74. Deacon
Chapter 74
Deacon
It’s taken seventy-two hours to get my head on straight enough to bother being on the main levels with my siblings and outside of Henri’s office for more than ten minutes at a time. The ten-minute increments were to procure more leftovers and say hello to Ms. Gertie.
Spending time with Henri, though, seems to be the answer to my problem with my wolf and my gift. Ancestors disappear when I tell them to, the control back to being what I had at the cabin. Even Marielle and Zachariah are forced away with my command. It’s a breath of air when I was drowning.
Waking up late, I make my way down to visit Henri, planning on going back to working on the surprise I’ve been preparing for her, but as I walk past her office, something’s new.
I know her smell. I take comfort in it. The usual smell of the fur of a wolf and the sweet, tender smell of honeysuckle is off. Different but not wrong. Her scent in the bedroom was the same, but now, down here, as I walk past, something doesn’t fit, not quite right .
She’s on an important video call with the mayor of St. Paul, trying to come up with a plan for the Summer Solstice gathering he wants to host, and if I’m being honest, it’s one event I’m excited to go to, so interrupting her is not in my best interest.
Reading but not answering text messages on my phone means I know what the rest of my family is up to and how apologetic they are, but there’s only one person I’m ready to apologize to. I go back up to the second floor to the nursery, ready to check in on Thalia. Anxious, she’s sent me nursery inspiration pictures and is still fussing over choosing a paint color.
I’m at the door to the children’s playroom when it hits me.
The change in Henri’s smell is less than it is in Thalia’s, but it has the same undernote.
It can’t be. No. I’m going to be wrong. I shake my head, trying to dismiss the idea, but I can’t.
I wanted to spend some time with Thalia, but she’s not my mate.
Probably pregnant, my wolf pushes. He wags his tail in excitement like this is the best fuckin’ news in the entire world.
The worst thing is that I can’t even ask ‘How did this fucking happen?’ I know exactly how it happened. Some idiot didn’t even bother looking for condoms, and as Lena has drilled into my head a hundred times over, there was an eighty percent chance that she’d get pregnant. Being on suppressants for as long as she was should have given me a little bit of hope and decreased that percentage, her system maybe needing time to flush the drugs, but it’s me.
If there’s a bad luck lottery, I’ll win it.
Why the fuck didn’t I think about it?
Because we want a family and want this. My wolf cocks his head .
I’ll have to apologize to little red later. But I can offer an olive branch to her dumbass mate right now. I pull my phone out of my pocket and text my older brother.
Me:
Your mate is looking at paint colors again. Go and reassure her that you all picked the right ones the first time.
I’m already halfway down the hallway to the stairs when I get a reply.
Cade:
Thank you. On it.
Cade and I bump into each other when we’re on the stairs, and he grabs hold of my forearm as I walk past him. “You okay? You look a little spooked?”
I shake my head and lie through my teeth. “Ancestors pissed me off. It’ll pass. Gonna clear my head.”
“Be safe,” Cade says and hangs his head for a second. “I’m sorry.”
I don’t want to apologize to him yet, but being angry isn’t the right solution. Not apologizing to him and accepting his apology isn’t growth or the right thing.
“Me too.” I finally press out with a nod and divert the subject away from me. “Remind Thalia that yellow is a bad color for a nursery, makes kids crabby.”
“Will do.” Cade lets go of my arm and continues up the stairs.
We could be using that knowledge too. My wolf thinks of the third floor where there’s space for hypothetical children for me.
It wasn’t—it’s not supposed to be—in the cards for me. I swore off the chance of passing this awful sort of gift on to someone else. I had every intention of keeping it. But my siblings insisted that we carve out space just in case. Dinah assured me it wasn’t because she saw something... but Henri might be pregnant. And Dinah’s been known to sugarcoat things for me.
Might, I remind myself, continuing back downstairs toward the garage. I could still be wrong.
My heart is hammering in my chest. Not even the purr of my motorcycle calms my body.
