Chapter 29 - Maisie

On a Saturday morning, at sunrise, Zane tells me he’s going to be the father of my child.

I want to joke that I already knew that—I am a doctor, after all. But I decide to keep my mouth shut and hear him out.

As we sit beside Halfmoon Lake watching the water, Zane only having been released from the clinic last night (though he spent the night in my apartment anyway), he tells me all about the names he’s been thinking of, all the things he wants to do with our kid, the things he’ll teach them. Whether it’s a boy or a girl. How he’s going to build a fort out of wood in the garden for them, even though he’s not very practical and will probably build it wrong. He says he’s going to do it anyway.

Methodically, in a list, he tells me all the ways he’s going to be the father of my child. And I sit in the golden sunlight and listen, head tipped back, his warm arm around me, and I laugh like a little kid.

That same morning, as we walk back up from the bottoms into Rosecreek, the town seems to have come alive with a kind of quiet energy it hasn’t had since the battle. Everyone is back now, those whose homes were damaged having been set up with temporary living quarters in the pack center. There’s so much to do, but there’s no panic, no rush. Just a sense that we’ve made it through the worst of it, and now it’s time to take things piece by piece, stone by stone.

And in Rosecreek this morning, I breathe in, and for the first time in days, I cannot smell the lingering stink of smoke. Just someone cooking breakfast somewhere, someone’s morning coffee smell drifting from somewhere else, and faintly, the rich, wet smell of the first chill of Fall.

We walk together through the town, the crisp morning air cool against my skin. Everyone is pitching in. Once Zane’s recovered, we’ll have no excuse to keep slacking. Bigby and Rafael are working side by side, pulling down the blackened beams of a half-collapsed house. Their faces are streaked with soot and sweat, but they’re smiling, laughing together in a way I haven’t seen since before the battle. Their bond is unspoken, strengthened by what they’ve endured.

Across the street, Byron and Olivia are repairing the roof of another ruined house. Byron is giving Olivia instructions, although she’s ignoring half of them, using her own method and grinning as he huffs in exasperation. Olivia tosses a nail at his head, and Byron ducks, muttering something under his breath before breaking into a grin. The whole scene feels... warm.

Zane hollers an insult at his brother as he passes. Without even looking up, Byron insults him right back. I end up with the giggles again, which sets Zane off chuckling, which only makes me worse.

When I’ve pulled myself together a bit, I fold my arm through his and squeeze. Wordlessly, he squeezes back.

We pass by the clinic where Veronica is organizing medical supplies that neighboring shifter towns have donated. She’s working with Rosa, and I smile as I watch them. Rosa’s been a steady presence for everyone. Always calm, always kind. She’s talking animatedly to Veronica about something—probably her plants. Her hands are flying as she gestures, and for the first time in days, I see Veronica’s tired face soften with amusement. Her worry seems less etched into her features than it was.

I owe them both so much. I can’t begin to think how I’ll pay it back.

The whole town feels like that, I’d imagine. Like we’ve all emerged from the ashes together. The wounds are still fresh, but we’re healing slowly.

In the coming days, Zane and I do our part, too. He’s supposed to be resting, but I catch him more than once lifting heavy crates or helping to rebuild the barricades. When I scold him for it, he just winks at me and says, “I’ll rest when we’re done.”

I’m not supposed to be helping either, but of course, I do. We joke that we’ll be rogues together, rapscallions, aiding and abetting each other as we secretly nail boards to broken windows and move cargo.

As the days following the disaster turn into weeks, life in Rosecreek begins to take on a new rhythm. The pack rallies together, not just to rebuild the physical structures of the town but to mend our emotional scars, too. There’s a sense of camaraderie that wasn’t there before. It’s palpable. I see it in the gentle smiles I receive in the street, the knowing glances the team sends me when they catch my eye, and the smoke damage on the windows of the pack center through which the sunlight still manages to persevere. I see it in everything—our future here, the lives we’re building, the way they are being sedimented in love, respect, and protection here in Rosecreek.

I know it means a lot to Zane, too, to have this. He doesn’t have to say it. I just understand.

We hold meetings in the evenings with the rest of the pack to plan for the future. The town needs new defenses and new homes for those for whom repairs and restoration won’t be possible. We talk about what went wrong, what we can do better, and how we’ll rebuild—not just the walls but our sense of safety, too.

There are moments of sadness, of course. Some lost everything. Some are still grappling with the trauma of what we faced. I see it on my friends’ faces, their guilt, their sense of loss of security. But there’s this undeniable undercurrent of hope in everything we do during this period, and of resilience. Laughter echoes from the parks where children play among newly repaired swing sets and see-saws. The sound is music to our ears. They don’t yet know what has been sacrificed, but someday, they will.

For me, these days feel like a kind of awakening.

I’ve always known I was good at medicine—competent, thorough. But now, as I move through the clinic, treating those wounds that still require attention and helping the town recover, I feel a new sense of confidence. A sense of purpose. I’m not just fixing broken bones or stitching up cuts, not just prescribing pills for the sick. I’m healing people—physically, emotionally—and I know that this is what I’m meant to do.

I want to contribute to my community this way for the rest of my life, I decide during these long, late-summer days of recuperation. No matter what happens, I want to be the best doctor I can possibly be for the people of my pack.

But there’s more. Something else has been stirring inside me. I’ve always had a fascination with magic, with the way it intertwines with the natural world. And now, after everything I’ve learned (both by choice and otherwise) over the past months, I feel like I’m ready to truly pursue it in a medical capacity. There’s so much potential there, so much I want to learn, and for the first time, I’m not afraid to chase it anymore. Nervous? Of course. But no, I’m not scared.

