There is no way this child is Bay. She’s huge. The backs of her hands have dimples and her legs are chunky and plump. There is not one crease in her arm when she bends her elbow, but several. She is fat and healthy and so much bigger than the newborn I left behind. I hadn’t realized she would change this much, so quickly. I wonder, briefly, if it’s even her, but then she turns her face toward me and I’m looking into Indie’s eyes. A lump forms in my throat.

“Hi, Bay,” I say, crouching beside her.

Her face changes, uncertain, and she begins to cry. The caretaker lifts her, and she turns into the woman’s chest, wailing.

She doesn’t recognize me. She has no clue who I am. Of course she doesn’t. She’s so young, and the moons I’ve been gone have been a lifetime to her. The woman bounces the baby lightly in her arms until the crying turns to whimpering, then happy cooing.

“You’ve gotten so big,” I tell her. She risks another glance my way, eyes wide. “I’m not leaving you again. We’re joined. I’m the delta and you’re the bay, remember? I lead to you.” I reach out a pinkie, and Bay takes it cautiously, her tiny fingers wrapping around mine. They are still so small, yet so much larger than the last time she took my hand like this.

“Do you want to try again?” the woman asks, glancing at my arms. I nod, and she passes Bay to me. She squirms a little, whimpers lightly. But I bob her in my arms and sing the lullaby I sang when we traveled the wastes together days after her birth. She quiets, transfixed, her wide eyes staring up at me. When I finish singing, she smiles, and I feel something crack open in my heart—a crack that isn’t damaging, but life-giving. Like something is emerging from a shell, being born.

Her little smile fills me with purpose, and I know that if she had smiled like this as a newborn—if she’d been able to—I never would have said half the things I did. I never would have said anything. I would have melted into a puddle in the dirt, turned useless by this small human. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way: to be willing to give anything for someone else, to love someone so deeply even when they know nothing about love. It’s different from the way I love Asher, the way I loved my mother or my pack. It’s a bit like how I loved Indie, but even that was different.

This is . . .

I suck my lip to keep from crying.

I understand, finally, why mothers put up with it all. Why they give so much of themselves.

I will do anything for Bay.