Filed to story: The Wolf Prince’s Fated Love
It was strange to be going through this with someone who I didn’t really know. Yet another thing out of order. The father of my child was a mystery to me, one I wasn’t sure I was ready to unravel.
“It feels real now,” I whispered, looking down at my lap. I couldn’t keep cataloging his every reaction. Because my brain was catching up to the scary part now. The omega part, where our daughter was marked for death before she’d drawn her first breath.
Another tear leaked out, followed by another, and another-too fast to hide or wipe away.
I startled when a warm, calloused thumb swept across my cheek, catching them.
“It’s going to be okay.”
His voice was a low promise that sent a highly inappropriate thrill through my system. I was buzzing with heat, electricity.
Want.
No fucking way, Leigh. Get it together, because we are not tapping that again. It’s already way too complicated, and that will not help.
“You don’t know that,” I argued, focusing back on the conversation instead of my traitorous body’s reaction to the man. “She’s an omega. She’s going to be hunted from day one, unless-” I froze, the other option hitting me in a rush.
Brielle’s aunt. She cursed Brielle’s mother to save Brielle. I could go to her, ask for the same curse. We knew there would be side effects, obviously, but?-
“No.” He barked the alpha command at me, and I flinched back at the sudden venom in his tone, the command rubbing my wolf the wrong way.
“Excuse me?”
“You are not doing it. I can see it on your face, and I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself. It’s not on the table.”
I jerked back from his touch, standing up to put myself fully out of reach. “I’m sorry, why the fuck do you think you have any say over what I do? Last I checked, we’re not together. This baby? She doesn’t give you license to tell me what to do, and I’m going to protect her any way I see fit. I’m her mother, and if you don’t like it, you can go fuck yourself.”
I was shaking with anger and had to focus hard to still my hands at my sides. I’d never been one for physical violence, but the urge to punch him square in his asshole, dictator jaw was strong.
Damn, I was hormonal.
No, screw that. He was a domineering jerk, and I was justified to be pissed off.
“You are her mother. And I’m her father. Protecting her is my job, and I’m insulted that you think I’d let you harm yourself, as if I’m incapable of doing that job. Because if anyone’s life is on the line to protect her, it’s mine, not yours.”
If words could kill, I’d be dead on the floor from the acid in his voice. Something in me wanted to hurt him, push him back just as hard as he was pushing me. And I knew it was wrong, I knew it, but the words flew out of my mouth anyway.
“You don’t know that you’re the father.”
He whipped back like I’d physically struck him.
And then I felt it: the utter fury rolling off him, a crushing weight of wrath. When he rose, I couldn’t help it; I flinched away from him. We’d flirted with anger before, both of us. But this was a level I’d never seen, and it was downright terrifying.
I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong and petty and, frankly, not even a little bit true. I hadn’t been with anyone before him for eighteen months, and after, well, there was nobody.
But he didn’t know that, and even if I took it back now… shit.
I’m a terrible person.
But he didn’t say a word, didn’t lift a hand toward me. He just walked away for the second time today. Except this time, I knew with rock-solid certainty that I’d gone too far, and he wasn’t coming back this time.
EIGHT
Gael
“You don’t know that you’re the father.”
I stared out at the clouds, barely visible in the darkness, from my seat at the very back of the plane, the ugly barb playing on repeat in my head. Leigh had free rent because she had moved in since I heard the news this morning, and this new revelation felt like it had gutted me.
Who knew? She didn’t even need a knife.
Goddess, I was fucked up over it. I’d spent the entire flight across the water isolated back here, stewing. I couldn’t even sleep, couldn’t do anything other than hide behind earbuds that were off and avoid my pack mates.
Had she really slept with someone else, and not bothered to tell me?
Had it been before we were together, or after?
I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
I didn’t want to believe it at all, let alone hear the gory details. If it was anybody in Pack Blackwater, I’d rip their head off. And as much as I hated it, I was eyeing Reed now. He’d been in her room this morning, and if it was him…
I’d kill him with my bare hands. She was not his.
She wasn’t mine either. We’d had sex. We had no mate marks or any other mate signs.
I rubbed absently at my chest, unable to shake the achy feeling that had lodged itself there since she’d said those hateful words. She despised me.
The fact that I was trying to do the right thing, standing beside her to figure this out, apparently meant nothing if she was willing to toss me aside like trash.
But I had to know if it was Reed. I couldn’t bear to look at him, and he was not only my pack mate, but one of my best friends.
If it was him, I’d have to leave the pack. Kane wouldn’t want to accept my resignation with everything that was going on, but there was no cell in my body that could stand by and watch her grow round with somebody else’s baby, especially not one of the few people I couldn’t bring myself to lift a finger to.