by J. L. Wilder
“That’s not the same thing,” Jessica protested.
“Why not? Because you’re a woman and I’m a man?”
“No,” she said hotly. “Because you’ve been running wild for twenty years, Wes. You don’t want to start a family. You don’t want to be a father.”
He was quiet.
“Do you?” she challenged.
“I still have a right to know,” he said. “And you should have told me.”
“I should have broken my best friend’s confidence for you?” Jessica shook her head despairingly. “You see the position you two have put me in? I didn’t even know you’d slept together until she came back and told me, you know. Nobody felt like they needed to keep me informed about any of this. But I’m supposed to spill my guts?”
He sighed. She had a point. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I know I put you in a bad spot. And if you want to yell at me for sleeping with Lauren, I get it.”
“Sleep with who you want,” she said. “But it’s not fair to expect me to help you clean up the mess afterward.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Jessica went to the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of beers. She pushed one across the table toward him. Then she sat down and cracked the second one open.
They each took a long swig, saying nothing.
Then Jessica set her can down. “So,” she said. “Now you know the truth. What are you going to do about it?”
“Fuck if I know,” Wes admitted.
“You don’t want to be a father, do you?” Jessica asked.
“She’s not really giving me the choice,” Wes said. “She’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want me around.”
“But what do you want?” Jessica pressed. “Say she left the choice in your hands. What would you choose?”
Wes thought about that.
She was right—he had never wanted to start a family of his own. He had never wanted to be a father. The idea of coming back from his little oasis out in the woods and moving into a house in the city, raising kids among the members of this den—it was entirely unappealing.
“I guess I don’t want to be a father,” he admitted.
“So then you don’t need to talk to her about it again,” Lauren said.
“But don’t I have...I don’t know. A responsibility or something?”
“If she wanted something from you, she would ask for it,” Jessica said. “It’s not like she doesn’t know how to get in touch with you. If she wanted you to be involved, she wouldn’t have told me not to tell you.”
“I guess that’s true,” Wes said.
“Trust me,” Jessica said. “The best thing you can do is stay out of her way.”
“So I can just never come into the city now because she lives here?”
“Sure you can,” Jessica said. “But maybe give it some time. Let her settle in. Let the story she’s telling about that human man being the father spread around a bit.”
Wes nodded, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He didn’t like that story. Even though he wasn’t interested in fatherhood, something about it made his blood boil.
They’re my babies.
He knew that wasn’t a fair thing to get hung up on. He didn’t plan on claiming them publicly as his own, and it only made sense for Lauren to spread a story about where they had come from.
But there was something deep and primal within him that resented the idea of the entire den thinking that another man had been responsible for Lauren’s pregnancy.
Set that aside. Do the right thing.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll stay out of the city for a while. I won’t bother her.”
“If you need to come in for anything, come to my place,” she said. “I’ll get you what you need.”
He nodded and drained his beer.
It was the last cold beer he was likely to get for a while.
Chapter Thirteen
LAUREN
“So how are you?” Jessica asked.
Lauren sipped her tea. “I’m fine,” she said. “A little overwhelmed, being back with the den after so many years. But fine, for the most part.”
“Wes mentioned that altercation between you and Tina, you know,” Jessica said.
Lauren raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you’d spoken to Wes again. I thought he had left town.”
“He’s left now,” Jessica said. “But he wanted to talk to me first.” She hesitated. “He’s a little overwhelmed too, you know.”
“What does he have to be overwhelmed about?” Lauren asked.
“Well, you know,” Jessica said. “Now that he knows he’s the father—”
Lauren spat out her tea. “Excuse me?”
“What?” Jessica asked.
“He knows?” Lauren’s head spun. How could she have lost control of the situation so quickly? “How the hell does he know?”
“You told him!” Jessica sounded confused.
“I most certainly did not.” Lauren couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I told him that it was none of his business and to get out of my house!” That had only been a few hours ago. What on Earth had happened since then?
She could only think of one possibility.
“You told him,” she said to Jessica.
Jessica’s face was bright red. “But he already knew, Lauren! He came to my house and he said—”
She hesitated.
“He said what?” Lauren asked.
“He said that he’d spoken to you and that he knew he was the father,” Jessica said.
“But he didn’t say that I’d told him that,” Lauren surmised. “Because I didn’t tell him that.”
“Then why would he have said—”
“It was a trick,” Lauren said. “He played you, Jess. He acted like he already knew because he wanted to trick you into confirming it. And it worked.”
She felt sick. She had meant to take this secret to her grave. She had intended that he would never know the truth. And now, just a few days after her return to the city, he had found out.
This changed everything.
“I didn’t mean to,” Jessica whispered, burying her face in her hands. “Fuck. I’m so sorry, Lauren. I never meant to betray your trust.”
