I came home from a Delta deployment to find my wife in the ICU. Her face… I couldn’t recognize her. The doctor whispered, “Thirty-one fractures. Blunt force trauma. Repeated strikes.” Then I saw them outside her room—her father and his seven sons—smiling like they’d just won something. The detective said, “It’s a family matter. The police can’t touch them.” I looked at the hammer print on her skull and replied, “Good. Because I’m not the police.” “What happened to them… no court could ever judge.”

I peered through the living room window. They were there—the remaining Wolf Pack. Victor, Dominic, Evan, Felix, Grant, Ian, Kyle. They looked exhausted, arguing.

Then, a man in a white lab coat walked into the room. Dr. Sterling. The chief of surgery at St. Jude’s. Why was he here?

I pressed my ear against the glass.

“Complications?” Sterling was saying. “But she is stable for now.”

“And the extraction?” Victor asked. “Successful?”

Sterling nodded. “The C-section was performed immediately upon arrival. The trauma induced labor, but the fetus was viable. Thirty-two weeks, not eight. The report Eleanor saw was old. She was much further along than she told anyone.”

My knees hit the grass. Thirty-two weeks. Eight months. She had been hiding it, wearing loose clothes, protecting him.

“And the child?” Victor asked.

“He is in the neonatal incubator in the basement,” Sterling said. “Healthy. Strong lungs.”