Go to town, get the test, bring it back, and figure it out.
An hour and a half later, I went to town, stared at pregnancy tests for like twenty minutes, purchased two different kinds, and came immediately back home. The thundering drum in my chest hasn’t stopped yet.
Henri’s meetings are over, and halfway down the hall, her office door is open and waiting for me.
Get it together, Deacon. I try to draw deep and steady breaths, matching my steps down the hall. If you’re freaking out, she’ll freak out. It’s all my fault. I fucked up. Make it better.
Fucked right, my wolf corrects as he plays a tiny horn of victory in the back of my mind. She’s pregnant with our pup. She’s ours, and now we’ll have a family.
Whose side are you on? She might not even want a kid. I stuff him back down.
Mine. He laughs like it’s obvious.
I lean against her doorframe, watching her work, which I know she hates, but she’s just so damn sexy, her hair pushed back in her headband to keep it out of her eyes. It’s one pair of glasses away from a sexy librarian wet dream.
That might be why she’s pregnant. Sexy librarian dirty thoughts. Heat aside, the things I want to do to her should get her pregnant alone.
“Can I help you?” Henri growls, but it’s adorable.
The glare she gives me only makes me want to kiss her.
I know what I’ve done to piss her off, invading her space like this. She prefers I stalk her from a distance or just embrace being with her in the office. Obvious lurking makes her nervous.
Is there a right way to tell her this? I can’t come up with one. “You’re pregnant.”
Her head rears back. “No. I’m not.” She shakes her head, the glare falling away, eyes softening with fear. “No.”
“Yeah, Hen.” I focus on schooling my features to stay calm, at least on the outside. If she listens carefully, she’ll hear my elevated heart rate, and I’m sure my own fear scent will mix with hers soon. “We risked it, and the odds weren’t what we hoped.”
“Deacon, I can’t be. That’s impossible.” The fear in her eyes doesn’t fade, but she looks back at the computer in front of her and ignores me.
I was going to sit in the chair on this side of the desk to talk to her and logic it out, but with a couple extra steps, I change trajectory. Squatting next to her in the desk chair, I put my hand on her thigh. “Henri, it is possible. And it’s happened. I can smell it.”
She turns to face me with a huge sigh. “No one gets pregnant on their first heat after suppressants. It’s why they tell us to stop taking them a season before we want pups. Furthermore, scent changes are an old wives’ tale.”
I don’t argue with the proof being Thalia upstairs and how we all knew. Instead, I pull one of the pregnancy tests out of my back pocket and place it in her lap. “Then take the test and prove me wrong. ”
“Deacon, I’m busy. Too busy for this.” She tries to turn back from me to her desk, but I hold the chair still.
I lock my eyes on her, and mixed emotions hit me hard. I take a deep breath before urging her, “Hen. We’ll figure it out. But you’ve got to take the test.”
“If I take the test, will you fucking let it go?” she groans.
She hovers her hand over the box, afraid to touch it, like it might bite her. Maybe make her more pregnant.
“If you take the test and it’s negative, I won’t mention it ever again.” I agree with a very firm nod. “I won’t bring up pups until you do.”
She’s pregnant. My wolf laughs at my statement. She’s going to test positive, and you’re an idiot for letting her think there’s a chance she won’t.
I push him aside rather than pulling him forward and risking agitating her.
Standing up, I offer her my hand.
Henri stands without accepting my hand and clutches the box, the cardboard buckling a little with her grip.
Exiting her office, she goes toward the kitchen and the guest bathrooms that we have. I wrap my arm around her and guide her back toward the stairs that lead up to the second and third stories.
Whispering, I scold, “I’m not letting my mate take a pregnancy test in the pack’s public bathrooms.”
“It’s not going to be positive. You’re just wasting time.” She argues with me but doesn’t pull away from me.
Fuck, Hen. I want you to be right. I really do. Except there’s this tiny little flicker in my chest that disagrees.