“You are Pantera, though, and apparently so am I,” El confirmed.
“I know, but we weren’t raised in the pride, so Ryan and the others think we’ll be easily fooled.”
El snorted.
“They definitely don’t give us enough credit for having survived this long without them,” El laughed.
“That’s what I said.”
They finished their walk back to the house in silence.They found Shawn’s mother in the kitchen.She was making them pancakes.The warmth of her smile penetrated El and immediately made her feel better.Without thinking about it, El walked over and embraced Shawn’s mother.
“Don’t be frightened my dear, we’re all in this together,” she whispered in El’s ear.
“I know.Thank you for always being you.You’ll never know what that means to me,” El replied.
El pulled back and then fixed her plate.Once they all had a giant stack of piping hot pancakes, they sat down at the table and dug in.Just as they were finishing up, a knock sounded at the door.Shawn looked at his mother, who gave him a slight nod.He turned to El and gave her a half-smile before standing up to go answer it.When he came back in, he was following one of the tiniest women El had ever seen, which was saying something since El wasn’t even five foot tall.Where El was all curves, Willow looked like she just jumped off a Victoria’s Secret ad if they had a gypsy theme.
“Hello, my Luna,” Willow greeted El.
El’s stomach plummeted, and nausea overcame her at the term.She definitely didn’t want to be anyone’s Luna.
“Just El is fine, Willow.Thank you for coming,” El said, sucking back the urge to vomit and standing up so that she could move in to shake Willow’s hand.
When El reached out her hand, Willow just looked at it and smiled softly before she pulled El in for a giant hug.El looked over the woman’s shoulder at Shawn who looked like he was having trouble suppressing his laughter.When Willow pulled back, El forced a small smile for the woman.
“I’m honored to help,” Willow finally said, letting her tiny hand flutter to her chest.
“Well, I’m not really sure what happens now.Do we need to go to a private room?”El asked, suddenly feeling nervous.
“First, we must ensure you are not pregnant,” Willow explained.
“Oh, how do we do that?”
“Just a simple pregnancy test,” Willow replied with a small giggle.
“Oh, sorry, things haven’t been normal lately, so I figured maybe you needed to like listen to my belly or something,” El told her, adding a small laugh of her own.
“Nope, in this case, I’d say the humans have it right.”
“What if she were to have just become pregnant?Say, yesterday?”Shawn asked, a bit of embarrassment touching his words.
“The good thing is, being a shifter, her hormones are off the charts and strong compared to a human’s, so this test should detect it, but to be safe, we can test her today and then wait three days and test her again if you’d like?”
Shawn looked at El for guidance.El wasn’t really sure what to do.If they waited three days, then chances were they were just going to end up back in bed together.El’s libido was off the charts lately, and having only been with Shawn once yesterday, hadn’t really done it any favors.
“I say we just take this one, and if you think that’s sufficient, go ahead and do what you need to do.I don’t think waiting three days would be any more successful,” El said.
“As you wish, my Luna,” Willow said, digging through her large burlap bag and then handing El a box containing a pregnancy test.
“Please, just El, I’m nobody’s Luna.”
Willow just smiled, not bothering to respond.El took the box and headed to the bathroom.Her nerves didn’t kick in until she paced back and forth while she waited for the timer on her phone to tell her it had been three minutes.El didn’t dare look at the test before the time was up.
A soft knock at the door pulled her attention.She cracked it open and found Shawn outside, looking just as nervous as her.El let him in and showed him her phone where the timer was furiously ticking off the seconds.They kept their eyes locked on one another as the final seconds went by, and the alarm sounded.El slowly turned the timer off and then turned and walked over to get the test.
She let out a long sigh when the test showed negative.With a big relieved smile, she showed Shawn.He let out the breath he had been holding and dragged his hand down his face.
“Good,” he blurted out.
