Little Wolves Rising

The first time I felt it, I was alone.

Three in the morning, the apartment dark except for the streetlamp bleeding through the blinds. I lay on my back with one hand pressed flat against my stomach, waiting. There. A flutter. Like a moth trapped behind glass, beating its wings against my ribs.

I laughed. Then I cried. Then I laughed again because I sounded like a crazy person and I didn't care.

The test had been positive for six weeks now. Six weeks of staring at that pink plus sign like it might rearrange itself into something less terrifying. Six weeks of calculating due dates and counting the money in my savings account and wondering how the hell I was going to tell Leo.

Leo with his sharp suits and sharper tongue. Leo who smelled like expensive cologne and something darker, something that made my knees weak even when I was furious at him. Leo who had looked at me across the boardroom table six months ago and said, "You're the new marketing consultant?" like he was already undressing me with his eyes.

He wasn't wrong.

I sat up slowly, the sheets pooling around my waist. The apartment was too quiet. I could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. Nothing that matched the earthquake happening inside my body.

I thought about telling him that night. I'd practiced the words so many times they felt like a prayer. *Leo, I'm pregnant. Leo, we're having a baby. Leo, I don't know what to do.*

But every time I opened my mouth, the words turned to ash.

Because Leo wasn't the kind of man who got women pregnant. He was the kind of man who had women. Disposable women. Women who understood the rules and played by them. Women like me, before I went and broke every single one.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I knew it was him before I looked. He always texted at strange hours, when his wife was asleep and he was alone in his study, drinking scotch and thinking about things he shouldn't.

*Come over.*

Two words. No question mark. He never used question marks with me.

I should have said no. I should have typed back *We need to talk* and waited for the fallout. But my fingers were already moving, already typing *When?* like a trained response, like a dog that still remembered the sound of its master's whistle.

*Now. She's visiting her sister this weekend.*

Of course she was. Of course he had the house to himself. Of course the universe was conspiring to make this conversation happen in the worst possible way.

I dressed carefully. Black jeans that still fit, barely. A silk blouse that flowed over my stomach without clinging. I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to see what he would see. A woman in her early thirties with dark hair and tired eyes and a secret pressing against her insides like a second heartbeat.

He wouldn't notice. He never noticed anything that didn't directly serve him.

His house sat at the end of a quiet street in the wealthy part of town. Big windows, manicured lawn, a Mercedes in the driveway. The kind of house that screamed *I made it* in a voice that was just a little too loud. I parked my beat-up Honda behind his car and sat for a long moment, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles went white.

The front door opened before I could knock. Leo stood there in a dark robe, his hair still damp from a shower, his eyes hungry in a way that made my stomach flip.

"You're late," he said.

"I'm always late."

He smiled. That crooked smile that had charmed me from the first moment I saw it, even though I knew better. Even though I'd read the articles about him, heard the rumors, seen the way other women looked at him in restaurants. I knew exactly what he was. I went in with my eyes open.

What I didn't know was that I'd stay.

He pulled me inside and kissed me before I could speak. His mouth was warm and tasted like whiskey. His hands found my waist, then slid lower, pulling me against him. For a moment I let myself forget. I let myself be the woman I was before, the one who didn't have a secret growing inside her.

But the flutter came again. A reminder. A demand.

I pulled back. "Leo, we need to talk."

"Talk later." He kissed my neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin just below my ear. "I've been thinking about you all week."

"Leo."

Something in my voice made him stop. He looked at me, really looked, and I saw the calculation behind his eyes. The way he was trying to read me, trying to figure out what angle I was working.

"What's wrong?"

I took a breath. Then another. The words sat on my tongue like stones.

"I'm pregnant."

The silence that followed was louder than anything I'd ever heard. Leo's hands dropped from my waist. He stepped back, and the space between us felt like a canyon.

"That's not possible," he said.

"Pretty sure it is. I took four tests."

"You're on birth control."

"I was." I crossed my arms over my chest. "Things fail, Leo. It happens."

He turned away from me, walked to the bar in the corner of his living room, and poured himself a drink. His hands were steady. That's what scared me most. He was too calm, too controlled, like he was already planning his exit strategy.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet."

"Let me rephrase." He turned to face me, his eyes cold. "What do you want from me?"

I could have lied. I could have said *nothing* and walked out the door and never looked back. But I was tired of lying. Tired of pretending I didn't care, that I didn't lie awake at night thinking about him, that I hadn't started imagining a future that included him and this baby and something that looked almost like a family.

"I want you to be part of this."

He laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh.

"You want me to leave my wife. Raise a child with you. Play house."

"I want you to be a father."

"I don't want children."

"Too late."

He set his glass down with a sharp click. "There are options."

The word hit me like a slap. I'd thought about those options. I'd spent weeks thinking about them, weighing them, crying over them. But hearing him say it, hearing the casual way he offered it up, made something harden in my chest.

"No."

"No?"

"I'm keeping it."

He stared at me. The mask slipped for just a second, and I saw something underneath. Fear, maybe. Or anger. Or both.

"You're making a mistake."

"Maybe." I walked toward him, stopping close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath. "But it's my mistake to make."

He reached out and grabbed my wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to hold me in place. His thumb pressed against my pulse point, and I felt my heart racing under his touch.

"You don't understand what you're getting into," he said. "I'm not a good man."

"I know."

"Then why are you still here?"

I looked at him. This man who had taken me apart and put me back together in a shape I didn't recognize. This man who had shown me pleasure I didn't know existed and pain I hadn't known I could survive. This man who was going to be the father of my child whether he liked it or not.

"Because I'm not a good woman either."

His grip loosened. For a moment, something shifted in his expression. Something almost like wonder.

Then he kissed me again, and this time it was different. Slower. More deliberate. Like he was trying to memorize the shape of my mouth.

When he pulled back, his voice was rough.

"We'll figure this out."

"Promise?"

He didn't answer. But he didn't let go of my wrist either.

And that was enough for now.