10. Mack
10
MACK
A t breakfast the next morning, I put more pancakes, eggs, and bacon on Aerin’s plate as usual and pretend not to notice her eyes narrowing.
“This is excessive. Even for you,” she says.
She’s beautiful, as usual, her braid hanging over one shoulder and a far too distracting dusting of freckles over her nose that I always want to kiss as I count each one.
I grin at her. “What do you want to do today?”
She takes a sip of tea and picks up her fork. “Uh, not sure. What happened yesterday?”
I mentally sigh.
I had hoped to avoid having to tell her the full extent of the territorial shifter, not that there’s even much to tell her with how little we found out.
After we ate dinner last night and went to bed, I was awake for another couple of hours thinking about what to do, but I fell asleep with no real answers and no clue how to resolve a problem I feel is forming.
“Mack?” Aerin prompts.
She still hasn’t eaten, and from the lines creasing her forehead, she’s worried.
“I have a problem and I’m not sure if it’s even a problem or I’m reading more into something than I should.”
She tilts her head, scrutinizing me. “Maybe talking it out would help. My dad did with Moses.”
Everything I know about her father, Douglas Boone, convinced me that he never leaned on anyone for anything. The man likes control far too much to cede even an inch of it to anyone. “Really?”
Aerin nods. “He didn’t exactly tell everyone, but although Dad made all the decisions, but occasionally, I’d pass by his office, or he’d walk into whatever room I was in and he’d be bouncing ideas off Moses.”
“I think that’s what I need,” I explain. “Bennett is a great beta. I couldn’t ask for anything more from him, but the way he thinks is similar to the way I do. I’m going to lay out everything that we saw yesterday, and I want you to tell me what you think.”
Instantly, she looks worried.
Taking her hand, I squeeze. “I’m not asking you to make a big decision about something and there’s no wrong answer. I just want your opinion.”
Aerin told me a lot about her childhood. She didn’t have much to say about anything. Her dad was controlling in the sense that almost all her decisions were made for her. Even when she started showing signs of being an omega, her dad sent her to another omega for training without even asking Aerin whether it was something she wanted.
Now she occupies one of the highest positions in a pack, and that comes with a whole host of responsibility. Like anyone who has been handed responsibility, she worries that she’ll do something wrong, a product of her childhood, but also courtesy of her cruel former mate who made her feel worthless.
She’s still adjusting to her role, doing great at it, but it can still be overwhelming for her.
“Okay,” she says, sitting up taller in her seat, and looking even more beautiful in her pale purple tank top. When she wears something formfitting, she likes to say that she looks like someone stuffed a pillow down her top, but I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
I take a few bites of my breakfast, quickly chew and swallow, since I’m starving, and then I tell Aerin everything that happened since we arrived at the hotel and the tracks leading out of town.
She sits quietly for several seconds, her expression thoughtful rather than the alarmed I thought it would be.
I eat more of my breakfast and prompt her to start on hers. She’s eaten three bites of her pancake when she puts her fork down.
“It sounds like a test,” she says slowly.
I blink, surprised. “What kind of test?”
I love watching her speak. She doesn’t rush. She takes her time figuring out what she wants to say, and she always has something valuable to say.
“Dad has been Alpha for a long time. Because he held the position for so long, no one could ever strike at him openly if they wanted him gone.”
“Yes?” I think I know where she’s going with this, but I wait for her to tell me.
“It sounds like someone is testing our responses.”
Which is worrying.
Testing defenses is the first step before attacking.
“But?” I prompt her when it seems like she hasn’t finished.
“It could be a lone shifter who thought they’d found somewhere nice to settle down, realized that another pack calls this place home when they picked up more of our scents and realized they couldn’t fight us all, so they left.”
“But it could also be someone testing our defenses before they launch an attack?”
She nods. “It could. Right now, I’m feeling emotional and helpless and worried. I want to think the worst because I’ve never been the most glass half full person in the world. But I know assuming the worst when we have so little evidence of something bad is probably just as bad a reaction.”
“I like the way you think, love.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
Partners. I never realized that’s what we were until now.
“What?” Aerin cocks her head as she studies me. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”
I take her hand and brush a kiss across her knuckles, turning her cheeks pink with pleasure.
“Just loving you and what we have,” I say. “Now eat. How about we get some gardening done this morning while we ponder this lone shifter? We’ll let our subconscious work on the problem for a bit.”
“I like the way you think too,” she says, smiling.
As the sun beats down on us, I slide my arms around Aerin, leave my palms flat on her rounded belly, and nibble her earlobe.
Her breath gushes out of her and she sighs, tilting her head back in a sign she wants more of my caresses. “Mack, we’re supposed to be gardening.”
“ Gardening ?” I mock growl, nipping her throat and drawing a sweet moan from her. “Who can think of gardening when he has a beautiful woman this close to him?”
Her lips tilt in a smile. “I don’t see her.”
I kiss her. “You must not be looking properly because she’s impossible to miss.”
Her expression softens as she frames my jaw with both hands. “I see a woman who cries at the drop of a hat. I’m sure you must be getting pretty sick of it. I know I am.”
She’d gotten tearful when we came out and saw how well the plants were doing. I don’t even want to imagine what it must be like to have hormones going into overdrive the way she’s going through.
