Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
VIVIENNE
Naked and disoriented, clutching my breeding belly with one hand and fending off branches with the other, I made my way home. It seemed to take hours before I saw the light still burning in the kitchen of Wolverton Manor, but at last I staggered through the front door and collapsed.
I lay there panting, in the entryway for some time, just trying to orient myself again. I felt like I had just woken up from a nightmare—I must have been sleepwalking and ended up by the front door.
But then I looked down at the bulge in my belly and knew this was no dream. The Beast had knotted me and bred me and then sealed me shut, in the way male Weres do, in order to keep his seed inside my womb where it could take root.
Oh God, was I getting pregnant with his baby even now? And if so, was it the Beast’s baby…or Kor’s…or both somehow?
I didn’t know but I made myself get up and stagger to the shower. There, I rinsed off the grass stains and dirt and the seed that had leaked out of me—but there wasn’t much. Though I rinsed and rinsed between my legs, the Beast’s seal held tight.
At last I had to admit I was defeated—if I was going to get pregnant with his baby, there was no stopping it now.
And I would have to live for the next few days with the breeding bump making me look slightly pregnant until all of his cream absorbed into my body and my belly went down on its own naturally.
I climbed out of the shower and dried off—being extra gentle as I patted the area between my legs dry. I was tender there—sore in a way I never had been after Carter took me.
I wanted desperately to lay down—even for a minute—but I realized that if I did, I might never get up again.
I didn’t know how many of the Pack Alphas Kor’s Beast might have killed but sooner or later, who ever was left was going to come looking for him and it stood to reason that Wolverton Manor was where they would search.
I had to get out of here and I had to do it as soon as possible.
I got dressed quickly in one of my roomier dresses and grabbed my purse and keys. My suitcase was already packed in the corner of the bedroom. I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at it and the rumpled bed with tears in my eyes.
I don’t want to go! My heart sobbed. I don’t want to go without him!
But what choice did I have? Where was Kor? Was he even still alive?
I didn’t know. I’d heard plenty of gunshots along with the screaming and ripping sounds under the trees. He might be dead, for all I knew. And though I wished I was one of those brave heroines you read about in romance novels that grab a gun and go out to rescue their man, I wasn’t.
I had no idea how to use a gun and there wasn’t one in the house, even if I had known how to use it.
Carter had quite a collection before he died, but I had sold it along with some of the other things he collected—I’d just wanted to purge the house of him.
Now I wished that I’d kept just one—maybe the revolver he was so proud of.
But even if I’d had it, I didn’t the first thing about loading it—let alone firing. I’d probably shoot my own foot off.
Even if I was armed to the teeth, though, I would be outnumbered many times over if I went back to the Moon Grove. I knew that Kor wouldn’t want that—he wouldn’t want me to end my own life when I had no chance of saving his.
So though it hurt every part of me, I took my suitcase and left the house. I drove the Mustang—which had become my favorite car of the ones Carter had left—down the winding roads. I left Wolverton Manor and Blackridge and the Pack all behind.
And I left Kor too.
I cried as I went, the tears rolling down my cheeks and wetting the top of my dress in an endless stream. But I left just the same. I might have new life growing inside me and even if I didn’t, I wanted to live…though I had no idea what I would be living for with Kor gone.
I was heading towards a new, uncertain future and I had no idea what it held for me. I only knew it would feel empty and sterile without my mate.