Alphas christmas heir, p.17
Alpha's Christmas Heir, page 17
“You screamed beautifully,” she says dryly, eyes crinkling. “A plus form. May I?”
I nod, and she leans in to peer at the baby first.
She doesn’t grab, doesn’t lift. She just sets two fingers gently against his back, feeling his breathing, then strokes the side of his head, tipping the hat up just enough to glimpse the hairline.
“Good tone,” she murmurs, half to herself. “Color’s nice now. He’s settled. How’s feeding?”
Heat rushes to my face. “Um. I mean. He... latched. A few times. We’re figuring it out.”
“Good,” she says, like we’re talking about carpentry, not my chest. “We’ll check again in a few hours. For now he looks happy enough.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine, sharp and kind all at once.
“And how about you?” she asks. “Head to toe.”
“I’m okay,” I say automatically.
She lifts one eyebrow. Caleb snorts softly behind her.
“Try again,” she says.
I sigh. “Tired,” I repeat. “Sore. Back hurts. Everything feels... stretched.”
“That would be because it is,” she says. “You just did a very big thing in a small amount of space. Let me check your vitals and then I’ll get out of your hair and let the casserole brigade in.”
She does a quick, efficient exam. Blood pressure, temperature, a few questions that make me blush and answer in monosyllables. No graphic details, no pain I can’t handle. Her hands are warm and sure.
When she’s done, she nods, satisfied.
“You’re both in good shape,” she pronounces. “Rest. Eat. Don’t try to be a hero and do laundry. If you feel dizzy or if your pain gets dramatically worse instead of slowly better, you call me. Otherwise, your main job is cuddles.”
“I can do cuddles,” I say, looking down at the pup. My throat tightens again. “Cuddles I like.”
“Good,” she says.
Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a manila folder.
“And now,” she says, “we do the least romantic part of this, so you can get back to the miraculous bit.”
Caleb’s scent shifts, sharpens. My stomach tugs.
Paperwork.
“Birth certificate,” Mara says, opening the folder. “State form, pack attachment, alpha-of-record declaration. We don’t have to fill it all out right now, but I like my parents to see their options while they’re still surrounded by blankets and endorphins instead of in some fluorescent office in a week.”
“Options?” I repeat, pulse spiking.
She nods.
“I promised you from the start there’d be choices,” she says. “That hasn’t changed. So. Officially, there’s a box for ‘Father.’ You can put a name in it, or not. If you do, that comes with certain legal ties—inheritance, visitation rights, obligations. If you don’t, your boy is still perfectly legitimate. It just means the state doesn’t have a man on file in that slot.”
Greyson’s voice echoes in my head: when we’ve signed, you’re mine. When the ink’s dry, you can’t run. A contract is safety, Liam.
My stomach flips.
Mara continues, unruffled.
“Now, because this is an Omegaverse town and we’ve finally dragged the law into the century we actually live in, there’s also a section for ‘Alpha of Record,’” she says, tapping another line with her finger. “That’s a guardian designation. It says, ‘If I can’t make decisions for my child, this alpha can, within limits.’ It gives them pack rights—visitation in medical settings, housing protections, so on. It does not give them ownership over you. Ever.”
Her eyes hold mine, making sure that lands.
“You can designate someone other than the biological father,” she goes on. “You can designate no one at all. You can designate yourself as sole guardian and leave the alpha line blank. You can change your mind later with paperwork and a cranky clerk. None of this is shackles, Liam. It’s tools.”
I swallow.
My hand curls protectively over the baby’s back.
“What about...” I have to force the words out. “What happens if I put Greyson’s name in the father box? Does he get a say? Can he... use that?”
Mara’s expression goes flinty in a way that makes me very glad she’s on my side.
“He could try,” she says. “He’d have to go through Hollyridge courts to do it. And I have it on good authority our sheriff and his favorite Beta have already stacked a neat little pile of harassment reports and voluntary separation documents in that file.”
