by V. K. Ludwig
Clan of the Woodlands
The Chieftain
V. K. Ludwig
Copyright © 2019 by V. K. Ludwig
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictional. Any similarities to real people or organizations are coincidental and not intended by the author.
For Rowan.
Thank god you’re fictional, or I might divorce my husband.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Coming soon…
The Jerk
The Jerk
The Jerk
Chapter 1
The Woodlands
Rowan
“I hate that I gotta do this to you babygirl,” I said, pulling the thermometer out of its case. “But you’re not leaving me another choice here.”
I dipped the end into the petroleum jelly, my hands way too shaky for this questionable twenty-first-century procedure. My stomach convulsed. This child-rearing shit is cruel.
“The baby books made it pretty clear,” I said, and wrapped my shaky hand around her dimpled feet. “You’re supposed to have four to five dirty diapers a day, so don’t give me that look.”
The moment I pulled up her legs, Rose scrunched up her nose and let out a single scream in warning. She flung her head from side to side, the towel underneath bunching up against her neck.
“Shit, I can’t do this.”
I sunk down and kneeled beside my bed, one hand placed onto her chest so she wouldn’t roll off the bed.
The thermometer let out a beep when I flung it onto my pillow, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Autumn! Autuuumn!”
Seven excruciating seconds later, my sister stormed into my room and stared at me with a raised brow. Her eyes wandered to the baby books atop my camo comforter.
Between those, the bottles, the jumpers, the rompers, the stack of cloth diapers and… yeah, it looked like a baby store had vomited all over my room.
“What the fuck, Rowan!” she said, and rammed her palms into her waist. “With all your screaming I thought you dropped her on the head or something.”
“Oh, it’s far worse than that,” I said, the defeat in my voice making me sound like a stranger to myself. “Rose didn’t poo today and some of the books suggested I should… you know… try rectal stimulation.”
Her brows furrowed and her pupils jumped from one book cover to the next. I had them all. The First Year. The First Twenty-Words. The First Nursery Rhymes.
I pointed to my favorite one. “The Daddy Does It Best suggested a thermometer.”
Autumn walked over to the bed, grabbed the thermometer and held it under my nose. “Are you telling me you are planning to shove a thermometer up her bum?”
Her question dropped fifty-pounds of gravel onto my shoulders. Thermometer up her bum. Yeah, the way she worded it made it sound even worse.
“Shit, I told you I suck at this,” I said, sinking my face into my palm. “I know nothing about babies. Fuck. I don’t even get how I managed to keep her alive for a week.”
Autumn let out a sigh and grabbed a fresh cloth diaper from behind the empty baby bottles on my nightstand. Her hands skillfully shoved the fabric underneath Rose, pulled the velcro straps across the front and fumbled her tiny legs back into her white pants with the orange fox print.
It took my sister fifty seconds to do something I needed twenty minutes for. My temples throbbed against my palms like Morse Code. The message? You suck, Rowan!
“How many times does she wake you at night?” Autumn asked.
“She doesn’t.”
I pushed myself up and leaned over Rose, her chunky hands diving into my beard with uncoordinated movements. She grabbed a fistful of hair, slapped her other hand against my cheek and let out a happy coo.
“So, you’re saying she’s sleeping through the night?”
“Nope.” I let a silly sound vibrate through my lips and Rose gifted me one of her mesmerizing smiles. “She wakes up two to three times a night. She just doesn’t wake me, because I’m usually not even asleep.”
“Rowan, you can’t keep going like that.” She grabbed the baby books and stacked them in a neat pile on the floor beside the bed. “You’re overtired and stressed out, otherwise you wouldn’t come up with such a stupid idea just because she didn’t go yet today. You can sleep when she sleeps, you know.”
“What if I roll on top of her in my sleep? She’s barely an inch longer than my right foot. What if I don’t notice and squish her and —”
“Then get her a fucking crib already! What happened to all the baby stuff Darya hoarded?”
Nah, I sure as hell won’t touch that shit. “Co-sleeping is healthy,” I mumbled, the foul taste of self-doubt palpable in my voice. No matter how many baby books you read, there’s things they can’t teach you. A dozen chapters on constipation. Not a single one on how to love a baby that isn’t yours.
There was silence between us for a while, except for the coos and the gurgling coming from Rose. She didn’t mind the silence. Neither did she mind the awkwardness… or the turmoil that gnawed on my bones and sucked the marrow right out of them.
I said I would take care of this baby. Darya’s baby. But fuck it was hard! Each day she looked more like her mom. Each day she looked nothing like me. Of course she didn’t.
“Maybe you should take her,” I said.
