Chapter 2 - The Truth Beneath the Ridge
Getting dressed required raiding Mia’s closet for an oversized hoodie and sweatpants that swallowed my frame. My muscles felt bruised, as if I had been run over by a freight train, and every breath reminded me of the terrifying change my body had just undergone. But there was no time to process the shock. The reality of what I was carrying—and who was responsible—demanded answers.
We drove up the winding mountain road forty minutes later, the tires of Mia’s battered sedan crunching over gravel and patches of late-spring slush. The trees grew denser, crowding the asphalt like silent watchers.
When we reached the timber lodge, Gavin’s truck was parked outside the main workshop, but it was Rowan’s weathered four-by-four that caught my eye.
I didn't wait for Mia to park properly. I threw the car door open before the engine even cut off and marched toward the massive timber-framed workshop where Gavin and Rowan built their custom furniture. The scent of pine resin and woodsmoke drifted from the open double doors.
Rowan was standing at the workbench, his back to me, running an electric planer over the edge of a thick walnut slab. Sawdust drifted in the golden afternoon light like falling snow. He wore a dark plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the corded muscle of his forearms—arms that I now knew could easily match the strength of a wild predator.
“You’re back early,” Rowan said without turning around, his deep voice vibrating through the cavernous room. “Did you and Mia run out of city coffee already?”
“Don’t turn around,” I said, my voice shaking with a dangerous mixture of fury and adrenaline.
Rowan paused, the planer whining down to a quiet hum. He set the tool aside slowly and turned, wiping sawdust from his hands with a rag. His green-gray eyes met mine, locking onto the pale, exhausted look on my face and the heavy, oversized hoodie I was wearing.
Then his expression shifted. The easy, confident amusement vanished, replaced by an instant, terrifying intensity. His nostrils flared. He took half a step forward, his gaze dropping instinctively to my lower abdomen before snapping back to my eyes.
“Chloe,” he breathed, the name sounding less like a greeting and more like a confession. “You smell like… you changed.”
“An hour ago,” I snapped, stepping closer, my hands curling into fists inside my pockets. “In my apartment kitchen. Surrounded by broken glass and a very confused art history major who is currently sitting in her car having an existential crisis.”
Rowan closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, running a hand over his short beard. When he opened them, there was no denial left in him. Only a profound, heavy resignation—and a fierce, burning protectiveness that made my skin prickle.
“I didn’t want it to happen like this,” he said softly, stepping toward me.
“You didn’t want me to turn into a six-hundred-pound grizzly bear? Because that’s usually the kind of conversation you have before you sleep with someone, Rowan!”
“Keep your voice down,” he muttered, glancing toward the main house where Gavin was likely within earshot. He reached out, grabbing my wrists with a grip that was gentle but unbreakable. “You’re shifting early. The first change usually doesn’t happen until the mid-twenties, and even then, it takes years of conditioning. The only reason it triggered now—” He stopped, his gaze dropping again to my stomach. “The cub.”
The word hung in the cool mountain air, heavy and undeniable.
Cub.
Not baby. Not child.
Cub.
“I’m pregnant,” I whispered, the reality finally solidifying into something I couldn't run away from. “And my body decided to rewrite its own DNA in the middle of making a cup of tea.”
“It’s not just your DNA, Chloe,” Rowan said, his thumb stroking the inside of my wrist where my pulse hammered wildly against his skin. “It’s mine, too. And my family has lived on these ridges for five generations. When a shifter bloodline mixes with a human who carries the dormant spark—like your mother, though she never turned—the pregnancy accelerates everything. Your body realized it couldn't protect what you were carrying without the skin of the beast.”
I stared at him, my mind spinning. “My mother knew?”
“Gavin knows,” Rowan corrected quietly. “That’s why he married her. To bring her back to the mountain where the air and the land could keep her dormant spark safe. They thought it might skip a generation for you. They were wrong.”
I pulled my hands away from his grip, stepping back as anger flared hot and bright beneath the shock. “You knew this could happen. You knew what I was—what we were—and you let me go back to the city? You let me sit in an art studio sketching charcoal figures while I was sitting on a ticking time bomb?”
“If I told you in the city, you would have thought I was insane,” Rowan said, his voice dropping, rough with emotion. He closed the distance between us again, his tall frame blocking out the light from the open workshop doors. “You would have packed your bags, driven back to New York, and never spoken to me again. You were an artist. You loved your quiet, predictable life.”
“My life isn’t predictable anymore, Rowan!” I shouted, tears finally spilling over my lashes. “I just broke a refrigerator by existing!”
Before he could answer, heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel outside. Gavin appeared in the doorway, wiping sawdust from his apron, his expression grave.
“I heard the shouting,” Gavin said, his eyes shifting from my red-rimmed face to Rowan’s tense posture. Then he looked down at my waist. He didn't ask questions. He simply sighed, pulling off his work gloves. “It happened, didn’t it?”
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“Inside her apartment,” Rowan said tightly. “Six weeks.”
Gavin ran a hand through his graying hair. “God help us. The pack council isn’t going to like this.”
