“If the shoe fits,” she snapped.
“But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even make sense in the context of which you’re using it. Can you just calm down for a minute and tell me why you’re so angry?”
“I have been telling you why I’m so angry.”
Decebel clenched his jaw as he forced himself not to say something he couldn’t take back. He reminded himself, multiple times, that not only had she just given birth three days prior, but that she’d lost a close friend and her doctor and had been trapped by a crazy high fae and Peri’s psycho sister. And from what he’d read in some of the books she’d bought on pregnancy, her body was going through some massive hormonal changes now that it no longer needed to nurture the baby inside of itself. With those things in mind, he proceeded carefully. “I feel like you’re trying to express yourself but, honestly, baby, I don’t know exactly what has you so angry. Can you tell me the main thing that has upset you?”There, that sounded reasonable. There was no way she could infer from that statement that he was accusing her of being a crazy, hormonal she-wolf.
“Youfeellike I’m trying to express myself?” she asked as she folded her arms in front of her chest.
Decebel nodded, but he could see from the look on her face that she didn’t agree with his assessment of the reasonableness of the question. She was definitely putting off a vibe of ‘you think I’m crazy, so I’m about to go crazy on you.’
“Well, bully for you, Decebel. You are an astute fur ball,” she said as she glared up at him. “But you missed something. I’m nottryingto express myself. I AM expressing myself! You’ve been off doing your thing, hanging with the guys, living your life, and I’ve been stuck here … expressing myself.” She pointed toward their suite. “And I’m not saying I don’t love our daughter or that I don’t want to be with her, but I just feel like I’m going to be missing out on everything fun.”
“What fun?” Decebel asked. “I wasn’t having fun, Jennifer. I was working.”
“I just mean in general,” she huffed. “I don’t even know how to express it without sounding like a freaking nut case.”
“Can’t get much worse than it already is, baby, so don’t worry about that.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain could command his lips to stay shut.
“Can’t it?” she said in a cool voice that made a chill crawl up his spine.
“I’m really hoping not,” Decebel murmured under his breath and then waited for the storm building inside of his mate to be released.
Jen knewthat what she felt was irrational. She got it. She totally, intellectually, understood that what she was feeling was not reality. Did that stop her from going full Bellatrix Lestrange on her man? Absolutely not. She could no more have stopped the words from coming out of her mouth than she could have stopped a hurricane.
“I just feel like my life is frozen. Like I’m going to be stuck here while everyone is getting to go do stuff.” Dec opened his mouth to say something, but Jen held up her hand to stop him. “Yes, fur butt, I do know how irrational that sounds. I do not need a Canis lupus Neanderthal telling me what a nut job I am. Regardless of the fact that I know it’s irrational, it doesn’t change that it’s how I feel.” Jen paused and took a deep breath. She’d begun to pace again and pulled her hair down out of a ponytail and twisted it up into a messy bun on top of her head. “Haven’t you ever felt something that you knew wasn’t reality but still couldn’t stop the fact that it felt real to you? It’s infuriating.” She stared at him, unsure of what else she could say to make him understand.
Decebel ran both hands over his face and let out a deep breath. His glowing, amber eyes met hers, and his wolf was the one who responded to her. “Why haven’t you let your wolf help you? You know she doesn’t experience the same emotions with which the human contends. She is better equipped to deal with some things.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact that it was hard to be irritated by his words. Jen knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending. That wasn’t how the wolf thought. Everything with their wolves was about survival, protecting, providing, meeting the needs of the pack. It made sense, and yet her human half wanted to be able to do it on her own. Prideful, yes, but asking her wolf for help at being a mom made her feel incapable. What is the wolf part of her was better at being a mother than the human part? Did that make her a terrible mother? Would that mean she was incapable of being a mom? Would it make her a failure?
“You are making the issue more complicated than it needs to be,” Decebel’s wolf said. “It doesn’t matter what would be if you didn’t have a wolf. YouareCanis lupus.Thatis all that matters. You cannot remove that part of your soul. There is no reason to not utilize that part of yourself when it is the reason the Great Luna created our kind in the first place.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Jen said. “And I agree. But the hormone stuff will still be there. I may be Canis lupus, but I am human too.”
Decebel looked as if he was going to say something else, but he stopped, and the eyes that had begun to return to their normal color suddenly glowed like the sun in their brightness.
“What’s wrong?” Jen asked, feeling herself tense up at the sudden change in her mate.
“I don’t hear our pup,” the wolf said, and a deep growl followed his words. He hurried past her into their suite and straight to the basinet. “Was she in her bed?”
“What do you meanwas?” Jen asked as she hurried over to see that the basinet, where she had indeed laid Thia earlier, was now empty. Jen immediately smelled Sally and Jacque’s scent, and it was very fresh. They must have taken Thia while she had been attacking her mate. “My own infant daughter has more of a social life than me.” She sighed, sounding ridiculously pitiful. Jen chose to ignore the fact that she wasn’t letting her wolf deal with the issue. Mostly because she could already feel her animal half beginning to freak out over the fact that their baby wasn’t with them. But Jen’s human half understood that Thia was safe.
“Why is our daughter not in her bed?” Decebel growled, and Jen could hear both man and wolf in his voice. Now it sounded like he was the one being irrational.
“Sally and Jacque must have borrowed her,” Jen said, trying to sound as carefree as she could. Her mate was on a hair trigger anyway when it came to their safety due to her recent captivity. She didn’t want to add fuel to the fire that was already beginning to burn in her mate.
“How on earth do you borrow someone’s child? And why the hell wouldn’t you ask before just taking her?” he rumbled.
“Dec, it’s no big deal. She’s safe.”
He turned his eyes on her, and another wolf might have stepped back at the rage simmering in them, but Jen wasn’t another wolf. She was his mate. He would never hurt her, no matter how angry he became. “She isn’t safe unless she is with us, in our home. If she’s out there,” he slung his arm toward the door, “I have no idea if she’s truly safe. Who knows if those two females will watch her as closely as we do. Who knows if they will make sure she’s fed, changed, and held. What if they set her down and turn their backs for two seconds?”
“Well she isn’t going to walk off, B.” Jen snorted. “And Sally and Jacque will take very good care of her. They will treat her as if she is one of their own.”
Right? She hated that the thought slipped into her mind, but Decebel’s words were planting a seed of doubt … which was utterly ridiculous. Her friends would never let anything happen to her child. “Look, I’ll just call them. It’s not a big deal.” She picked up her cell phone from the counter and clicked on Jacque’s contact. Decebel was staring at her as though he wanted to rip the phone from her hand. She took a step back just in case he decided to act on that impulse.
“Hello?” Jacque’s voice came through the speaker, and Jen was immediately on edge. Her redheaded friend sounded unsure, and that was not cool.