“You didn’t,” Lauren sighed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have known he was up to something.”
Lauren shook her head. “You’ve been in a really bad spot because of all this,” she said. “I knew when I asked you to keep the secret from your brother that I was asking a lot. Maybe...maybe it’s better that it’s out in the open. At least you don’t have to deal with lying to him anymore.”
“But it’s not what you wanted,” Jessica protested.
“Yeah, well, I guess I should have thought of that before I slept with him, right?” Lauren smiled wryly.
She was putting on a brave face for her friend, but inside, she felt like going to pieces. This changed all her plans. What was she going to do now? What would she say to people?
“You still can’t let anybody else know,” she murmured. “I don’t want anyone else to know.”
“Are you sure?” Jessica asked. “Cody and Tina are giving you such a hard time because they think your babies’ father is human, right? Maybe they’d lay off if they knew the truth.”
“Maybe,” Lauren agreed. “But I don’t want them to know.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want everyone to know that I was involved with Wes,” Lauren admitted.
“Why not?” Jessica asked. “Are you embarrassed?”
“Of course I am,” Lauren said. She ran a hand through her hair. “No disrespect to Wes, of course. But everyone here knows him. Everyone knows that he doesn’t want to have kids or be part of a family. How are they going to look at me if they know I’m pregnant with his children?”
“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “It was weird even for me.”
“Exactly,” Lauren said. “At best
, people will feel sorry for me, and at worst, they’ll think I’m a joke. As things are, they think I’m strange for having half-human babies, but it’s not like nobody’s ever done that before.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said again. “I really did mean to keep your secret, Lauren.”
“I know,” Lauren said. “I really don’t blame you. It was probably bound to get out eventually.”
“At least you know Wes will keep quiet,” Jessica said. “He isn’t going to want anyone to know that he’s involved in this.”
“You don’t think so?” Lauren asked.
“No way,” Jessica said. “Trust me. I bet you won’t see him again for months. You can forget that he knows anything about it.”
But Lauren couldn’t seem to put it from her mind. Even after Jessica had said her goodbyes and gone home, the thought stayed with her.
Wes knows.
It completely changed everything. How would she raise her children in the city knowing that their father—who knew that he was their father—was only a few miles away? What would she do when he came into town on one of his regular errands? Would she and her children have to walk right by him on the street, and would she and Wes both pretend that there was no awkwardness to that?
She was too restless to stay indoors. She had to go out and walk.
She made her way to the edge of town, thoughts racing through her mind about what it would look like to raise her children as part of the den now that Wes knew he was their father. She couldn’t seem to slow the thoughts down. They were coming too fast, one on top of the other, so that she couldn’t even process them.
And Lauren felt a sudden urge she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She had been living in the human world for years. She had allowed this part of herself to fall away.
But tonight, she wanted to be a bear again.
Chapter Fourteen
LAUREN
How long had it been since she had experienced the world this way? How long had it been since she had been this in tune with the core of who—what—she was?
She had wondered if shifting would be a challenge, but it hadn’t been. It had been easy, like riding a bike. It had been as natural as breathing.
She’d closed her eyes and reached deep within herself, remembering what it had felt like to be animal instead of human. How perfect and right it had felt when she’d shifted in her youth, allowing her instincts to take over, leaving the more rational part of her mind behind.
It was happening before she knew it.
She felt the familiar heat spreading from the core of her body, radiating outward into her limbs. She felt the sense of growing, expanding across her shoulder blades, around her torso, her arms and legs growing longer and thicker. Her back bowed forward automatically as it became more difficult to balance upright.
As her hands hit the dirt, she looked down and saw paws instead, and somehow that seemed exactly right. As if there had never been hands there at all.
The bear wasn’t impressed at having found herself again. The bear didn’t think about the fact that this could have been much more difficult. The bear was unconcerned about things like that.
She definitely wasn’t thinking about Wes anymore.
Instead, she inhaled, getting the scent of the forest around her. It felt like coming home. She’d been living in the city for so long.
Too long.
Now she could smell the rich, mossy smell of the moist earth beneath her feet. She could smell the trees around her—they smelled of life in a way her human nose couldn’t detect. She was aware of the movement of small animals in the brush around her, scurrying away, startled by the sudden appearance of a bear in their midst.
She was no threat to them. She had never been a hunter, even in her animal form. Her human side was far too dominant to allow her to do something like that.
But she had loved to run.
She wasn’t particularly fast, of course. Much faster than she was as a human, but nowhere near the speed of some of the other animals who dwelt in these woods. Her body was too bulky for that. She wasn’t built for speed.
