One day, if he hadn’t already, he would take his mate to bed and hold her as he’d once held Lilly. He would bite her, as he did Lilly, only it wouldn’t be playful. It would be a bite that would mark her as his forever. That thought pushed her over the edge. She ran for the nearest bathroom, hitting the floor in front of the toilet just as the vomit reached her throat and exploded from her body.
The images of Dillon and his faceless new mate assaulted her mind. The more they came, the more she hurled. She wanted to stop thinking about it, but the idea of Dillon with someone else was like a train wreck complete with dismembered body parts littering the ground. She couldn’t look away. Lilly just kept seeing him, staring into the eyes of a stranger as he made love to her.Apparently, Lilly was a masochist because she sat there on the floor watching the soul-ripping images in her head like a bad, unending soap opera. She continued to vomit until her stomach was empty, then she dry heaved until her throat was raw.
“STOP!” Lilly roared into the small space, the sound reverberating off the walls. She couldn’t handle it. She needed her mind to stop playing the movie in her head. Lilly had to pull it together and quickly. She was no longer only responsible for herself. She had a child to take care of. Lilly had eight more months ahead of her filled with doing everything she could to make sure her baby was as healthy as possible. She also had eight months of praying that nothing weird was going to show up in her lab work or on ultrasounds.
“Oh, God, what if the baby has fur? Or a tail? Of all the men in the world, I had to go and fall in love with a mother-effing werewolf.” She was going to have to stop cursing, too. Even though it would be hilarious to teach her child to say, “bastard daddy,” it wouldn’t be proper.
She flushed the toilet and pulled herself to her feet. When Lilly got a look at herself in the mirror, it only pissed her off all over again. This mess of a woman, smeared mascara, hair lank, pieces of vomit on her shirt…Thiswas what she’d been reduced to because of her own choice to love a man she knew she’d never be able to keep. “Lesson. Learned,” she whispered at the woman in the mirror.
Lilly stripped out of her clothes and climbed into the shower. The water cascaded over her body, and she pictured it rinsing off every touch Dillon had ever placed on her. She imagined the soap scrubbing his scent and fingerprints away. She wanted nothing from him, other than the precious life that fate, or God, or maybe even Dillon’s goddess had given her. If the child had been given tothem, then Dillon would have been there to receive the news, but he wasn’t. She’d been to the doctor alone. She’d come home alone to an empty house. Lilly took that as a sign that this child was for her and her alone.
Soon, she was clean and dry, and she set herself to the task of tidying up the mess she’d created. As she cleaned, she made the decision to move from her apartment as soon as possible. There was no way she could stay here. There were too many memories. She needed a new start and a bigger place. A highchair, stroller, crib, and baby swing would take up a lot of space.
Luckily, Lilly had some money saved. Maybe she could get them a small house. She’d figure it out, somehow. She’d taken care of herself before Dillon Jacobs had come along, and she’d take care of herself now that he was gone.
As she lay in bed that night, she gave herself the chance to say goodbye. She remembered the happy times. Lilly even thought of what could have been. How he might have reacted to her when she’d told him she was going to have their child. She thought about how they would have speculated whether their child would have his auburn hair or her dark locks. Lilly gave herself over to a future she desperately wanted but that had slipped away in the blink of an eye. She laid on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach, and closed her eyes as tears rolled down her cheeks, wetting the pillow beneath her head. What could-have-been would be all she’d have, and tonight would be the only night she’d allow herself to have a pity party. She could have walked away from Dillon a year ago. But she made the choice to stay. She couldn’t really be mad at him, not that it would necessarily stop the emotion from creeping up on her. But right now, she wasn’t angry. She was unbelievably sad. Not only for herself, but for her child.
Lilly had no idea what the future held for the life growing inside her. Dillon never mentioned children that were only half-Canis lupus.She didn’t know if something strange was going to happen. Those would have to be worries for tomorrow. Tonight, she’d had enough. Her body demanded sleep.
She rolled over and pressed her face to the pillow. Apparently, when he said he’d removed everything, he hadn’t included changing the sheets. The coward’s smell was all over them. Lilly was too tired to get up and change them, and if she was going to be honest, his scent was comforting to her. “Just for tonight,” she mumbled as she let sleep steal her away from her pain.
Chapter 7
“It’s easy to look back at a mistake and say, ‘That ended up working out for the best.’ But maybe the mistake you made wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe the mistake was actually the right choice all along, and the precious thing that comes as a result of your decision is the universe confirming you made the right choice.” ~Dillon Jacobs
Present Day
“I’ll letyou know if I hear from her, Jacque. You know I wouldn’t keep that from you,” Dillon said into his cell phone. It was the fifth time his daughter had called. He loved that she was reaching out to him but wished it was under different circumstances.
“Okay, thanks, um, dad.”
The line was dead before he could say anything else, like ask if he could come see his grandson. Dillon tried hard not to ask much of anything from Jacque. He didn’t feel he had the right. First, because he hadn’t been around for the first seventeen years of her life, and second, because of the way he’d handled things when he’d showed up in Coldspring when he’d found out about her. Not to mention what one of his own wolves had pulled while they were in Coldspring: kidnapping Jacque and torturing her.
“That’s not your fault,” Tanya, his mate, said from the doorway of his office. He’d felt her coming to him. She was his rock, his best friend, and more than he ever deserved.
“I should have known something was wrong,” Dillon said. It was the same thing he always said when they had this conversation. “He was my second.”
“You may be an alpha, Dillon, but you are not all knowing. That gift belongs to the Great Luna alone.”
Dillon turned to look at her. She was as beautiful as the first day he saw her. She had long, blonde hair, which she said was dirty blonde, nottrueblonde, as if it was some sort of failing. She gazed at him with large brown eyes set above a cute nose and high cheekbones. She was petite, which he liked because he wasn’t as large as most wolves. Standing at five eleven nine inches, Dillon wasn’t tall, though he could hold his own against the larger wolves just fine.
“It’s okay to be worried about her,” Tanya said as she walked toward him.
“Jacque’s going to be fine, and she’s got Fane. He’s—”
“Sheisn’t who I was talking about, and you know it.”
Dillon immediately felt shame. It was a conflicting emotion for him and had been since the day he’d met the eyes of his true mate over twenty years ago, at a gas station of all places. The connection had been instant. He’d heard her thoughts in his mind, and when the wind had blown her scent in his direction, he’d been done for.
Dillon had never been so crushed, or elated, in all his long life, at least not until he’d found out he’d had a child. Then he’d been crushed and elated all over again, and the guilt and shame flooded him on an entirely different level.
“How many times will we go through this?” Tanya pressed her hand to his cheek, pulling his head down so he had to look at her. “I’ve never held it against you, and that’s not going to change.”
“Why not?” Dillon asked, his voice rough with his wolf, who was just as conflicted as the man.
“How can I?” She blew out a breath and then dropped her hand. “Dillon, we have true mates, but we also have free will. There is nothing in any of the writings about our kind that say wecan’tlove someone else. In fact, our existence is a bit cruel because wecanlove, but that love won’t ever compare to the love we will have with our true mate. But our ability to love others is also a blessing. What if our true mate dies before we ever meet them? We would be left to a life of loneliness. At least if you fall in love with someone, you get the gift of a healthy relationship. And, if you fall in love with anotherCanis lupus, at least the darkness will be slowed to some extent, though not as much as by your true mate. I wouldn’t want you denied that if I had never come along.”
“I wouldn’t have felt the same,” he growled.
