A blue pearl that hadn’t been there before. A strangled gasp of shock left my throat, and Brock’s gaze hurried to follow my own.
The siren.
“Shit!” He cursed and pulled out his phone. “That damn siren is on our property. Do a perimeter search now,” he barked.
His bold orders about a siren had my head reeling. How did he know that a blue pearl was a siren’s calling card? And how did he know about my siren issue? Unless he had his own...
“What siren?” I mean, technically there could be more than one causing trouble.
He sighed. “Get in the truck.”
I did as he asked, and as soon as we were both inside the cabin, he hurried to lock the doors. “That deal that I said went bad the night we met, it was with a siren. One of a set of twins. Nasty women my father got involved with.”
Twins. He said twins.
I swallowed hard. “Calista?” As soon as I spoke her name, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know.
“How do you know her?” he asked, barreling toward his house. Wolves were bursting from the bushes, noses to the ground, scouting the property.
“She’s one of my recent bounty cases. I caught her and her sister, but then she broke out, so I’m on the hunt for her again. Cass is out looking for her now.”
He groaned. “That makes sense.”
We should have had this conversation a week ago! I wondered how forthcoming he’d be with information. “What deal did you have with her?”
He pulled up to his porch, where Sabine was waiting. Ray stood next to her with a shotgun in his hand.
“Let’s worry about this later. My boys are on it and we need to get you better.” His reply was obviously to keep from having to tell me about the deal. It was clear our newfound friendship didn’t run very deep.
I would have argued, but dammit he was right. I needed to know what the hell was wrong with me before I lost any more weight. Exiting the car, I crutched my way to the porch, where Ray exchanged a few brief words with his alpha before running off into the tree line.
Sabine ushered us over to a quiet area, while her eagle eyes scanned my body as if looking for visible injuries.
“What is it? Just tell me,” I blurted out anxiously.
Her eyes flicked to Brock and she sighed. “You’re pregnant, and from the rumors, I’m guessing the baby is his.”
The porch spun as her words slammed into me.
“Excuse me? That’s not possible,” I asked, finally managing to string words together.
Brock hadn’t said a word. He stood there, staring at my belly as if he expected to find some kind of evidence of what Sabine had said.
“So it’s his?” Sabine jotted some notes in her binder, as if what she was talking about wasn’t a big deal, a really huge fucking deal. Like, life-altering shit.
My arms crossed over my chest defiantly. “If I were pregnant, which I’m not, then yeah it’d be his. I’m not a whore.” Just a little bit of one, sometimes, last week in particular.
“A baby?” Brock seemed to have found his voice. A huge grin lit up his normally stoic face.
Fuck. He liked kids. Could he be any more perfect?
Sabine nodded. “Her HCG levels are high. Normally, you wouldn’t be able to breed with a witch or a dud, but with a fox shifter…” She let that sentence settle.
I was a fox shifter, and from the photo my dad had probably been a fox shifter too. Now it looked like I was pregnant with a werewolf’s baby.
Fuck. My. Life.
“Birth control,” I mumbled, unable to string my thoughts together better than that.
Sabine nodded. “Great stuff for human sperm, doesn’t work with most supernaturals.”
What? Oh my God. Why did my doctor never tell me that? She was a supe! Well, she did think I was human and I never mentioned my soft spot for the shifters. I also usually used a condom.
Breathe, just breathe.
“So our baby is hurting her?” Brock looked at me tenderly.
Our baby? My heart melted, even though I was pretty sure I was about to hyperventilate, have a nervous breakdown, or something. I was definitely losing my shit. What had happened to calm and collected, badass Evie?
Our baby. He said it so casually, like it wasn’t the craziest news he’d ever heard.
Sabine raised her eyebrows, no doubt as shocked as I was that the alpha was taking the news so well.
Did I even want a baby? I’d never stopped to think about it. I was only twenty-four and I led a wild life, chasing after bad creatures. A baby never factored into that picture.
“Yes,” Sabine confirmed. “I don’t think the fetus is compatible with her fox, so it’s robbing her of her resources. Feeding off her, if you will.”
Feeding. “Like a parasite?” I screeched. Yeah, I’d totally lost my cool.
The doctor nodded.
Everything started spinning faster then, and a black wall slammed into me with force, stealing the breath from me. As I lost consciousness, the last thing I remembered was falling into strong, waiting arms.
10 Oh, Baby
When I finally came to, I immediately realized I was back in Brock’s house. There was a certain feel to the place, one that reminded me of him. His earthy scent permeated every surface.
Only this time I wasn’t in the bed with the fluffy white comforter, and the nightstand on the wrong side of the room. I was in an even larger bed with silky sheets in earthy colors. The blinds were slanted, mostly shut, but some late-afternoon light still filtered into the room, illuminating the sole man sharing it with me.
