Her Cloak Was Sewn With Blessings, While I Had Nothing Chapter 01

Her Cloak Was Sewn With Blessings, While I Had Nothing Chapter 01

The Greyfang Pack had a tradition that went back generations.

When an Alpha’s daughter got pregnant, the family gathered a small tuft of naturally shed fur from every close relative, washed it, smoked it with incense, and stitched it into a blessing cloak for the newborn, one stitch at a time.

The cloak carried the mingled scent of the entire Alpha bloodline, meaning that from the first day the pup opened its eyes, the family claimed it and would protect it.

When my sister Brielle and I ended up pregnant at the same time, my mother, Maris, spent three full months traveling through the forest and the town to collect fur from our uncles and elders.

She even asked me whether I wanted fawns or clouds embroidered along the edge of mine.

I was naive enough to believe that this time, they finally saw me as a true princess of the Greyfang Pack.

Then, close to my due date, my mother came to the hospital with the finished cloak in her arms.

Brielle threw herself into her arms, delighted, and our brother Kieran smiled and helped her open it out.

There was only one.

In the center of the soft gray white fur lining, the name of Brielle’s pup was embroidered in gold thread.

I put a hand on my own high, heavy belly and asked quietly.

“Mom, where’s mine?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Brielle’s pup has been breech this whole time and the healer says the birth could go wrong. I wasn’t going to risk her or the pup, so I sewed your share of the fur into hers. Don’t start with me about it.”

Kieran frowned and cut me off before I could answer.

“Stop fighting over every little thing. Brielle is about to give birth. Are you really going to put this on her right now?”

My father, Garrick, went further and took the Alpha family’s private medical card right off my bedside table.

My husband Drystan had left it with me before he went north, and it called in the best healers and private care in the hospital.

Garrick said Brielle might need emergency surgery, so the private suite and the top-level care went to her first.

So they knew birth hurt. They knew a she-wolf could lose half her life on that table.

Brielle’s fear was worth the whole family sitting vigil over her.

Mine was something I was expected to swallow alone.

Brielle held the cloak with two blessings sewn into it against her chest and said it softly.

“Sable, you’re not going to fight me over a blessing for a pup, are you?”

I looked at the tight rows of stitching, and it stopped hurting.

No matter how warm that cloak was, it couldn’t warm somebody who had already been left outside the door.

*****

“Sable, you’ve been a warrior since you were a pup. You held the winter patrols. You’ll get through a birth just fine.”

“Brielle has been fragile her whole life. Step aside for her.”

That was true enough.

Brielle had been sickly as a pup, and it had earned her double the treatment a Pack Princess got, all her life.

At the full moon balls, the Alpha family dinners, and the spring hunt festivals, she always stood beside our parents in the prettiest gown in the room.

I ran the territory borders like any other Pack warrior, and there was always a bandage somewhere on my arm from training or a fight.

I didn’t say anything, so my mother smoothed it over.

“It’s one cloak and one card. Drystan is Alpha of the Frostveil Pack now. The two of you have everything, so don’t act like this costs you anything.”

Kieran leaned against the door frame with an impatient look on his face.

I looked down at the cloak, packed with the blessings of the whole Pack.

“Fine. I won’t fight for it.”

I didn’t press them the way I used to, and I didn’t scream at them about why it was Brielle again.

I turned away, screwed the cap onto the thermos by my bed, and put it in my canvas bag.

Brielle’s whole face loosened with relief.

“I knew you loved me best.”

She took our mother’s hand and leaned into her.

“Mom, I want the maple pecan rolls from Hollow Creek Bakery. Nothing tastes like anything right now.”

My mother stroked her hair, all sympathy.

“All right, I’ll go get them.”

“Your back’s bad. Why would you go all that way?” Kieran stopped her and turned to me. “Sable, you’re not doing anything. Go get them.”

“Brielle is the Luna of the Silverpine Pack and she’s carrying their next heir. She’s not going hungry.”

My hand stopped on the strap of my bag.

I was nine months along, and the healer had warned me the day before that labor could start at any time.

And I had married the Alpha of another Pack years ago.

By rank, Brielle and I were both Lunas.

There was no reason for me to cross half of Greyhaven days before delivering to buy her a pastry.

Hollow Creek Bakery was a long way from the hospital and took two city buses with a transfer. Both family SUVs were parked downstairs, and nobody offered to drive me.

It insulted me, and it insulted the Alpha of the Frostveil Pack.

But Drystan was still in the north, and my pup’s safety came first, so I set my teeth and nodded at them.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

I put the bag over my shoulder and walked out of the room without looking back.

I carried that heavy belly one slow step at a time through the ward doors.

The late autumn wind in Greyhaven was cold.

The bus was packed with people coming off work. I held the rail, and every jolt of it turned my stomach over.

My pup felt what I was feeling and kicked once, restless.

I looked down and rubbed my belly through my coat.

“Easy, little one.”

“Mama still has you.”

The line outside Hollow Creek Bakery ran all the way around the corner.

The wind cut through my thin knit cardigan. I stood at the back with my hands in my pockets until my fingertips went numb.

The middle-aged woman ahead of me glanced back, saw my belly, and frowned.

“Honey, you’re about to pop. What are you doing standing in this line alone?”

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile.

“My family wanted these.”

“And your mate? Where’s your family?”

Everything in her face disapproved.

“Who sends a woman this close to term out into the cold by herself? If something happens, sorry doesn’t fix it.”

I looked down and didn’t answer.

Drystan was in the north handling the absorption of the Blackridge Pack.

Their former Alpha had started a border war, and Drystan and I had put him down together. By the ruling of the Werewolf Council, Blackridge’s territory and members went under Frostveil’s control for the time being.

That fight had drained me too far, and when the healers found signs of early labor, Drystan insisted I come back to Greyhaven to deliver.

Greyfang was the Pack I was born into, after all.

Drystan assumed that until he got back, my Alpha father would at least protect his own daughter.

Then a blizzard came down on the north, the roads closed, and even the mind link kept breaking up.

I worried about him.

But I knew that I had to get my pup out safely before anything else was worth talking about.

I used to think blood and the Pack bond would give me the bare minimum of shelter.

It turned out that to my parents, I was always the daughter who could be spent and sent on errands and never needed looking after.

By the time I had the rolls, it was almost dark.

They were fresh out of the oven and sweet-smelling, and the paper bag was warm through.

My phone buzzed with a voice message from Kieran.

“Did you go to the next territory for those? Brielle’s stomach hurts from waiting. Can you move faster?”

I didn’t answer it.

I put the phone on silent and back in my pocket.

Back at Mooncrest’s inpatient wing, I stood outside Brielle’s private birthing suite.

The door hadn’t been shut all the way.

Laughter kept coming through it.

“Brielle, drink some of this bone broth. I had it going all afternoon.”

“Thanks, Mom. Nobody’s ever been as good to me as you.”

“Of course. You’re the daughter I love most.”

“Not like your sister. Closed off like a rock since she was a pup, and she never learned how to make anybody like her.”

I stood outside the door with the box of maple pecan rolls slowly going cold in my hand.