“Understatement,” Caleb mutters behind her. His scent sharpens at the name—smoke and sugar with an edge like flint.
“But,” Mara says, “if you don’t want his name anywhere near your son’s paperwork, you are not obligated to write it. He forfeited that privilege when he forfeited your safety.”
My eyes sting again.
“So if I leave it blank,” I say slowly, feeling my way through the thought, “that’s... okay? He’s not... lesser. For not having—”
“Sweetheart,” she cuts in gently. “Look at me.”
I do.
“Your boy is not lesser because a line on a paper is blank,” she says. “He will have a name, a home, a nest, a town full of people who adore him. That’s what matters. The rest is bureaucracy. Useful, sometimes. Not holy.”
Something in my chest eases.
“And the Alpha of Record?” I ask, voice quiet. “If I write someone there... what does that mean in practice?”
“It means the state recognizes that alpha as having your permission to act on your child’s behalf when you’re not able,” she says. “Doctor’s appointments. Parent-teacher meetings. Kicking down doors at hospitals when a nurse says ‘family only.’ It also means—if they’re decent—that they step up. Pack-wise. Financially, emotionally. Again, within limits. They don’t get to override you. You are the parent. They are the backup. The pack.”
She glances past me, to where Caleb stands near the dresser, hands loose at his sides, shoulders tense, expression open and terrifyingly vulnerable.
“No one here is interested in chaining you, Liam,” she says softly. “Only in backing you up. But you don’t have to decide right this second. You just did a very big thing.”
I look at the baby.
His eyelashes are ridiculously long for someone that small. His tiny fingers twitch in his sleep, grabbing at nothing. His little mouth opens in a yawn he’s too sleepy to finish.
My heart almost gives out.
I know what it felt like to have someone else’s name trap me.
I know exactly how contracts can be weaponized—leveraged to keep you in a penthouse with no keys, to decide what you eat and who you see because “the pack invested in you, Liam.”
I’m not doing that again.
But I also know what it felt like last night when the lights went out and the storm howled and Caleb’s hands were the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
I know what it feels like right now, with the baby between us and Caleb hovering three feet away like a tether, making sure he’s close enough to catch me if I slip and far enough I don’t feel crowded.
I glance up.
Caleb’s eyes are on me. On us. His jaw is tight, but not with expectation—just with the effort of not speaking, not stepping in, not saying, Pick me. I’ll be good, I swear.
“Caleb,” I say.
He straightens slightly. “Yeah?”
“Do you... want to be on there?” I ask, the question landing between us like a live wire. “As his alpha?”
His throat works. His scent surges, then reins itself back.
“I want whatever doesn’t make you flinch when you look at it,” he says carefully. “If that’s my name, great. If it’s a blank space, also great. If it’s a feral goose you adopt next spring, I’ll learn to speak honk. I’m not going anywhere either way.”
A laugh escapes me, half-strangled. My eyes burn.
“Why a goose,” I mutter.
“Have you met them?” he says. “Pure alpha energy.”
Mara snorts.
“Let me put it this way,” he continues, voice going softer again. “I already signed up. In here.” He taps his chest lightly. “Last night. Before there was ever paper. Whatever you write down now is just catching the system up.”
The baby stirs at the motion, scrunches his face, lets out a tiny complaint. I instinctively rock him a little, murmuring nonsense.
“This is my choice,” I say, barely more than a breath. To Mara. To Caleb. To the baby. To myself.
“Then make it,” Mara says gently, sliding a pen onto the quilt beside me and setting the form on the little folding table we dragged over to act as a nightstand.
It takes me a minute to get there.
Mara helps ease the baby into the bassinet next to the bed, swaddled snug, hat still on. He makes an indignant squeak at being moved, then settles when my hand rests on his chest through the blanket. Caleb fusses with the angle of the bassinet until it’s exactly where I can see inside without sitting up.