The thought of combining magic with medicine excites me in a way that nothing else has before. I think about what I could do for the pack, for the people I care about. How I could protect them, heal them, guide them.

Zane, as always, is supportive. He encourages me to go after it, to embrace my abilities fully.

“You’re already amazing,” he says one night, his voice low as we lie together in the dark in my apartment. “But if anyone can figure out how to be both a healer and a witch, it’s you.”

His words stick with me. They always do.

Before I know it, we’re searching for a bigger place. It’ll be a couple of months since so much of the town’s housing has been damaged, but we’ll get there. And this time, it’ll be our place, not a place made to fit in with someone else’s life.

It’ll all be ours.

The days slip through our fingers. As the first chilly night foreshadowing Fall sets in, Zane and I find ourselves outside again, beside the lake under the stars.

The sky is impossibly clear, a blanket of twinkling lights stretching out above us. The air has that crisp, clean smell of the changing season. I can feel the promise of something new, something beautiful, in the air.

We’re lying on a blanket spread out on the sand, my head resting on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. His arm is around me, his thumb tracing lazy circles on my shoulder. There’s no rush, no urgency. Just us, together, breathing in the night.

“I love nights like this,” I murmur, turning my face up to look at him. The moonlight catches in his eyes, and he smiles that slow, easy smile that makes my heart skip.

“Me too,” he says softly. “Especially now.”

He rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow, his face inches from mine. His hand cups my cheek, and for a moment, we just look at each other.

When he kisses me, it’s slow and gentle. Like we have all the time in the world. And we do. There’s no rush, no need for anything more than this. His lips are soft and warm, and I lose myself in the feel of him, in the way he holds me. He treats me like I’m the most precious thing in his world. And I just might be.

He kisses me harder. The world falls away, and it’s just us, under the stars, wrapped in each other, alone but not really. Alone, but at the same time, never again alone. His hands move down my body and hold me like I’m a delicate artifact, a thing of total and unbroken beauty.

“I love you,” he whispers against my skin, his breath warm on my neck. “More than anything.”

I smile, my fingers tangling in his hair. “I love you too. You know I do.”

We make love under the stars.

Zane still takes it slow, though I tell him now he no longer needs to. I can tell it's hard for him to hold back with me. But still, he treats me as if I might break, and so we go slowly, both savouring each moment, holding off until we can come together.

He touches my sex, my hips, my chest, making paintings with his fingers. One of his fingers curls slowly, impossibly slowly, inside me, and I arch from the ground as if puppeteered, mouth forming an 'O' as his thumb swipes lazy circles against my clit. He has me at his complete command. When he gets me to this place, he could ask me for anything, anything at all, and I'd allow it.

Zane takes one of my breasts in his other hand, squeezing gently, then mouthing the skin there, teeth so devilishly teasing even now. His fingers skitter down to my stomach and caress me there, touch so gentle and reverent that I could cry. With his hand and his mouth, slowly but surely bringing me toward the edge of climax with his fingers below, he worships the curves of my hips, the plane of my stomach, my gasping chest.

I touch him, desperate for him, trying to unclothe him even as I shake with need. I free his member from his pants and touch him, desperate to have him and desperate at the same time for him to feel what I'm feeling, to know how badly I want for him to lose himself in me the way I lose myself in him. He deserves all the pleasure in the world.

As he rubs me particularly firmly down there, I surge my hips up toward his, squeezing him, and he moans, a ferocious, possessive sound, capturing my lips with his. He rocks his hips down toward mine, then reaches his hand low to guide himself inside me.

"Mine," he rasps as I whine with need. When I catch the look on his face in the soft moonlight, he's looking at me as if he'll never need anything else. "All mine."

As he pushes in, as gently and as lovingly as he did that first night, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss me. I moan against his mouth as he takes my lips with his own, so controlled, so slow and deliberate.

He kisses my throat, my chest. One of his hands lands ever so gently on my stomach. I’d never have let a man touch me there in a million years before, but now, I laugh, overflowing with a joy I can’t name, as he cradles me in his arms, loving every inch of me. Every single thing I thought I could never love about myself.

He reaches down to touch me again, to bring me closer. His fingers on my heat bring me to the edge until I’m almost wailing.

Breasts heaving, my face and chest hot with need, I angle my hips up against his, body gyrating, lost in my all-consuming pleasure. He thrusts harder and faster, self-control coming unseated, driven almost to madness by me. The pressure of him, the heat of his body, the musk of his sweat; by all of it, I am undone.

When we come together, my vision whites out for a moment. There are thousands more stars than before.

Zane pulls out of me and slings his arms around my middle, pulling me to his chest even as we both fight to get our breath back. His fingers run small, light circles on the bare skin of my midriff. I can still smell his sex, the faint remaining traces of his arousal, sticky like the sweat on his naked skin. When he feels me shivering, suddenly cold in my nakedness, he wraps his jacket tight around my shoulders and squeezes me, and I laugh, unable to help it, as I am surrounded by the smell of him, head pillowed against his firm, broad shoulder.

We talk about nothing and everything: the baby, the future, this town of ours, the way things were, the way they could have been, the way they are. The way they will be, soon, now that the rest of our lives have begun. I have the distinct sense, there under the stars, that I am becoming what I was always meant to be.

Later, as we lie tangled in each other, the night air cooling around us, I glance across at the waters of Halfmoon Lake. I wonder how many couples like us it has witnessed experiencing love and loss alike through the years. The surface shimmers with near-mystical light, all the stars reflected back in shifting, dazzling pinpricks.

“Hey,” I murmur. “You know, Baby Cox might want a sibling someday.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Zane laughs, but then he kisses a ‘yes’ against my mouth again and again and again.