Chapter Nine November
Idon’t hear from Matt. He can’t contact me.
I miss my “things,” but their loss pales in comparison to the fear and stress, the sadness and worry that had become so present that I thought they were normal.
The undercurrent of fear that he’ll suddenly appear never fully leaves, but it fades around Jasper.
If it’s co-dependency, I decide that I don’t mind.
We make breakfast together, even if “together” means I’m nursing while he’s cooking, or he’s singing Ari songs (very silly, somewhat gross songs, by the way) while I’m getting it on the table.
And he doesn’t complain about the fact that it’s five in the morning, because the news is on at six, and he has to get there before that.
We go with him, in his car, using a carseat base he borrowed from Harper and Alban Wymark.
Yeah, the lawyer. They live a few streets away, and the lawyer is Officer Walsh’s brother-in-law.
It feels like everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is ready to help.
I don’t feel isolated, even though I’m away from everyone I know.
Even though it’s only been four days, I feel sort of at home.
When Jasper is done with the news, he has places to go in town. Today, it's hockey practice, the opening of a new little book and gift shop, and a whole bunch of community events.
Ari and I go, too.
I’m safe around him, and he’s happy around me, and Ari.
.. Ari must be too young to miss Matt, or maybe there’s something magical about Jasper Wainwright.
He’s a baby wrangler. Ari naps like a champ on his shoulder, and I’ve seen him write up articles for The Pine Ridge Gazette with one hand while she sleeps in the crook of his free arm.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he loved her.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was falling in love with...
But that’s dumb.
When we finish Jasper’s rounds after the evening news at six, we come back home, eat, talk, and watch a movie together. Sometimes, I feel like the movie is just an excuse to go sit in front of the fire with him, closer each night, his hand warm and strong around mine.
Like him. Warm and strong round us. Protecting us.
THE MOON WILL BE FULL tonight. I can feel it. The wolf is awake, pacing under my skin, slavering because my mate, my mate who smells divine, like blood and milk, and herbs and vanilla, is near us.
Very near.
Push the toast down in the toaster and don’t move from the spot. My eyesight is at its keenest these three days. I see Loretta draping a blanket over herself to nurse the baby, fast and discreet.
Today, I let myself look, even though I’m ashamed of how my cock gets hard watching the flash of soft breasts with hard nipples, so big that they overflow her hand. How my eyes zero in on the reddish pink nipple bearing a single drop of milk.
I growl and turn the garbage disposal on to cover the sound of lust I’m making.
I want to fill her belly with me. Push my knot into her and give her siblings for Ari, give her the sweet, safe haven she wants with lots of children running through it. Want to feel her growing with our children.
I picture her, round in front, belly like a basketball that I can put my hands under when I take her from behind, and I have to press an icy cold gallon of milk against my crotch to shock me back into respectable behavior.
“Today, I have to do the morning news, and then I’ll be home all day. My evening work will start around four.” I give myself an extra hour to make sure they’ll be safe. “I have been dragging you with me everywhere, and you’ve barely gotten started on the housekeeping things I asked you to do.”
“You also keep vacuuming every night, and doing all the dishes,” Loretta chides, smiling at me from across the kitchen. “I think I’m safe enough to stay here today. I’ll unload the clean dishes and do the dirty ones, Jasper! Tonight, I’ll cook something and have it ready by four.”
I’m going to protest until I see the shine in her eyes. My domestic engineer. She loves this. There’s a quiet, peaceful joy I haven’t seen yet.
Well, not in her. I’ve seen it in others.
Nesting. My mate wants to make our den suitable for our family, and it gives her happiness to do so.
“You spoil me,” I sigh, bringing the plates of toast and scrambled eggs over to the table.
Her smile falters. “Matt used to say that. He used to love coming home to a clean house and a hot meal. Having a lunch packed full of homemade goodies, fresh cookies, and homemade bread every day. And then... the morning sickness hit so hard. I think that’s when he started picking on me. On the little things.”
My hand covers hers. “I won’t stop. Um. You know, people have different love languages, too. You sound like you love to do things for people. To give them your best effort, your time.”
“Mmhm.”
“Well, I like that, too. So, see, we’d be a good match, because I’d want to spoil you and the kids, and provide, and do the heavy lifting around the house.
You know, bringing in the firewood, taking care of the lawn, stuff like that.
And you’d tell me I was wonderful for reshingling the roof—in a fantasy world where I know how to do that without falling to my death,” I joke because I realize how serious my conversation got, how quickly it turned away from mere hypotheticals.