Then I swing my legs slowly over the side of the nest and stand. The room tilts for a second. Caleb’s hand is on my elbow instantly, not gripping, just steady. My scent flares; his wraps around it, anchoring.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
“I know,” I say. And I do. That’s the weirdest, most terrifying part.
We shuffle to the kitchen table like two very old men.
The table is small and scarred, by the window. Someone—Caleb, probably—cleared it of its usual junk and set out a glass of water, a folded dish towel, and a bowl of something that smells like oatmeal and honey. The fairy lights from the bedroom spill a soft glow into the kitchen. Outside, Hollyridge is buried in fresh snow, Main Street a white ribbon under the still-falling flakes.
Mara sits across from me, sliding the form between us. Caleb hovers a respectful step back, leaning against the counter, arms loose at his sides rather than crossed.
I sit down gingerly, grateful for the chair’s solid back. Every muscle complains. My body feels alien and familiar at the same time. There’s a strange emptiness low in my belly where a week ago there was kicking. The ache there is a reminder that emptiness is not the same as loss.
The pup is down the hall, snuffling. He’s not inside me anymore. He’s... here.
Mara taps the top of the form.
“All right,” she says. “First things first. His name.”
Right. That.
Caleb and I had thrown around possibilities half-jokingly in the weeks leading up, but nothing ever stuck. It always felt... theoretical. Safe to speculate when the person attached to the syllables couldn’t frown at us yet.
Now that he exists, the idea of giving him a bad name feels like a crime.
“I don’t—” I start, then stop.
My mind flashes back to last night, to the clock on the wall when Mara finally shouted, “One more, Liam!” It had been just after midnight. Church bells in the distance, muffled by the storm.
Christmas Eve.
“It feels cheesy,” I say slowly, “but... what about Noel?”
I expect Caleb to snort. He doesn’t.
His face goes soft.
“It fits,” he says immediately. “He’s our Christmas storm miracle. Noel Vale...” He rolls the syllables. “Noel Hart-Vale, if he wants to be fancy.”
I swallow.
“Noel,” I repeat, tasting it. It feels... right. Round. Soft. Strong in the middle, like it knows where it belongs.
Mara smiles. “Noel it is,” she says, and writes it in the appropriate box in her neat, looping handwriting.
Then she taps the next section: Father.
The space stares up at me, a single line waiting to divide my life into before and after.
My hand trembles when I pick up the pen.
For a second, I see Greyson’s name in my mind’s eye. The way he’d written it on every contract, every document that tied me tighter to his pack. The way he’d said, “You’re safest when I’m in charge. You don’t want the responsibility, Liam. Let me handle it.”
I remember signing things without reading them, because he frowned when I tried.
Never again.
I press the pen tip to the paper.
The urge to fill the space—to not leave it blank, to not leave anything open-ended—is strong. Conditioning, maybe. The belief that an empty line is a problem to be solved, not a door to stay open.
I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. The way Caleb counted me through the worst of it.
He’s in the other room, making small complaining noises as he adjusts Noel’s hat. His scent reaches me even here, a faint trail of smoke and spruce.
“Noel doesn’t belong to him,” I say aloud, softly, because hearing it helps. “He never did.”
Then, deliberately, I leave the line blank.
My heart hammers as I move on.
Mara doesn’t rush me. She just watches, eyes warm.
The next section is for me. Parent. I write my name there—Liam Vale—in slow, careful letters, like I’m learning to spell it for the first time. Daughter of Maggie Vale. Former property of no one.
My hand steadies as I write.
Then, farther down, there it is.
Alpha of Record.
I stare at the empty line.
Caleb shifts across the room. I can feel his gaze on me, feel his scent hover and hold back like it doesn't want to crowd the ink.
“This is my choice,” I say again, louder this time.
“Yeah,” Caleb says quietly. “It is.”
The pen feels heavier in my hand.
