“Is there any chance of delaying calling in the council?” Tianna asked. “They’ll ask questions we don’t have easy answers to.”
Brock raised his eyebrows at the Amazonian fae-witch. “A horde of vamps invaded werewolf pack territory. I have no choice but to alert the council. It’s my duty as a pack alpha. Besides, if they were to find out some other way before I told them, that’d be reason enough for a trial on my competence to rule these wolves.”
Ah, so Brock had considered keeping them out of the loop, but we couldn’t. Damn.
Tianna nodded slowly as if she understood all that Brock wasn’t saying. “Then I’ll leave you to it while I go seek out Willemena. If we’re lucky, she won’t want to charge you something you aren’t willing to pay.”
“I’ll pay whatever her price. Evie’s safety is my top concern,” Brock said.
“Willemena was Gran’s friend, and she’s already played a role in guiding Evie,” Cass added. “She should want to help.” But he emphasized the word “should,” because witches were a fickle and moody bunch. Just because Willemena should do something was no guarantee that she would.
Tianna nodded once, but didn’t look overly hopeful. “I’ll keep that in mind, sweet cheeks. Thanks for the heads-up.” Winking long pretty lashes at him, she sashayed out of there, stepping right over the vamp’s head as if it were nothing more than a rock.
Cass whistled after her, encouraging her to wag her hips even more. She looked over her shoulder, offering him a smoldering look that made him fidget and me grateful that he now had his own place to spend his wild nights.
“All right,” Brock barked. “Let’s get to it, everyone. I might have to tell the council that we killed an entire seethe of vamps, but they don’t need to see the evidence of our kills. The vamps’ bodies will disintegrate with the first light of day, but the wolf council might arrive sooner if they question my story. Ray!”
Brock’s second in command stepped forward, leaning a shotgun against either shoulder. The look in the werewolf’s eyes was calm, as if it took far more than a battle with vamps to rattle him. I could see why he was Brock’s most dominant wolf.
“You know what to do,” Brock instructed. “Get it cleaned up fast. I have to tell the council right away. I’ll have Tianna bring the witch to Evie’s cabin. Make sure the council doesn’t go near her place.”
Ray gave one curt nod. “You got it.”
Brock had been assigning Ray a lot of responsibilities since our one night stand, and I hadn’t seen him much. Now I wondered how much of that was Brock delegating his duties to Ray so he could keep an eye on me.
The second—as tall and broad shouldered as Brock, but with close-cropped brown hair—turned to face the wolves gathered around us and started barking orders. He was clearly used to organizing them. Those who remained as wolves began shifting back to their human forms. Those who hadn’t shifted set off to track the strewn bodies. I wasn’t sure what exactly they planned to do with all of them, but I didn’t think I wanted to know. Probably burn them. It was going to be a big fire.
“Take Nathan’s body to the clearing by the river,” Brock said. “You know the one. We’ll put him to rest there.”
Ray nodded. “All right.”
“We’ll do right by him once I deal with the council.”
Sabine ran up to us, carving a path between the wolves in varying degrees of transformation, her ashy blond hair disheveled and her eyes wild until they landed on me. “What happened? I was tending to the wounded when I heard that Evie almost died.”
My heart sank. The wounded? I’d been too busy worrying about almost dying to consider what might have happened to all the wolves that had rallied to defend the pack.
“I need to check on the baby,” Sabine added, and from the looks around the pack, it was clear that the rumor mill had done its job and everyone there now knew I was their alpha’s baby momma.
“Can you do it while she’s a fox?” Brock asked. “Because she can’t shift back yet.”
Sabine raised her eyebrows in curiosity, but didn’t ask. “That will be fine. I need to make sure the baby’s heartbeat remains strong.” The doctor moved to my side.
“Are any of the wolves seriously injured?” Brock asked, sounding conflicted. The alpha had to be feeling pulled in all sorts of directions at once.
“A few. I’m treating eight wolves, but all of them will make a full recovery. Some might just take a while is all.”
I hinged on the “full recovery” part of her statement with everything I had. This vampire seethe attacked because of me. Tonight’s display was all my fault.
The edges of Brock’s shoulders softened just a bit at Sabine’s report. I imagined that, beneath the unshakeable leader mask, he was as relieved as I was that we hadn’t suffered greater losses.
Brock faced Ray, who appeared to be waiting for any final instructions. “Let me know if you find anything unusual,” Brock told Ray, who only nodded knowingly before taking off to supervise the cleanup.
“Cass, Reo, Haru, and Molly,” Brock continued, “please wait for Evie at the cabin. We’ll be along shortly.”
Cass narrowed his eyes at the alpha as if he didn’t want to let me out of his sight either, but he eventually relented. “I’ll go, but only because Tianna might need my help.” I didn’t want to think about what kind of help Cass might want to offer the Amazonian woman.