But Loretta picks up the thread of our fictional family life. “Then, after we’d brought you inside, chilly, but hopefully otherwise unbroken and in one piece, I’d have a big batch of beef stew nestled in creamy garlic mashed potatoes waiting for you, and we’d thank each other.”
“That’s right.”
I smile.
She smiles.
Loretta speaks again, and this time, the smile vanishes.
“Or you’d come home, and I’d be in sweat pants and smell like a sweaty gym sock, and the twins would have been sick all day, and Ari would be home from preschool, blowing green snot out of her nose, and I would feel like I was getting something.
Nothing would be ready. The house would look like the children’s pharmacy section barfed on the counter.
Toys would be everywhere.” Her eyes are darting.
Panic is rising in her voice. “Dishes would be piled in the sink. There wouldn’t have been any time to get dinner ready, and you’d be hungry and yelling, wondering why I couldn’t do anything—”
“Okay, first of all, there are two things wrong with this scenario. One— ‘you’d come home.’ I would have been there.
Three sick kids and you think you’re getting sick, too?
I’m sorry, I only need to be at the studio for a couple of hours.
I would be here to help you with the vomitando grande twins and the snot-nosed big sister. ”
“Wh-what’s the other thing?”
“Several, in a bundle. You’re worried about dinner? Are we suddenly broke? Am I also afflicted with the plague?”
“No...”
“Then I can whip up something. I’m not this size without being able to feed myself,” I say, pointing to my impressive physique.
(I’m allowed to brag when it’s comforting my mate!) “Or, I can order takeout. The Jade Forest has dumplings to die for, there’s a pizza shop, a new Italian bistro, and The River House’s to-go menu is substantial.
Secondly, me, yelling at you? In front of our kids?
No. Not okay. Shows disrespect on so many levels, and I’m not like that.
Third, yelling at you, at all? When you’re trying your best with a house full of sick kids?
Or even just a day when time got away from you?
What kind of ungrateful bastard am I in this world?
Because I’m gonna talk to the other me and have a come-to-Jesus moment with him. ”
Loretta’s smile creeps back, first one corner, then the other, melting my heart.
“You don’t just look like Superman, you’re a super hero, too.”
“Nah. Just the mild-mannered reporter.” I wink. “Also, I’m not so great. If you knew all there is to know about me, you’d pick someone better.”
“I don’t think there is anyone better. I just... I wish our timing had been different.”
The penny has officially dropped. We both realize it, I guess. Our friendship and my protectiveness have an undercurrent of attraction, of companionship that runs towards the romantic.
We both finish breakfast in silence.
When I’m going to leave, Loretta runs to the door, the baby on her hip, and she kisses my cheek. I kiss Ari’s head and gaze at Loretta in surprise. “What was that—”
“When you come home, tell me the bad things. Tell me why I’d leave.”
Because one bite from me would turn you into a monster.
Because the wrong provocation and missing potions could turn this into a very different kind of Big Bad Wolf scenario.
Because our kids would have werewolf DNA.
It’ll be weaker than mine, and mine is weaker than my dad’s.
Not being bitten directly makes you much less of a danger, but the danger is still there.
I hesitate, then punt. “Well, I make up songs about pooping spiders and flatulent ponies and sheep.”
Loretta laughs. “Yeah, but Ari loves them. Is that it?”
“Uh. I’m pretty useless when I’m doing my overnight sessions three nights a month.”
“But you’re not out of town, right? You’d still be around in the morning and the daytime?”
“Mmhm.”
“Lots of husbands travel for work. This is better.”
Husbands. She said it. Not me. The pretense is over, even if our timing sucks.
She realizes it, too, and she blushes like a beauty queen. My wolf is nipping and biting me inside, begging me to take some kind of action.
“Could you call Alban today? Make sure the papers arrived?”
“His cousin, Alain, was personally going to drive them to Matt. I’m so impressed with the service.
And Ardy told me that my temporary order of protection is still in effect, and because Pine Ridge’s court docket isn’t typically busy, the hearing can take place next week, on the 12th.
Best part? Because Ardy and Alban convinced the judge that I’m at credible risk for harm, I get to appear on a screen, not in the courtroom. He still won’t see me in person.”
I nod, even though I was there with her when we stopped by the police station yesterday, and I heard the same thing. “That’s wonderful.”
“It’s looking that way, after all,” Loretta muses, and I fall in love with the way she looks at me, like I’m a shooting star that she happened to catch. I take a risk. I bend to kiss her cheek, and her head turns, like magic.
Lips meet. Moons rise, wolves howl, blood boils—and you’d never know it. It’s a three-second kiss that leaves us both wide-eyed with surprise, and grinning like idiots as we wave goodbye.