I think about last night. About the way he wrapped around me in the nest, counted my breaths, held my leg and my hand and the entire world together. The way he kissed my forehead and the top of Noel’s head and whispered a promise he didn’t know I heard.
I think about the sheriff at the highway exit who pulled Cole over and told him, calm and lethal, that Hollyridge law trumped pack contracts.
I think about the boy at the creek, seventeen and terrified of his own potential to crush, walking away because he thought distance was safer than staying and learning how not to.
He’s not that boy now. I’m not that boy now either.
“We choose him,” I whisper, not sure if I’m talking to myself, to Noel, or to the memory of all the choices I didn’t get to make before.
The pen touches down.
C
a
l
e
b
H
a
r
t
My hand shakes a little by the end, but my chest feels fierce. Hot. Right.
I set the pen down with a small, decisive click.
“I want this noted as voluntary, not automatic,” I say, surprising myself with how steady my voice sounds. “Somewhere. That I had options. That I picked him.”
Mara’s smile widens. “I’ll add an addendum,” she says. “I like addendums. Bureaucrats hate them.”
She makes a note in the margin in tiny, precise script: Alpha of Record designated by omega parent’s informed, voluntary consent; biological father not listed at parent’s express request.
Looking at the words makes something inside me unclench.
“That’s that, then,” she says, sliding the form back into the folder. “Welcome to the world, Noel Vale, citizen of Hollyridge, heir to more casserole recipes than he’ll know what to do with.”
Emotion chokes me. I nod, unable to speak.
Caleb moves then, crossing the small space between us.
He doesn’t reach for me. He just rests his hand on the back of my chair, his fingers near my shoulder, his presence a steady line at my side.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“For what?” I manage.
“For trusting me with him,” he says. “With you. For letting me be on that line. I know what it means. I won’t ever take it lightly.”
“Good,” I say. “I’ll revoke you if you’re terrible.”
His laugh is wet and shaky. “Fair,” he says.
Mara stands, stretching her back until it pops. “All right, boys,” she says. “I’m going to go let Ruthie and the Temples in before they start a coup downstairs. Remember: rest, fluids, no heroics. Call if anything scares you. That includes paperwork.”
She pats my shoulder on the way by, squeezes Caleb’s arm, and disappears out the door in a swirl of chamomile and cold air.
For a moment, the apartment is quiet again.
Then the dam breaks.
The next few hours are a slow, chaotic tide of people and casseroles.
Ruthie is first, of course. She sweeps in with a massive glass dish wrapped in a towel and a mobile made of paper snowflakes she swears she didn’t stay up all night cutting.
“Oh, look at you,” she coos, leaning over the bassinet. “You did it, honey.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or Noel. Probably both.
Behind her, Evan and Mae shuffle in, cheeks red, hats pulled low. Evan carries a secondhand rocker, carefully refinished, while Mae clutches a bag bulging with knit hats in colors so bright they should be illegal.
“We thought you might need somewhere to collapse that isn’t the sheriff,” Mae says, nodding at the rocker.
“Rude,” Caleb mutters.
“Accurate,” I say, grinning despite the ache.
Nora “just happens” to swing by on her lunch break, which is interesting, since she told us earlier she didn’t actually get one during storms.
“Official wellness check,” she says, already washing her hands at the kitchen sink. “New citizen, possible hazard to public sanity due to excessive cuteness. Needed to verify.”
She hovers by the bassinet until I sigh and pat the edge of the nest.
“Come on,” I say. “You can hold him.”
“Only if you’re sure,” she says, demeanor instantly serious.
“I’m sure,” I say. “You and your terrible cookies can be his Beta aunt.”
Her face softens in a way I’ve never seen. “Deal,” she says, and lifts Noel with the kind of care she usually reserves for bomb threats.
The room fills up with talk and laughter and the clink of dishes. Someone finds the radio and puts on low carols. Snowlight glows at the windows. The air smells like rosemary and cheese and cocoa and all the familiar scents of Hollyridge layered over the new, potent one of baby and nest.