Her frustration is right there in her eyes. I gather her in my arms and carry her to the plastic lounger Bennett will never get tired of warning me we’ll break. He’s probably right about that. Will I stop sharing it with Aerin? No.
“We’re going to fall,” Aerin warns me, reading my mind.
“Then we fall,” I say simply. “Aerin?”
Her expression instantly turns wary. “Yeah?”
“This is forever. You know that, right?”
When she pauses, I know I just read the situation right. She’s still carrying scars from Shane Dacre, and those scars—and fears—are leading her to think her tears and her hormones will eventually drive me away. She couldn’t be more wrong.
“Yes,” she eventually says. “I mean?—”
I kiss her. “I’m not going anywhere. My future is with you and Thumper, and yours is with me.”
She’s stopped warning me to stop calling our soon-to-be born little girl Thumper which is probably a mistake. I think that now, even when she’s here, and she has a real name, we’re going to be slipping back to that nickname frequently.
“But I cry every day. Sometimes even twice.”
“It’s just hormones, love,” I soothe her.
“You gave everyone a list of words they’re not allowed to say around me.”
I called a meeting too after Aerin had gone to bed, but she doesn’t need to know about that meeting.
“Not because I’ve had enough of your crying,” I reassure her. “But because it always breaks my heart when you do. All I want is to make you happy.”
She bursts into tears.
I gather her in my arms and stroke her back. “See! It’s not even ten in the morning yet.”
I kiss her hair, prepare to reassure her that it’s okay when the lounger gives way beneath us with a crack.
Aerin yelps and I do the same as I’m suddenly lying on a pile of broken plastic with Aerin in my arms. “Are you okay?”
She glances at the broken lounger and then at me. “I’m not sure why I should be surprised that it eventually happened.”
“When Bennett sees it…” I sigh, shaking my head. “He’ll be rubbing it in my face for days.”
Aerin smiles down at me, her eyes still glassy, her cheeks pink, looking soft and happy.
Suddenly, all the love I feel in my heart hits me so hard, it hurts. I look at her and I know I would do anything, give anything for this woman. Anything at all.
“Mack?” Aerin says softly.
I cradle the back of her head and smile at her. “Just amazed you’re mine.”
“Really?”
I nod. “Really.”
We study each other for a little longer. “Soon it won’t be just us anymore. The house will be loud. We won’t have quiet evenings on the lounger anymore.” She pauses. “Not only because we broke it. But?—”
“We’ll have other moments,” I interrupt her softly. “Some, I think, will be even better. Like taking Thumper for walks in the forest. Or when Thumper shifts for the first time and we go for a run as a family.”
So many other memories we’ll hold on to forever.
She smiles at me. “Do you want to get up? Your back must hurt lying on broken plastic.”
“With you smiling down at me like that?” I draw her face down for a kiss. “I don’t feel a thing.”
She’s smiling as her lips touch mine.
Then a ringing phone shatters the moment before I can extend the kiss.
I groan. “Ignore it.”
She breaks the kiss. “It could be important. Maybe it’s Ivy.”
Her expression is so hopeful that it’s clear she wants to speak to her.
If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have left the phone to ring out. But I get up, depositing her on the other lounger, and get to my feet. “Wait here. I’ll grab the phone and bring it out if it’s her.”
“My legs still work,” she calls after me.
“I didn’t say they didn’t. I’ll be right back.”
Inside, I pick up the still ringing phone and answer it. “Hello?”
There’s silence for a split second. Then the phone goes dead.
I pull the receiver from my ear. Assuming it was a wrong number, I hang up and move to go back outside.
Five steps later, the phone rings.
I pick it up again.
The second I’ve answered it, the line goes dead.
I check the last number called, but they’ve withheld it so there’s no way to know who it was.
I stare at the phone, recall the marks on the tree and dread forms in my belly. Reversing the call is pointless. Whoever called deliberately blocked their number.
Is this another test of our defenses? Or is this something else?
When it happens for the third time, I hang up and start to call Bennett.
“Mack?” Aerin calls from outside, sounding like she’s up and moving toward the house. “Was it Ivy?”
Not wanting to worry Aerin with potentially just a prank, I put the phone down, making a mental note to speak to Bennett about it later. “Wrong number, I think.”
But just in case it’s not just a wrong number, I’ll speak to the rest of the pack and have them stop by the house on a regular basis. If anyone is even thinking about causing trouble, that should make them hesitate.
Aerin appears in the doorway.
“How about a walk in the forest?” I suggest.
“ Now ?”
It’s been a while since we’ve been on one. Aerin gets tired easily, and she prefers to be closer to the house. Maybe it’s her nesting instincts in operation, but we go on fewer walks now. Our favorite thing to do has been to read in the den or garden.
“Just a short one. Maybe I can take you back to that tree I kissed you against when our dads were getting ready to kill each other the last time they stayed?”
Her eyes slide to the phone. “And you’re sure it’s just a wrong number?”
I tuck my cell phone into my back pocket, walk over to her, and wrap my arms around her. “Think so. Whoever it was hung up as soon as I answered.” I kiss her forehead. “Come on, let’s go out for this walk instead of killing more herbs. Bennett will never forgive us after all the help he’s given us.”
“Okay.”
I lead the way outside, but my mind keeps sliding back to the phone and I keep thinking there’s more to it than I want there to be.