But she was strong. Her human body would tire after a mile or two, but as a bear, she could run for hours without wanting to stop. And now her muscles were craving that exertion.
She pushed off, propelling herself into a slow run, enjoying the familiar sensations that had so long been absent from her life. The way the ground gave just a little bit beneath her weight, making the world seem softer than it did when she was human. The way she could hear animals scattering before her, fearing her, wanting nothing to do with her.
It was so easy to relax into these feelings of strength and power, and to forget altogether the things that had been troubling her before she had left home. A slight feeling of unease remained with her, but she ran harder, testing her muscles, pushing herself to the point of pain, and the thoughts were driven from her mind.
She was surprised to find that her bear body was acutely aware of being pregnant. As a human, it was possible to notice the changes that had occurred, the small amount of weight she had put on, but it was also possible to forget about what was happening inside her body much of the time.
As a bear, she didn’t think she could possibly have forgotten.
How can I be so aware of the difference? I haven’t been in this form in twenty years!
She didn’t know. But she did know that she could feel something. A whole new set of instincts was awake within her. She had never been a fighter, but she knew now that she would tear the throat out of anyone or anything that posed a threat to her because that threat would also be a threat to her cubs.
Strange. But it made her feel more powerful even than her normal bear form did.
She liked it.
She wasn’t sure how far she had run when at last, she came to a stop beside a stream. Without stopping to think about what she was doing, she waded in and submerged herself.
She came up human, water sluicing off her skin, tilting her head back so that her hair would be slicked out of her face.
Even in her youth, running around these woods as a bear, she had always been with other members of the den. Adults had taken her out with other shifters near her own age, or, when she was a bit older, she’d gone with groups of friends. She’d never run alone like this before.
The current of the stream was calm, and even in human form, Lauren was strong enough to swim against it. She paddled around for a while, enjoying the feel of the cool water against her skin and delaying the moment when she would have to turn and go back to town. She knew that once she did, she would have to start giving serious thought to the future. She would have to consider how she was going to raise her children with Wes, knowing the truth as he did, living so close by.
As long as she was out here, she could pretend that she didn’t have that problem.
She floated on her back, letting the current push her downstream just a little. Finding her way back would be no problem—she would just follow her scent.
Then she heard a voice. “Hey.”
Badly startled, she jerked upright and looked around to see who had spoken.
Wes was standing at the edge of the stream, watching her.
Chapter Fifteen
LAUREN
“Are you following me?” Lauren demanded.
She ducked beneath the surface of the water up to her shoulders so that only her neck and head were visible, painfully aware as she did so that the water was fairly clear here. She wondered how well he could see her body. Part of her wanted to shift back to bear form and take a swipe at him.
“Of course I’m not following you,” Wes said, leaning idly against the trunk of a nearby tree. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t know! You came to my house and I practically had to throw you out to get you to leave. And now you’re sneaking up on me in the middle of the woods. What am I supposed to think?”
“I’m not sneaking u
p on you,” Wes said, sounding exasperated. “It’s not my fault you didn’t hear me coming. I made plenty of noise.” He lifted a foot and pointed to the heavy boots he was wearing. “These aren’t quiet, you know.”
“What are you doing here in the first place?” she asked.
“I live here,” he reminded her. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be in the city. You know that I live in the woods. Maybe you’re following me.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She glared at him. “If I was following you, I wouldn’t be fucking naked in the middle of the water right now.”
He smirked. “I guess that’s true,” he said.
“Can you get out of here, please?”
“You’re twenty yards from my trailer. Where is it you want me to go?”
“I don’t know. How about back to your trailer?”
“I think you owe me a conversation,” he said.
“I don’t owe you shit, Wes.”
“Yeah, you do.” She could see the anger on his face now. “You’ve been lying to me. Those are my babies you’re carrying. Jessica told me the truth.”
“Yeah, I heard about how you tricked it out of her,” Lauren said acidly.
His face was unremorseful. “Neither of you was planning to tell me,” he pointed out. “If I didn’t find out the truth for myself, I would never have known.”
“I’m entitled to keep that kind of thing to myself if that’s what I want to do.” Almost unthinkingly, she brought her hand to rest on her stomach. She could feel the slight swelling between her hips, her body starting to change. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“And you really don’t think I have a right to know.”
“Maybe if we had a different kind of relationship,” Lauren said. “But we don’t, Wes. What happened between us was a one-time thing. You didn’t even stick around for a conversation afterward.”
“Did you want me to? You made it clear you were leaving back to Palentine right away!”
“That isn’t the point. The point is that we aren’t part of each other’s lives. I’m not going to tie myself to you just because you happen to be the one who knocked me up. And I don’t know why you’re being so weird about this, because you don’t want kids anyway. You should be thanking me for leaving you out of it.”