Chapter 2
Riggs
“Shh, Alanna,” I said softly. “It’s okay.”
I rested a steadying hand on the carrier and rocked it gently against my leg. We were in the kitchen at two in the morning, both of us seriously sleep-deprived, but Alanna was more so since she didn’t have a shifter’s constitution. She seemed angry about it, too.
Mathan sat at the kitchen table, looking like a zombie. He was nursing a mug of honey lavender tea, by the smell of it, and frowning at the squalling baby waving her fists in anger next to me.
I pulled up the online directions that explained how to make a bottle, mixed the formula into the water, stirred it, sniffed it out of curiosity, then pulled back with a grimace and popped the mug into the microwave. When I turned, I folded my arms over my chest and fixed my Second with a look.
“You know, you could, oh I don’t know, pick her up if she’s distressing you and causing you to miss your beauty sleep,” I said dryly.
“No, I’m good.”
I clenched my jaw. Although I was generally a good alpha, I needed help, and Mathan only seemed to want to keep his distance.
I didn’t know what he was afraid of, but he’d avoided being around Alanna even when Piper was here.
Now that she was gone, he was still avoiding her.
He was only here now because he probably felt sorry for me and had come down to the kitchen so I didn’t feel alone.
I didn’t know how Mathan could be both thoughtful and grumpy, but he somehow managed.
I wasn’t going to let him get away with the whole distance thing he was doing, though. Babies weren’t scary. They just cried a lot. I was quickly becoming an expert. “Don’t hurt her when you pick her up. She’s fragile.”
Mathan set his cup down and frowned at me before rising to get Alanna. I bit back a yawn and scrubbed a hand over my face. “What was that look for?”
“I would never hurt a cub.”
I nodded, chastened. “Sorry. I only meant be careful of your bear strength, because she’s not a shifter.”
He snorted and, squatting down, carefully undid the buckle across her chest and picked the still squalling baby up. Bringing her close, he wrapped the blanket from the carrier around her until she was snug against him.
She went quiet at once, looking up at him with big blue eyes. And everything in me—from my muscles to my racing thoughts—settled. Ah, blessed silence.
I glanced at Mathan. He’d had a rough childhood.
And by rough, I meant violent. He’d come to the Moonhaven Bear Clan with Alistair, my secretary from Scotland.
Mathan had quickly risen through the ranks and proved to be a good, dedicated bear, so when I’d become alpha, I’d called him as my Second, Matteo as my First, and Alistair as my secretary.
Because of Mathan’s childhood, he’d sworn never to be mated—even if he found her—and never to have children.
That wasn’t an issue if he stuck to it, since we could only have children with our mates.
But speaking from recent experience, if he ever did find her, I didn’t think his resistance would last long.
Mathan had proven me wrong before, but I was doubtful anyone could hold out indefinitely against their own mate.
The microwave dinged, and I turned to pull the warm coffee mug out.
“You put the formula in a coffee cup?”
I frowned at the steam wafting off the top of the cup and stuck a clean finger in to test how hot it was.
Sighing, because I’d put it in too long, I fished an ice cube from the freezer and dropped it in the cup, then stirred it with a spoon.
“Yes. You can’t put the bottle in. It’s plastic and will melt. ”
“What about those bottle warmer things?” he said, shaking a crinkly toy at Alanna until she batted it away. “You put water in the bottle warmer, and it warms the water, then you stick the bottle in. It’s like a bottle bath.”
I blinked at my Second in astonishment. His ears turned pink, and he avoided making eye contact as he tucked the blanket around Alanna’s arm again. “I read magazines sometimes,” he muttered.
“Parenting magazines?”
Alanna started fussing again, so he started pacing with her across the kitchen and back. He managed to continue avoiding my gaze as he gently patted her back and jostled her up and down on his hip while she stared up at him in fascination.
Mathan’s curly red-brown hair stuck up in every direction, and his tee shirt was inside out and backward.
Clearly, Alanna’s crying and my inept attempts to soothe her had pulled him out of a sound sleep.
He’d stomped in five minutes ago like an angry, hibernating bear, grunted at me, and quietly made himself some tea.
But I was used to Mathan being grumpy. I wouldn’t know what to do if he was ever pleasant.
