ONE
RAWLING
The phone had beeped fifty million times since I got home two days ago, and I was two beeps from tossing it out the window.
Turning it off would have been sensible, but part of me longed to be connected to the outside world. I just didn’t want that world, or anyone in it to intrude by messaging or calling.
Huddling under the covers with a hand on my belly, I took slow deep breaths because getting upset wasn’t good for the baby.
Baby! I had a baby inside me, and Phelan was the alpha father.
Gods, what a mess I’d made of my life in the one semester since starting at Sombertooh University. Pregnant at nineteen while pretending to be a latent shifter in a college full of shifters. But all of that I could cope with, sort of, but it was the voices in my head that both terrified and reassured me.
Hunter!That was what one voice called me. Not me, Rawling, but who I really was. A person who hunted shifters. I thought of it as the bad voice that dared me to create havoc while the good one calmed me, telling me I wasn’t really that person.
Since arriving home, or even before I left SU, the bad voice had been mostly silent. When it tried to convince me of something, the other one quashed those thoughts.
Hunter!That was the bad side of me, and my baby was doing the goddess’s work by protecting me. I was supposed to keep my little one safe, not the other way around, but the silence from that scary voice had allowed me to sleep without the nightmares that plagued me for the first time in weeks, maybe months. My memory was a little hazy.
How I wished I could stay under the covers and not emerge until... ummm, well… maybe not ever. The baby and I could be cocooned in my bed. Would that be so bad? Besides, staying in my room shut off the memories of my godfather, Rawlins, that lingered outside the door. If I emerged, like a butterfly, being in his room, office, or the living area, I’d be surrounded by his scent and the books that were still piled on the coffee table.
There were so many unanswered questions about his life as a shifter that he hadn’t shared with me. I couldn’t fathom if he’d been trying to protect me or whether he thought I couldn’t handle the truth. I hoped it was the former, but protect me from what? Guys like Atticus? Or did he know, deep down, that I was a hunter?
I shoved a second pillow over my face and screamed into it. If I’d never gone to SU, none of this would have happened. That was what I told myself repeatedly. No shifters, hunters, or a baby.
A fluttering in my belly had me lifting my ratty old T-shirt and peering at the tiny bump.
No, I take it back.I love you already and will never regret being your dad.
I sniffed and dabbed at the tears with the quilt Rawlins had told me his grandmother made. As I reached out for the water bottle I’d placed on the chair, light streamed into my safe space,and I tucked the quilt around me, preferring the darkness. Light insisted I confront my fears, whereas the dark allowed me to wallow.
But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t forget I was pregnant. The tiny life inside me made sure of that. And by my calculation, I was three months pregnant. Shoot, if I went back to SU, I’d be six and a half months. There’d be no way to hide a burgeoning baby bump.
There was a niggling in my head, reminding me of a woodpecker chiseling at a log. My mind was dredging up a name I’d been avoiding, even though I suspected the damned beeping was caused by him.
Phelan.
There was another word, too, that stood with his name, hand in hand, and I raged at them in my head because it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t and we weren’t… we weren’t supposed to love one another. He was a wealthy wolf shifter with a pedigree, and I was latent. No. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I was almost beginning to believe I was a latent shifter. I was human, damn it. Nothing wrong with that.
The baby kicked, and I patted my belly, murmuring that no matter whether they were human or shifter, I’d love them forever and always.
Closing my eyes, I thought back to the last day at college when I’d told Phelan he wasn’t safe around me. That was when everything fell apart.
“What are you talking about?”he asked as I wept and pushed him away. “You’re having our baby, and I love you.”
“Unlove me and find an omega shifter to live your life with.”
“That’s not how it works.” He took my hand and kissed the palm. “You aren’t just someone I have sex with, and you’re not a distraction when I’ve had a crappy day. It’s more than love.” He stroked my tear-stained cheek. “Me and you, we’re supposed to be together.”
“Listen.” I scrambled out of bed and clutched a pillow to my chest, needing a barrier between me and whatever bonkers message he was trying to send.
“I’m not what you think I am.”
Phelan narrowed his eyes, and my knees went weak. He was so damned hot, and even my frazzled all-day sickness, hunter brain got hot and bothered when he did that.
He tapped his lips. “Pretty damned sure you’re the omega I fell head over heels for.” He put a hand on his chest. “The one who’s carrying our baby.”
“Stop.” The pillow plopped on the floor as I put both hands over my ears. “I don’t want to hear this. Na na na na na.”
