“Shawn, Willow will be here in an hour,” Shawn’s mother said, interrupting their argument.
“Who is Willow?”El questioned, hoping Shawn wasn’t about to parade one of his exes in front of her.
“Willow is a—“ Shawn sputtered nervously looking to his mom for help.
His mom put her hands up as if she didn’t want to be involved and then turned and shuffled back down the hall.
“Who is Willow?”El snarled.
“She’s no one like that,” Shawn confirmed realizing what El was thinking.
“Good.I don’t think I could handle that right now.”
“Well, she’s not an ex, but what I have to tell you may not sit well either,” Shawn confessed.
El sighed and opened the door gesturing to Shawn with her hand that she wanted to take the conversation outside.Shawn walked through the door, almost having to duck down to get through the doorframe.El followed him out to the mouth of the path where she had just spoken with Marcus.El sat down, leaning back up against a tree while Shawn paced.
“Sit down, Shawn, you’re making me nervous,” El asked gently.
Shawn stopped and looked down at her.His eyes were full of so much love, it made El’s heart hurt.She held her hand out to him, beckoning him to come in and sit with her.He finally conceded and sat down in front of her.
“Whatever it is, as long as we’re together we’ll get through it,” she told him when he still didn’t start talking.
Shawn finally told El everything his mother had told him the day before about the prophecy.El soaked in everything he said, never interrupting him.She wasn’t shocked, which made her question her sanity at this point.If there was anything she had learned about her journey was that just when she thought nothing else could get thrown her way, something did.
Once Shawn was done, he simply stared at her as if he was waiting for her to freak out.Maybe she should have been freaking out, but she was just numb.The one thing she was certain of was that she did not want to bring a child into her screwed up world.Especially knowing that her child would have the weight of two worlds thrust on his or her shoulders from day one.No one deserved that.El hadn’t even found her own mother yet.For some reason, that seemed to be the decisive factor for El when it came to considering having children of her own.
“El,” Shawn said, impatiently.
“So, Willow is a healer, and she’s going to make sure I can’t get pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t slept with her?”El joked.
“No,” Shawn said, although his tone was somber.
“Okay, well let’s get that taken care of first, and then we’ll try to figure out what all of this means.One thing I’m certain of is I do not want to bring our child into this world like that.”
“I agree.”
“I do like the sounds ofourchild, though,” El told him, reaching out to take his hand.
“I do too, even though I’m not sure we’d really know who the father was,” Shawn said.He didn’t sound jealous, just curious.
El probably should have felt weird over his comment, but she didn’t.Their child would belong to all of them.Lord help the child if it were to be a girl, because having four overbearing shifter fathers was bound to drive the poor thing crazy.Just the thought of seeing her mates as father’s made El breakout in a gigantic smile.
“Well let’s go see Willow, and then go from there,” Shawn said, standing up and holding out his hand to El.
She took his hand, loving the way his engulfed hers.The warmth from his hand seeped into hers, and even though things were crazy and at times scary she knew she had Shawn and her other mates by her side through it all.
“Do they know?”El asked, Shawn when the thought of her other mates made her realize they would need to know what was going on.
“Yes, I spoke with them yesterday.They didn’t really approve of Willow being the one who helped you,” Shawn told her.
“Why?”
“Because Willow is Pantera, and they don’t trust Pantera.”