For a moment, my words relieved my shoulders of ten pounds worth of sorrows. No more night-time feedings. No more bottle washing. No more nausea-inducing diaper changes at zero-two-fucking-darkness. No more living proof of betrayal.
No more Rose spending tummy-time on my chest…
The ten pounds of sorrows returned, crashing down on me once more.
“I think you two are doing just fine,” Autumn said. “How about you show me that thing you talked about at breakfast?”
“Nah, it’s just a silly thing, and she doesn’t always do it.”
Autumn gave me a shove against the shoulder. “Come on. I wanna see it.”
After I freed my beard from Rose’s clasp, I took her chunky arm into my hand and lead it toward my mouth.
“Who’s gonna eat the baby?” I asked in a deep, goofy voice.
I scratched my beard across her open palm and let my teeth gently run along her arm saying, “Nom, nom, nom.”
Her mouth fell into a wide grin, and a hint of a squeal took root at the back of her throat. It turned into a wet gurgle, her eyes sparkling bright. The cuteness emanating from this tiny body made my heart pump faster, turning the blood inside my veins into a liquid kind of joy.
Autumn laughed and pressed a kiss onto Rose’s forehead. “And you think you suck at this? Look at her, Rowan! She thinks you’re hilarious.”
“I’m just the loser she got stuck with.” I pushed myself up from the mattress, scooped
up Rose and handed her over to not-really-her-aunt. “Hold her for a sec. I haven’t had the chance to change using two hands ever since she came here.”
Walking over to the closet, I pulled the milk-stained and rancid-smelling shirt over my head and flung it halfway into the hamper. I grabbed a fresh one and put it on. Slowly and mindful. Has there ever been this much bliss in the full use of your arms?
Autumn got up and paced my room with Rose propped against her chest, the infant’s head plopping from side to side in a constant struggle to support her own head.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Autumn said, and pulled a strand of her red hair out of Rose’s fist. “Max and I think you’re doing fantastic with her. Rose couldn’t ask for a better fa… um…”
Her voice worked itself into a tangle, and she glanced over her shoulder with pleading eyes.
“The word you’re looking for is full-time nanny,” I said, struggling my face into what ought to be a humorous grimace. But my body rejected the sham, turning the muscles around my mouth into a sore and bitter snarl.
I wasn’t her father. Would never be dad nor daddy. Shit. Considering how much time I spent with her, chances were high she would call me da-da one day. God damnit. The thought of it alone let a hard freeze spiral down my spine. A child’s first word shouldn’t be a lie.
“Max told me you are avoiding him whenever he wants to discuss how to get Darya out of the Districts,” she said. “If we don’t start planning, we will miss a window of opportunity, Rowan.”
I stared into the darkness of my closet. Somewhere in there, all the way back where light never reached, leaned a box against a wall with a baby crib inside. I had pushed it into the blackest corner, along with the memories of my wife.
Wife. A word that held pride for every clansman. For me, those four letters now ripped my balls off and shoved them down my bleeding throat. She had disappeared on me without a word over a year ago — to get from the Districts what I failed to give her.
What she so desperately wanted now rooted her lips against my sister’s collarbone. She needed yet another bottle.
“I’m not avoiding him. Chieftains got shit to do.” I walked over to the dresser, grabbed a clean bottle and filled it halfway with boiled and bottled water. “You know Xavier will come down from the mountains so we can discuss the intel from the memory stick the councilwoman gave you.”
“You need to get her out of there.”
My chest constricted, but I kept on going.
Two and a half spoons of formula. Screw the nipple on. Put the cap on. Shake, shake, shake.
I plunged the bottle into the bottle warmer and shoved the plug into the outlet of the battery pack. The button clicked underneath my shaky fingertip. Nothing happened.
“Rowan, you have to get her back here.”
Something squeezed my chest a bit more, tugging the air out of my lungs like rusty metal chains. This fucking thing gave up on me.
I flipped the switch back and forth a few more times.
Nothing.
“Rowan…”
I wiggled the plug out of the outlet and punched it back in.
Fucking nothing.
“Rowan…”
I picked up the battery pack and crashed it back down onto the dresser.
Nothing.
“Rowan!”
“I don’t have to do shit!” I shouted, grabbing the god damn bottle and throwing it across the room. The glass shattered against the wall, and a mix of shards and milk came pouring down onto my bed. “She can rot in the Districts for all I care. I said I would take care of this baby and that’s what I’m doing. Whatever happens to Darya isn’t any of my god damn business, because this is a consequence of her actions. Hers. Not mine.”
Rose startled and threw her stiff hands up. An ear-blasting scream followed, and she gaped her mouth wide from a red face.
Autumn quickly grabbed the yellow blanket which hung draped over the backrest of my rocker, placed Rose on the floor and swaddled her with it.