I nod, and she leans in to peer at the baby first.
She doesn’t grab, doesn’t lift. She just sets two fingers gently against his back, feeling his breathing, then strokes the side of his head, tipping the hat up just enough to glimpse the hairline.
“Good tone,” she murmurs, half to herself. “Color’s nice now. He’s settled. How’s feeding?”
Heat rushes to my face. “Um. I mean. He... latched. A few times. We’re figuring it out.”
“Good,” she says, like we’re talking about carpentry, not my chest. “We’ll check again in a few hours. For now he looks happy enough.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine, sharp and kind all at once.
“And how about you?” she asks. “Head to toe.”
“I’m okay,” I say automatically.
She lifts one eyebrow. Caleb snorts softly behind her.
“Try again,” she says.
I sigh. “Tired,” I repeat. “Sore. Back hurts. Everything feels... stretched.”
“That would be because it is,” she says. “You just did a very big thing in a small amount of space. Let me check your vitals and then I’ll get out of your hair and let the casserole brigade in.”
She does a quick, efficient exam. Blood pressure, temperature, a few questions that make me blush and answer in monosyllables. No graphic details, no pain I can’t handle. Her hands are warm and sure.
When she’s done, she nods, satisfied.
“You’re both in good shape,” she pronounces. “Rest. Eat. Don’t try to be a hero and do laundry. If you feel dizzy or if your pain gets dramatically worse instead of slowly better, you call me. Otherwise, your main job is cuddles.”
“I can do cuddles,” I say, looking down at the pup. My throat tightens again. “Cuddles I like.”
“Good,” she says.
Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a manila folder.
“And now,” she says, “we do the least romantic part of this, so you can get back to the miraculous bit.”
Caleb’s scent shifts, sharpens. My stomach tugs.
Paperwork.
“Birth certificate,” Mara says, opening the folder. “State form, pack attachment, alpha-of-record declaration. We don’t have to fill it all out right now, but I like my parents to see their options while they’re still surrounded by blankets and endorphins instead of in some fluorescent office in a week.”
“Options?” I repeat, pulse spiking.
She nods.
“I promised you from the start there’d be choices,” she says. “That hasn’t changed. So. Officially, there’s a box for ‘Father.’ You can put a name in it, or not. If you do, that comes with certain legal ties—inheritance, visitation rights, obligations. If you don’t, your boy is still perfectly legitimate. It just means the state doesn’t have a man on file in that slot.”
Greyson’s voice echoes in my head: when we’ve signed, you’re mine. When the ink’s dry, you can’t run. A contract is safety, Liam.
My stomach flips.
Mara continues, unruffled.
“Now, because this is an Omegaverse town and we’ve finally dragged the law into the century we actually live in, there’s also a section for ‘Alpha of Record,’” she says, tapping another line with her finger. “That’s a guardian designation. It says, ‘If I can’t make decisions for my child, this alpha can, within limits.’ It gives them pack rights—visitation in medical settings, housing protections, so on. It does not give them ownership over you. Ever.”
Her eyes hold mine, making sure that lands.
“You can designate someone other than the biological father,” she goes on. “You can designate no one at all. You can designate yourself as sole guardian and leave the alpha line blank. You can change your mind later with paperwork and a cranky clerk. None of this is shackles, Liam. It’s tools.”
I swallow.
My hand curls protectively over the baby’s back.
“What about...” I have to force the words out. “What happens if I put Greyson’s name in the father box? Does he get a say? Can he... use that?”
Mara’s expression goes flinty in a way that makes me very glad she’s on my side.
“He could try,” she says. “He’d have to go through Hollyridge courts to do it. And I have it on good authority our sheriff and his favorite Beta have already stacked a neat little pile of harassment reports and voluntary separation documents in that file.”
