Chapter Seventeen
Seraphina gasped awake, sitting straight up in Rod’s bed. Her hand flew to her chest trying desperately to understand the strange sensation she was feeling. She heaved to catch her breath, but something was wrong. Something was off. Something was…
She moved her hand lower, settling over her belly.
There. Something was right there.
She went still, listening closely, listening for her animal.
And there it was. A faint and rapid pitpitpit. A... new heartbeat. Too fast and too weak to be her own.
A young, her vixen whispered in awe. We have a young.
Seraphina sucked in a breath at the realization. Holy… she and Rod had made a baby today. So fast. How did she not realize she was fertile? Her animal was always good at warning her. This time, the vixen did nothing to stop her.
The animal knew her heart, she realized. She’d been battling back the fox’s will, but it wasn’t necessary, was it? Because the fox was her, and she was the fox. And a no from one meant a no from the other.
A young. A smile spread her cheeks at the thought. She was going to be a mother. She was going to have a family. With the only male she could ever see it happening with. And not because she’d been bred, but because she’d been loved. Because she’d chosen love, and he had let her.
A young.
Something of her own. Something of him.
She turned to shake Rod awake, but realized she was alone in the bed. That fast, the joy bubbling up in her chest was crushed under the weight of what they’d lost today.
Exchanging one life for another.
Climbing out of bed, she pulled the blanket with her and wrapped up in it. She padded down the hall and found him on the couch, surrounded by all the framed photos from his shelf. In his lap, was a ratty looking album. The thing had been around a while. And he flipped through it, his expression unable to settle on whether it wanted to smile or frown.
She was awake enough now to know she couldn’t tell him about the baby. Not now, when his heart was so raw.
Later. She’d tell him the good news later.
She chewed her lip. She hoped he thought it was good news.
“Hey,” she whispered, holding her secret in even though it was so hard to do.
His gaze jerked up, and his eyes went soft even if they were still full of so much hurt they were hard to look at. “Hey, sweets,” he rasped. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” She padded forward, taking a seat as close as she could get and lifting one of the frames to have a look. “What’s this? You?”
“And Ma.” His voice was rough with unshed tears.
The photo showed a small boy with a dark mop of hair straddling a bike. A young Valerie was gripping the seat with one hand and showing him where to hold the handlebars. Her smile was vibrant, and his was wild-eyed with wonder.
“Who took it?” Seraphina smiled at the little boy in the picture.
“Waldo, I think. Or one of Aaron’s parents. It was Fourth of July, and our families used to do things together. Before they passed.”
“I love it.” Cradling the frame to her chest, she nodded at the album. “What’s in there?”
“More of the same. Some of my grandparents. Ma in high school.”
“Can I see?”
He tilted the page so she could look. She flipped through in silence, reliving some of Rod and his mom’s best moments.
“What of your dad?” She’d never asked, and it hadn’t come up. But now that there was a baby growing in her belly, she wondered if the young would have any grandparents.
“Never knew him,” Rod said. “Ma didn’t like to talk about him. He hurt her, don’t know how. But I never wanted to. Now I never will. That’s how she wanted it.”
“Yeah.”
Seraphina could understand the way some people had to be cut from your life so you could live it without being wounded. She’d made the same choice years ago. But family was what you made it. You could choose it, and it could choose you.
She turned the page to find a photo of young Rod with Adam, Aaron, Rider, and Annie. A squared R squared... plus another A is how they liked to say it. The five of them had linked shoulders and were smiling like they had no cares.
Family, her fox declared.
Yeah, she and Rod had enough family to make life good. Family they had chosen. The ones that mattered the most.
He closed the album and moved it to the table before pulling her into his lap.
“What do we do now, vixen?” he murmured. “How do I move on when one leg of my life is gone. How do come out of this still me?”
“I don’t know.” It was honest, and not helpful. And also all she had.
“I’d just figured out how to make this work with you, baby. And it was like my eyes were opened to this whole new life we could have. You and me and Ma. Some kids. Working hard, laughing hard. A family finally. A future that looked so damn good, Seraphina.” His voice cracked at the end, and her heart with it. “Now it’s like someone took a red pen to it all. Just… all of it.”
“What does that mean?”
He was quiet for a long time, just their breaths filling the space.
“I had a list of things I wanted for life. Every time I gave up something on the list, when it looked like something that couldn’t ever happen for me, I took the red pen to it.”
She went still.
Did that mean he was giving up on them?
“What’s that list look like now?”
He stared down at her. His eyes travelled over her entire face, pausing on her lips before finding her eyes again.
“I need to rewrite it.”
She swallowed hard, dredging up the courage to ask the tough question. The one that kept coming up no matter how many times they tried to cement things. Their time at the river, the spur, the woods, the shower. Every time, promises were made, but doubt persisted.
“Will I be on it?”
His eyes bore into her, their bond throbbed with emotion. “You’ll always be on it, Seraphina. Always.” Still, it wasn’t enough.
Her lip trembled with one last question.
“Will I get the red pen?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he carried her back to bed, and held her tight until they both fell asleep.