The moment I fully opened my eyes, Brock jumped up from the armchair in the corner, where he’d clearly been waiting. I was pretty sure I’d felt him staring at me even while I was unconscious. The wolf had a certain presence that did things to me.
He was at my side in a flash, reaching to hold my hand. “Are you all right, Evie?” His voice dripped with concern.
I took in his strong jaw, full lips, thick dark hair and dreamy amber eyes, and forgot that I was supposed to answer him. But he looked so worried; I couldn’t make him wait.
“I’m fine,” I croaked, even though I sure as shit wasn’t fine. I was probably still a pregnant fox shifter with a sketchy past. “Though, I think I need some water,” I added, around a parched throat.
He helped me sit, piling pillows that smelled of him under my back, and then rushed to the chest of drawers to retrieve a glass of water, already poured. He pressed the glass to my lips gently, and tipped it up slowly. I wanted to complain about the fussing, but drank instead.
“Is that enough? Do you need more? Do you want ice cubes?” he asked, ready to bolt for the kitchen as soon as I said the word.
“I’m fine for now.” I chuckled darkly. “You know, I can drink water on my own. I’m not completely useless.” Though I did feel a hell of a lot like it.
He ignored my protests and set the glass down instead. His gaze traveled the length of my body before he slipped his hand into mine. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I sighed. Should I tell him the truth? Or should I put on my tough Evie act, the one I had perfected? In the end, I found so much vulnerability in his gaze that I opted for the truth. “I’m as well as can be expected. I feel like crap, I’m scared out of my wits, and it seems like I have a parasite growing inside me.” I laughed to try to cover my discomfort, then stilled when I caught his reaction.
“A parasite? You think our baby is a parasite?” His jaw tightened as my heart melted all over again at those words. Our baby.
What was with me? I wasn’t the maternal type. I was the kick-down-doors type.
He pulled his hand from mine but I caught it before he could pull away. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Though I kind of had. The baby was feeding off me, for fuck’s sake.
“Then how did you mean it?” His words were defensive.
I let the tension ease from my shoulders and tried for honesty again. “Listen, I’m not used to this kind of, er, stuff. I don’t do feelings, and I don’t do... babies.” He went to pull away again, but I persisted. I huffed, blowing strands of hair from my face. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m out of my element, and I’m kind of freaking out here. I don’t know what to think.”
“So you’re spewing at the mouth?” he offered.
I grunted, offended, before I noticed the kind smile that graced that gorgeous mouth. The corners of my lips came up as I gave him a very small smile back; it was the best I could do right then. “I’ll never admit to spewing anything, but, yeah. I might appear calm and collected, but I’m not. I’m totally losing it.”
He laughed, a real hearty sound, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “You? Calm and collected?”
Yanking my hand away from his, I crossed my arms across my chest, giving him a full-on pout.
He laughed some more and sat on the bed at my side, placing a possessive hand on my thigh. Even beneath the blanket, the heat of his hand radiated through the point of contact, straight to my core. Damn, what this man did to me. I was in trouble, and now I was carrying his baby. What the hell kind of turn had my life taken without my permission?
“You aren’t even a little bit calm and collected,” he said, and I glared, doing my best to ignore his wide smile. “You’re fiery as fuck, stubborn as hell, sexy as sin... and now the mother of my child.”
I gulped and my pout fell. Well, damn. If he was going to be like this, how the hell was I supposed to keep my distance and remain angry at him? I was starting to want to curl into the safety of his arms, and that was so not me. I didn’t rely on anyone else to prop me up. Were the pregnancy hormones messing with my emotions already? Yep, I was sure they were. It was like PMS on steroids.
I didn’t know what to say. Already this pregnancy was turning me into something I wasn’t.
“I want to help you,” he said. “I want to take care of you.”
“Take care of me? Just because I’m carrying a baby doesn’t mean I’m a baby myself. You realize that, right?” But my protest was half-hearted and he knew it. I’d lost so much weight in the past week, it was clear I did need someone to take care of me.
“I know you don’t need me to take care of you. I want to.” His eyes twinkled. “Even though you are pretty gimpy at the moment.”
The comment made me bristle, and then I realized he was totally joking. I was in over my head; no point pretending things were normal. “Is Sabine a hundred-percent sure I’m pregnant?” It wasn’t like I could actually feel a baby moving around inside me, or anything. The baby was probably the size of a pea at this stage, if that.
“She’s totally sure.” Joy lit up his face, and I melted like chocolate in the sun. Damn him, his sexiness, and baby loving nature. “She ran the tests multiple times, coming at them from different angles. There’s no doubt about it. You’re carrying my baby.”