answer.
Grace stands with her arms still wrapped around herself, and I watch the impossible start to come apart in her face.
Then she stops arguing with us.
I see it happen—her eyes drop, her breathing changes, and one hand comes off her ribs and flattens low on her belly, right where mine wants to be. Her lips part. She’s gone somewhere inside, where the wolf is, and whatever she asks down there, she gets an answer.
“Oh,” she says. Very small.
“Grace?”
“She’s known too.” Her eyes come up, shining and lost at the same time. “My wolf. She’s been curled around something for days, and I thought she was just quiet from the mark—” Her voice cracks. “Decker.”
I get to her before her knees go, and her fists twist into my shirt. We stand there in front of everyone while it lands on her the way it landed on me…too big to take in one breath.
“Okay,” Kaylin says into the quiet, thick-voiced. “I’m sorry, I know there’s probably a protocol or something, but is nobody going to say it out loud? Because I’m about to burst.”
The room breaks—laughter with tears in it, Jericho’s hand back on my shoulder and staying this time, Nadia saying something dry that makes Grace laugh wet into my chest. Viktor waits for the noise to come down.
“Then medical sees you first thing tomorrow, not next week,” he says.
Grace lifts her head. The joy’s still all over her face when the other thing lands, and I know what it is before she opens her mouth.
“I’m the one who’s been fighting for her. And now I’m the one person who can’t go.” Her hand hasn’t left her belly. “She’s out there, and I’m—” She stops. Steadies. “Who’ll finish what I started?”