“You need to get a grip,” she snarled, shoving Rose’s frantically moving arms deep into the soft fabric. “Were you drunk last night? Is that why you can’t keep it together today?”
“What?” I shouted, anger thickly coating my vocal cords. I had a grip. And I had it together. “That’s what you think of me? Too much of a drunk to take care of her? If that’s the case, apply for the job, because I fucking quit.”
“Rowan, you can’t —”
“Oh, watch me!” I grabbed my khaki field jacket and punched my fists into the sleeves. “Why does everybody think that I should be the one taking care of this baby? What is she to me?”
Autumn picked up Rose, now swaddled tightly and screaming at the top of her lungs, and hasted over to me. She swayed her arms from left to right, but it was of no use.
Rose squinted her eyes at the ceiling, tears welling down her chubby cheeks. Veins popped red underneath her smooth skin, each one making another hair along my neck stand on end.
It was her who didn’t have a grip now. She couldn’t keep it together anymore.
Because I shouted.
Because I drank.
Because I wasn’t good enough.
Because I couldn’t love her the way every baby deserved to be loved. I wasn’t her father. And I sure as hell wasn’t Marry fucking Poppins.
“I hate Darya for what she did to us. What she did to you,” Autumn said. “But none of this is Rose’s fault. Darya is still your legal wife, and that makes Rose your —”
“She is not my daughter.”
The way my jaw clenched made a shooting pain run down the roots of my molars. No, it wasn’t the baby’s fault. But it sure as hell wasn’t my fault either.
I gazed at Rose and the way she punched her fists against the blanket. Her flooded eyes stared right back at me, making me want to reach out for her. Making me want to get her out of that damn swaddle.
“I’m done with this shit. You keep her,” I said, and kicked my feet into my boots, not even bothering about the shoelaces.
I stomped toward the door. Between door and frame, I turned around once more. “Make sure you bring Darya back so I can have this child out of my house, but don’t expect me to be part of of the planning committee.”
The moment Autumn opened her mouth, I pulled the door shut behind me and made my way out of the cabin. Fresh snowflakes turned into a muddy mess underneath my soles, barely crunching as I walked up the incline.
Rose’s screams hollered from the cabin and into the woods, but that wasn’t my problem anymore. She might have been my child if things worked out differently. But they didn’t, and she wasn’t mine. And I hated her for it. Fucking hated that baby.
Bet her donor was some sort of genius with a stellar IQ. Better than me in all aspects. Not to mention that he was actually able to knock Darya up. Unlike me.
The screams wouldn’t go away and surrounded me like the clear winter air that turned my ears numb. Not numb enough though because the high-pitched shouts made my lungs still in my chest, as if I wanted to share in that child’s agony.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins and spiked my heart into a fast-paced ba-boom… ba-boom… ba-boom. Didn’t Autumn know she hated to be swaddled?
With no control over them, my legs hurried back down the incline, my heels slipping across and digging into the mud every other step.
I stomped into the cabin, dragging the mud right with me and slathering it across the hardwood floors.
“Where is she?”
Autumn stepped out of my room, a constant sh, sh, sh on her lips as she bounced Rose against her body.
“I can’t calm her down,” she said, her face distorted into a mix of desperation and anger.
“Give her to me.” I grabbed Rose from her with impatient hands and freed her arms from the blanket. “She hates to be swaddled. If she ever gets like this, there is only one thing that can calm her down.”
I pressed her chest agai
nst mine, taking in her sweet baby scent, like milk and fresh-baked butter cookies. She flung her frantic hands against me, one digging into the collar of my shirt, the other weaving into my beard.
“What are you going to do with her?” Autumn asked.
I zipped the jacket up around both of us, then I draped the yellow blanket over my front and tucked the ends underneath my arms. I put the white, oversized wool beanie on Rose’s head and stepped out the door.
“I’m taking her for a walk.” I placed a gentle kiss on her brown baby fluff and placed my hand behind her head in support. “She loves the trees.”
Chapter 2
The Districts
… 11 weeks later
Darya
I lay on the white table surrounded by four white chairs and four white walls, thinking about all the ways I might make myself bleed.
Biting myself wasn’t an option anymore ever since they put me in this tight, slippery rubber suit — all white of course. Nails trimmed back into the red and pink nail-bed, scratching myself until the skin broke was also out of question.
I pressed my chest against the sleek surface. No, I couldn’t let them fuck my mind. I wouldn’t! My fist came hammering down in complete silence, muffled into non-existence by whatever they had shoved into my ears.
I punched the table again. And again. Each time my balled hands made contact, the vibrations spread across my skin and dug into my lungs.
More. I needed more.
I tossed myself onto my back and stared at the white ceiling, throwing both hands up and letting them crash down like cannon balls.