Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance, стр. 43
Reine shook her head as she walked away, thinking the stress of losing her pack so shortly after being claimed into this one must be affecting Ziva's thinking. Why else would her only thoughts after everyone she'd ever known had been killed be about Thomas losing Alpha?
Grief affects everyone differently, she thought with a sigh. She didn't know Ziva very well yet, since she'd only recently been claimed, but surely it must be grief, and her fully human blood, making her act so oddly.
The pack had only recently gotten back into some semblance of order after adjusting to the Alpha outcome, and cleaning up after the human's attack, before Ziva and Thomas announced that Ziva was with cub.
Reine's memories flashed to a celebration feast thrown for the pack to blow off some much needed steam. No one cared that the cub was half-human, since most of the pack's cubs were so. The pack rejoiced and celebrated their newest, unborn member with abandon.
The pack was overjoyed, using the feast to not only celebrate new life in the announcement of Thomas and Ziva's upcoming cub, but also to honor and celebrate their new Alpha, and using the feast as a chance to morn those they had known from the adjoining land.
Everyone partook but Ziva.
Ziva wasn't thrilled to be carrying another baby, since this cub would not hold the honor of being the Alpha's cub. She also felt that her own cub news was more of an afterthought, tacked on to honoring Reine and mourning the adjacent pack.
Ziva felt like Reine had stolen her thunder, somehow, yet again.
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Emma continued to 'see,' through Reine's eyes, how Ziva slowly started to break apart, bit by bit.
Ziva was full and ripe with Galen when Reine announced that she was also with cub.
Reine was thrilled beyond belief to be carrying Henry's baby. She 'saw' immediately that she was carrying a girl, and that her name would be Emma.
Emma, still unconscious, felt Reine's joy in carrying her before she had been born. She somehow knew she was experiencing all of her mother's memories while wounded badly from her gunshots, but she couldn't feel that pain here. Here, sharing her mother's memories, she only felt joy and love as Reine conveyed to her how much she had wanted and loved Emma from the very moment she'd known of her existence.
Ziva, though, was not happy at all.
Ziva had already lost a lot of herself when she was raped by some unknown mist-man shifter and left carrying Elam, but Reine hadn't known any of that when she and Ziva were both pregnant together.
Ziva also lost a bit more of what little sanity she had left once her clean start as an Alpha's wife had been dashed when Reine became Alpha instead of Thomas, and now Reine's cub would hold the prestigious spot in the pack that her and Thomas's cub, in her opinion, had been destined to have. All of that, plus pregnancy hormones again, so soon after carrying what she'd considered a 'Devil's spawn,' only sped up Ziva's crazy.
One day, Reine was coming back from an unsuccessful hunt, and had taken a moment in the bushes just off a well-used path to throw up.
Reine was still bent over, her first trimester hormones making her throw up daily, when Ziva stopped near her on the path.
"Morning sickness is a bitch, is it not?" Reine asked as she stood up, trying to use the moment to bond some with Ziva, her brother's mate.
"How the hell would you know? Your wolf blood protects you from most of it. I threw up way more often than you do." Ziva said, as Reine straightened up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Ziva, look. I'm not sure how it is that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but you are my brother's forever mate. We are about the same age, newly mated, and both carrying our first cubs. Surely we can start over, become friends. If there was anything I did to make you dislike me, I do wish you would tell me. I'm sure I meant no harm."
"Our first cubs? Right. Our first cubs."
"Are you all right?"
"How did you manage to beat Thomas in the challenge?"
"I'm sorry?"
"It has never happened before, ever, in our history. You had to have had help. Did the mist-man come to you? Is it his child you carry? Or are you one of his children? That would explain everything, wouldn't it?"
"Ziva, what are you talking about? Are you feeling all right? Let me take you back to your den."
Reine reached out, taking Ziva's elbow and aiming her toward the pack.
In a quick flash of movement, Ziva pulled a knife out from some pocket of her skirts and managed to cut Reine across her forearm before Reine could react.
Ziva's knife was aimed at Reine's midsection, with Ziva thrusting and stabbing the air in front of Reine. Ziva was off balance and bulky from being heavy with child herself, and trying to plunge the knife into Reine's stomach.
With a loud growl Reine shifted into her wolf form and threw herself at Ziva, knocking her down into the bushes, pinning her there with her wounded forepaw, and growling and snapping her jaws just millimeters from Ziva's face.
Her brother's pregnant mate or not, no one was allowed to treat Reine that way. If Ziva had been a wolf, Reine would have torn her throat to shreds, and no one, not even her brother, would have been able to say anything about it.
But Ziva was human, and pregnant, and brand new to this pack. She'd also recently lost everyone she'd ever known, and was surging with hormones.
Reine decided she would spare Ziva's life, this time, but wanted to teach her a lesson so that Ziva learned exactly how her new pack's Alpha would be treated.
Reine shifted her