“Let’s go,” Brock urged me as Sabine led the way to the house. Never before had the walk back seemed so long, nor had I ever wasted an opportunity as fine as this one. Brock’s beautiful body was on full display, yet all I could think about was our baby and how much I needed to hear her heartbeat.
8 Majorly Fucked
“So?” Brock asked the moment Sabine pressed the ultrasound wand to my fox belly. Relaying through my telepathic link with Brock, I’d made her drape a sheet over my foxy bits even though Brock argued that there was nothing to be shy about. Yeah, I might be in the shape of an animal, but I was still a woman with dignity.
I was lying on Brock’s bed with my paws in the air, craning my neck to make out the ultrasound machine. If I couldn’t make sense of the blobs when I was a human, there was no chance I would as a fox, but I still tried.
“Is everything okay with the baby?” Brock asked again, before Sabine had the chance to answer.
“Hmm,” she said, and I had to resist the urge for every muscle in my body to clench. “Yeah, it looks like the baby is doing fine.”
I let my head roll back onto the comforter and let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. Brock sank heavily onto the bed next to me. Leaning down, he whispered next to my ear. “You hear that, Ev? The baby is fine.”
I might’ve been annoyed that his whisper, while I was in fox form, was akin to him shouting, and he should have realized that. But he sounded so damn happy that I couldn’t help but feel the same.
‘Evie! Get over here. It’s an emergency!’ Cass called out through our connection, and I snapped to attention, rolling onto my stomach, getting tangled in the sheet for a moment before breaking free of it, and then jumping down to the floor.
‘I’m on my way.’ I was already making my way out of the room, my nails clicking as they hit the tile floor of the hallway. Oh God, were more vampires attacking?
‘Good. Try to make it fast. Willemena is here and, well, from what she says, your situation is pretty fucking urgent.’
How the fuck had the witch gotten here so soon?
“What is it, Eve?” Brock asked, sprinting until he was right alongside me in human form.
‘The witch is already there.’
“Really? That’s ... all right. Then let’s get you back to yourself. With any luck, you’ll be back to my sexy woman before we know it.”
And before my ex-boyfriend arrives. But I sure as hell was keeping that thought to myself. I didn’t bother telling Brock that something serious was happening. He’d find out soon enough.
‘I’m coming,’ I projected to Cass. ‘How the hell did Willemena make it to the cabin so damn fast?’ I clattered across the tile of the dining area when it hit me. ‘She can materialize, can’t she?’
‘Sure can. Evie, it was fucking nuts. We were standing around the porch waiting for my sexy T to arrive, when Willemena just materialized out of thin air. Literally. Molly about crapped her pants from the excitement of it.’
‘I bet she did. I wish I’d been there to see it.’
Gran hadn’t been able to materialize. The ability was reserved for incredibly powerful witches, and even then, only a select few who were predisposed to the tricky magic. I mean, the witch’s body got pulled apart to a cellular level before being reconstructed again. If the witch got one single thing wrong, well, they’d never be the same again, literally. Even of those few select witches who could do it, few had the guts. It was a tool reserved for emergencies.
‘Move those little legs as fast as you can, girl. This witch is hard to deal with.’
‘Entertain her with your superb sense of fashion until I get there.’
‘Sadly, I don’t think that’s going to cut it.’
A fluorescent pink furry demon imp with horns and wings? Yeah, there was nothing more distracting than Cass.
Running out the open patio door, I launched across Brock’s back lawn and down the hill as fast as I could. Brock was right beside me.
“Finally! There you are!” Willemena called out from the deck of my porch the second Brock and I entered earshot, descending the hill at a full run. The witch proceeded to glare at us, hands on hips, long silver hair and hippy skirt whipping in the breeze, until I was at her feet.
“Took you long enough,” the witch grumbled.
‘Told you,’ Cass said. ‘She woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, that’s for damn sure.’
“Follow me inside,” Willemena said, pointing a bony finger at me. She gave Cass and Molly the squinty eye. “I guess you two can also come.” Rows of silver bangles chimed along her wrists when she shook her hands at Brock and my two warrior protectors. “You three can wait outside. I don’t know you.”
Brock looked like he’d been punched in the gut. “I’m her alpha and the father of her child. I’m coming with her. It’s my duty to protect her.”
“Her alpha?” Willemena actually looked surprised, and I was pretty sure a witch like her wasn’t surprised often. “My, my. You don’t say?”
“I do say,” Brock all but growled. “And I say I’m coming with her.”
Willemena arched her dark brows, which seemed at odds with the silver of her hair beneath the glow of my porch light, and clucked. “Fine,” she said. “You, Tianna, the human, and the pink furry one can come.” But she sounded like she was agreeing for some reason of her own.