Probably send him to the Clan doctor to get a checkup, or make sure he hadn’t been body snatched by aliens.
The grumpiness, though, was why I marveled at the way he was handling Alanna. Out of everyone in my Clan, I’d expected Matteo and Emrie to be good with kids. Maybe Taco. Mathan was one of the last bears I’d thought would be good at this.
I turned back to the counter and checked the temperature of the formula again. It was just right, so I poured the formula into Alanna’s bottle and turned back, only to catch Mathan gazing down at Alanna with a gentle expression on his face.
“Wanna feed her?” I asked quietly, hesitating to break the tender moment between them.
Mathan nodded, his face going blank again as he headed for the kitchen door. “Sure. But let’s go out by the fire in the living room. Alanna feels chilled.”
I doubted it. He’d wrapped her well, but I wasn’t going to argue with him.
I got the fire going again, adding another log, while Mathan settled into a recliner, using one of the throw pillows to prop Alanna up to feed her.
She immediately started sucking down her bottle greedily.
Content now that she was being fed, her eyes nearly crossed as she slipped a small hand free of the blanket and reached up to touch the scruff on Mathan’s cheek.
I sat opposite them and leaned my head back against the chair cushion, exhaustion settling deep as worry for Piper crept in.
I missed her.
She’d only been here a few weeks, and she’d avoided me the whole time, but I still missed her.
I missed her scent as I walked around the Lodge.
I missed the sound of her movements, and the simple awareness my bear and I had of her when she was in the same space as us.
It had felt... right. Being with her felt right.
Which was one of the reasons it hurt so much that she’d avoided me for weeks, only to take off and leave me protecting the person who was the most precious to her in the world. It left a muddle of emotions tangled inside me, all snarled together like last year’s Christmas lights.
“You know,” I said finally, my voice low, “they say it’s worth it. Finding a mate. Having cubs.”
Mathan glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “Does it feel like that right now? With your mate who-knows-where, and after becoming a guardian overnight?”
I was spared trying to figure out the answer to that question when the front door opened and Emrie and Roarke came in, carrying what looked like a few dozen shopping bags each. I blinked. That was a lot of stuff for one little cub.
Roarke looked grumpier than usual, probably due to the late hour, but Emrie’s face lit up when she spotted us in the living room. She lifted her bags in triumph. “We got everything, Alpha!”
I got up immediately to take a few of the bags from her, earning Roarke’s grateful look.
I could tell he’d already offered and had been turned down flat.
I carried them to the couch and spread them all out.
After Roarke set his down on the couch as well, I quickly counted them all, just out of curiosity.
Thirty. There were thirty shopping bags here, filled to the brim with baby things.
“I think you guys might have gone overboard.”
Roarke chuckled. “You think this is bad?” he said in a low voice. “You should see our house. It looks like someone is using our home as storage for a baby superstore. Emrie is nesting.”
“I heard that, you tattle-tale dragon!”
I laughed, then yawned and shook myself to wake up a bit. It shouldn’t be possible to be this tired already. I hadn’t even had Alanna for twenty-four hours yet.
I glanced sideways at Roarke, and dragon flame flared in his eyes.
I knew it was a protective thing, and that he was noting my exhaustion.
To Roarke, all weaker shifters were under his protection, and he felt like it was his responsibility to take care of them.
Since he was the second strongest shifter in the world, that covered a lot of people.
Except the Prime. But in a way, him too, because he was our king.
I didn’t let it bother me, and I never felt threatened by it. One, I was a strong shifter in my own right, and two, he never tried to step on my toes when it came to my Clan. Also, Emrie was still one of my bears, so by extension, that made Roarke one of us.
It was odd, having a dragon in a group of bears and their mates. But that was the way life worked. The fact that he was more apex than me just required a little more care when he and Emrie came over to the Lodge.
“Looks like you got that bottle warmer set I was telling Alpha about,” Mathan said quietly, careful not to wake Alanna, who was just beginning to nod off.
But Mathan had a deep voice, and Alanna jerked awake at the sound anyway. She took one wide-eyed look at the newcomers in the room and started to whimper.
Emrie’s face softened as she reached for her. “Do you mind, Mathan? I haven’t met this precious baby yet.”