“Understatement,” Caleb mutters behind her. His scent sharpens at the name—smoke and sugar with an edge like flint.
“But,” Mara says, “if you don’t want his name anywhere near your son’s paperwork, you are not obligated to write it. He forfeited that privilege when he forfeited your safety.”
My eyes sting again.
“So if I leave it blank,” I say slowly, feeling my way through the thought, “that’s... okay? He’s not... lesser. For not having—”
“Sweetheart,” she cuts in gently. “Look at me.”
I do.
“Your boy is not lesser because a line on a paper is blank,” she says. “He will have a name, a home, a nest, a town full of people who adore him. That’s what matters. The rest is bureaucracy. Useful, sometimes. Not holy.”
Something in my chest eases.
“And the Alpha of Record?” I ask, voice quiet. “If I write someone there... what does that mean in practice?”
“It means the state recognizes that alpha as having your permission to act on your child’s behalf when you’re not able,” she says. “Doctor’s appointments. Parent-teacher meetings. Kicking down doors at hospitals when a nurse says ‘family only.’ It also means—if they’re decent—that they step up. Pack-wise. Financially, emotionally. Again, within limits. They don’t get to override you. You are the parent. They are the backup. The pack.”
She glances past me, to where Caleb stands near the dresser, hands loose at his sides, shoulders tense, expression open and terrifyingly vulnerable.
“No one here is interested in chaining you, Liam,” she says softly. “Only in backing you up. But you don’t have to decide right this second. You just did a very big thing.”
I look at the baby.
His eyelashes are ridiculously long for someone that small. His tiny fingers twitch in his sleep, grabbing at nothing. His little mouth opens in a yawn he’s too sleepy to finish.
My heart almost gives out.
I know what it felt like to have someone else’s name trap me.
I know exactly how contracts can be weaponized—leveraged to keep you in a penthouse with no keys, to decide what you eat and who you see because “the pack invested in you, Liam.”
I’m not doing that again.
But I also know what it felt like last night when the lights went out and the storm howled and Caleb’s hands were the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
I know what it feels like right now, with the baby between us and Caleb hovering three feet away like a tether, making sure he’s close enough to catch me if I slip and far enough I don’t feel crowded.
I glance up.
Caleb’s eyes are on me. On us. His jaw is tight, but not with expectation—just with the effort of not speaking, not stepping in, not saying, Pick me. I’ll be good, I swear.
“Caleb,” I say.
He straightens slightly. “Yeah?”
“Do you... want to be on there?” I ask, the question landing between us like a live wire. “As his alpha?”
His throat works. His scent surges, then reins itself back.
“I want whatever doesn’t make you flinch when you look at it,” he says carefully. “If that’s my name, great. If it’s a blank space, also great. If it’s a feral goose you adopt next spring, I’ll learn to speak honk. I’m not going anywhere either way.”
A laugh escapes me, half-strangled. My eyes burn.
“Why a goose,” I mutter.
“Have you met them?” he says. “Pure alpha energy.”
Mara snorts.
“Let me put it this way,” he continues, voice going softer again. “I already signed up. In here.” He taps his chest lightly. “Last night. Before there was ever paper. Whatever you write down now is just catching the system up.”
The baby stirs at the motion, scrunches his face, lets out a tiny complaint. I instinctively rock him a little, murmuring nonsense.
“This is my choice,” I say, barely more than a breath. To Mara. To Caleb. To the baby. To myself.
“Then make it,” Mara says gently, sliding a pen onto the quilt beside me and setting the form on the little folding table we dragged over to act as a nightstand.
It takes me a minute to get there.
Mara helps ease the baby into the bassinet next to the bed, swaddled snug, hat still on. He makes an indignant squeak at being moved, then settles when my hand rests on his chest through the blanket. Caleb fusses with the angle of the bassinet until it’s exactly where I can see inside without sitting up.
Then I swing my legs slowly over the side of the nest and stand. The room tilts for a second. Caleb’s hand is on my elbow instantly, not gripping, just steady. My scent flares; his wraps around it, anchoring.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
“I know,” I say. And I do. That’s the weirdest, most terrifying part.
We shuffle to the kitchen table like two very old men.
The table is small and scarred, by the window. Someone—Caleb, probably—cleared it of its usual junk and set out a glass of water, a folded dish towel, and a bowl of something that smells like oatmeal and honey. The fairy lights from the bedroom spill a soft glow into the kitchen. Outside, Hollyridge is buried in fresh snow, Main Street a white ribbon under the still-falling flakes.
Mara sits across from me, sliding the form between us. Caleb hovers a respectful step back, leaning against the counter, arms loose at his sides rather than crossed.
I sit down gingerly, grateful for the chair’s solid back. Every muscle complains. My body feels alien and familiar at the same time. There’s a strange emptiness low in my belly where a week ago there was kicking. The ache there is a reminder that emptiness is not the same as loss.
The pup is down the hall, snuffling. He’s not inside me anymore. He’s... here.
Mara taps the top of the form.
“All right,” she says. “First things first. His name.”
Right. That.
Caleb and I had thrown around possibilities half-jokingly in the weeks leading up, but nothing ever stuck. It always felt... theoretical. Safe to speculate when the person attached to the syllables couldn’t frown at us yet.
Now that he exists, the idea of giving him a bad name feels like a crime.
“I don’t—” I start, then stop.
My mind flashes back to last night, to the clock on the wall when Mara finally shouted, “One more, Liam!” It had been just after midnight. Church bells in the distance, muffled by the storm.
Christmas Eve.
“It feels cheesy,” I say slowly, “but... what about Noel?”
I expect Caleb to snort. He doesn’t.
His face goes soft.
“It fits,” he says immediately. “He’s our Christmas storm miracle. Noel Vale...” He rolls the syllables. “Noel Hart-Vale, if he wants to be fancy.”
I swallow.
“Noel,” I repeat, tasting it. It feels... right. Round. Soft. Strong in the middle, like it knows where it belongs.
Mara smiles. “Noel it is,” she says, and writes it in the appropriate box in her neat, looping handwriting.
Then she taps the next section: Father.
The space stares up at me, a single line waiting to divide my life into before and after.
My hand trembles when I pick up the pen.
For a second, I see Greyson’s name in my mind’s eye. The way he’d written it on every contract, every document that tied me tighter to his pack. The way he’d said, “You’re safest when I’m in charge. You don’t want the responsibility, Liam. Let me handle it.”
I remember signing things without reading them, because he frowned when I tried.
Never again.
I press the pen tip to the paper.
The urge to fill the space—to not leave it blank, to not leave anything open-ended—is strong. Conditioning, maybe. The belief that an empty line is a problem to be solved, not a door to stay open.
I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. The way Caleb counted me through the worst of it.
He’s in the other room, making small complaining noises as he adjusts Noel’s hat. His scent reaches me even here, a faint trail of smoke and spruce.
“Noel doesn’t belong to him,” I say aloud, softly, because hearing it helps. “He never did.”
Then, deliberately, I leave the line blank.
My heart hammers as I move on.
Mara doesn’t rush me. She just watches, eyes warm.
The next section is for me. Parent. I write my name there—Liam Vale—in slow, careful letters, like I’m learning to spell it for the first time. Daughter of Maggie Vale. Former property of no one.
My hand steadies as I write.
Then, farther down, there it is.
Alpha of Record.
I stare at the empty line.
Caleb shifts across the room. I can feel his gaze on me, feel his scent hover and hold back like it doesn't want to crowd the ink.
“This is my choice,” I say again, louder this time.
“Yeah,” Caleb says quietly. “It is.”
The pen feels heavier in my hand.
I think about last night. About the way he wrapped around me in the nest, counted my breaths, held my leg and my hand and the entire world together. The way he kissed my forehead and the top of Noel’s head and whispered a promise he didn’t know I heard.
I think about the sheriff at the highway exit who pulled Cole over and told him, calm and lethal, that Hollyridge law trumped pack contracts.
I think about the boy at the creek, seventeen and terrified of his own potential to crush, walking away because he thought distance was safer than staying and learning how not to.
He’s not that boy now. I’m not that boy now either.
“We choose him,” I whisper, not sure if I’m talking to myself, to Noel, or to the memory of all the choices I didn’t get to make before.
The pen touches down.
C
a
l
e
b
H
a
r
t
My hand shakes a little by the end, but my chest feels fierce. Hot. Right.
I set the pen down with a small, decisive click.
“I want this noted as voluntary, not automatic,” I say, surprising myself with how steady my voice sounds. “Somewhere. That I had options. That I picked him.”
Mara’s smile widens. “I’ll add an addendum,” she says. “I like addendums. Bureaucrats hate them.”
She makes a note in the margin in tiny, precise script: Alpha of Record designated by omega parent’s informed, voluntary consent; biological father not listed at parent’s express request.
Looking at the words makes something inside me unclench.
“That’s that, then,” she says, sliding the form back into the folder. “Welcome to the world, Noel Vale, citizen of Hollyridge, heir to more casserole recipes than he’ll know what to do with.”
Emotion chokes me. I nod, unable to speak.
Caleb moves then, crossing the small space between us.
He doesn’t reach for me. He just rests his hand on the back of my chair, his fingers near my shoulder, his presence a steady line at my side.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“For what?” I manage.
“For trusting me with him,” he says. “With you. For letting me be on that line. I know what it means. I won’t ever take it lightly.”
“Good,” I say. “I’ll revoke you if you’re terrible.”
His laugh is wet and shaky. “Fair,” he says.
Mara stands, stretching her back until it pops. “All right, boys,” she says. “I’m going to go let Ruthie and the Temples in before they start a coup downstairs. Remember: rest, fluids, no heroics. Call if anything scares you. That includes paperwork.”
She pats my shoulder on the way by, squeezes Caleb’s arm, and disappears out the door in a swirl of chamomile and cold air.
For a moment, the apartment is quiet again.
Then the dam breaks.
The next few hours are a slow, chaotic tide of people and casseroles.
Ruthie is first, of course. She sweeps in with a massive glass dish wrapped in a towel and a mobile made of paper snowflakes she swears she didn’t stay up all night cutting.
“Oh, look at you,” she coos, leaning over the bassinet. “You did it, honey.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or Noel. Probably both.
Behind her, Evan and Mae shuffle in, cheeks red, hats pulled low. Evan carries a secondhand rocker, carefully refinished, while Mae clutches a bag bulging with knit hats in colors so bright they should be illegal.
“We thought you might need somewhere to collapse that isn’t the sheriff,” Mae says, nodding at the rocker.
“Rude,” Caleb mutters.
“Accurate,” I say, grinning despite the ache.
Nora “just happens” to swing by on her lunch break, which is interesting, since she told us earlier she didn’t actually get one during storms.
“Official wellness check,” she says, already washing her hands at the kitchen sink. “New citizen, possible hazard to public sanity due to excessive cuteness. Needed to verify.”
She hovers by the bassinet until I sigh and pat the edge of the nest.
“Come on,” I say. “You can hold him.”
“Only if you’re sure,” she says, demeanor instantly serious.
“I’m sure,” I say. “You and your terrible cookies can be his Beta aunt.”
Her face softens in a way I’ve never seen. “Deal,” she says, and lifts Noel with the kind of care she usually reserves for bomb threats.
The room fills up with talk and laughter and the clink of dishes. Someone finds the radio and puts on low carols. Snowlight glows at the windows. The air smells like rosemary and cheese and cocoa and all the familiar scents of Hollyridge layered over the new, potent one of baby and nest.
