by Alexis Davie
Tammy reached for her own cell phone and grinned at Eve.
“But I can,” she said. “It’s not like he knows who I am. And he might just accept it.”
Eve shrugged. She didn’t think he would accept it. What would be the point of making a private profile and then accepting friend requests from strangers? Eve looked down at her cell phone as she searched for Nix again.
“Oh my God,” she said when she saw the exact same search results as before but now minus Nix’s profile. “He deleted his profile.”
Tammy looked uncomfortable suddenly. She shook her head.
“No, honey. Look,” she said, turning her cell phone so Eve could see the screen.
Eve felt as though her heart would break all over again. There was Nix, looking as sexy as ever in his profile picture, smiling out at her, his smile seeming to taunt her.
“He blocked me, didn’t he?” Eve said quietly.
“It looks that way,” Tammy said. She shook her head, looking irritated. “God, I hate this ghosting shit. Is it really so hard to say thanks for last night and just leave it at that instead of just ignoring someone completely?”
“Apparently, it is,” Eve said.
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to act more casual than she felt. There was no way she was going to tell Tammy just how attached she had let herself become to Nix over the course of one night.
“I guess I just have to put it down to experience. I thought we had a connection, but obviously to him, it was just a drunken one-night stand,” she said.
Even as she said it, she didn’t quite believe it. She didn’t know what was going on with Nix, or why he had ghosted her, but she knew that when they were together, he had felt their connection every bit as much as she had.
“I know that feeling,” Tammy said.
“It happened to you too? Was there something in the beer last night or what?” Eve said.
“Who knows,” Tammy replied. “But it isn’t quite the same for me. I woke up this morning and took one look at the guy I was with and just died a little inside.”
“He was cute,” Eve said. “And haven’t you liked him for ages?”
“Yeah, he’s definitely cute, but that was it,” Tammy shrugged. “There was no chemistry between us, and my God, was he boring. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so many months mooning over him and he turned out to be the most boring guy in the world.”
“So you’re going to ghost him, then?” Eve said, raising an eyebrow.
“No, that’s cruel. And besides, it’s not like he can contact me. I didn’t give him my cell phone number or my address and I gave him a fake last name.”
Eve couldn’t help but wish Nix had done that to her. She could have looked him up on social media and not been able to find him and just assumed it wasn’t his scene rather than getting her heart ripped out when he blocked her.
* * *
Eve sat down heavily on the closed lid of the toilet. Tears ran down her cheeks, blurring her vision, and her hand shook slightly. She wiped her tears away with the back of one hand and looked again at the little white stick in her hand.
Pregnant.
The word screamed out at her from the test. She could hear the word rattling around her head like a mantra. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. She cursed herself for being so careless with Nix, and she knew the baby had to be Nix’s because she hadn’t slept with anyone else since him. It was all she could do to go five minutes without thinking about him, let alone start dating someone else.
Eve shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Slowly, her tears turned to a smile. Maybe this was fate. Maybe that was why she had felt such a connection with Nix. Not because he was her soulmate or any of that stuff, but because they were unwittingly creating a new life together. Maybe that was the whole purpose of her meeting Nix and feeling so drawn to him. It was so that she could find herself here with a new life growing inside of herself.
She put her hand flat on her stomach, rubbing it over her belly. She knew she was only around four weeks along, but she imagined she could feel the kicks of her baby inside of her, and she smiled again. Tears still streamed down her face, but now, they were tears of joy. She had always wanted to be a mother, and while this wasn’t necessarily the time she would have chosen, or the way she would have wanted it to happen, now that it had, she felt only excitement.
She was going to have a baby. And she was going to give her baby everything. All of the things she hadn’t had as a child. She wasn’t deprived of anything materially as a child—her father had enough money for them to live comfortably. And he had showered her with love. But she could give her baby the one thing she had never had—a mother.
Her own mother had died in an accident when Eve was only four, and Eve could barely remember her now, although she still carried a photo everywhere with her in her locket, taken just two weeks before the accident, and she thought she remembered her mother singing to her when she couldn’t sleep. Her baby might not have a father, but he or she would have her, and she would love her baby enough for both of them.
4
Nix sat alone in his apartment. It was getting late and the room was lit only by the glow from the TV screen. Nix had the volume muted—he wasn’t watching the show; he was thinking of Eve. He found himself thinking of her almost constantly. The only time she wasn’t on his mind was when he was sleeping, and even then, more often than not, she popped up in his dreams.
Of course, he spent a lot of time thinking about the night they had had together, how Eve had reacted to his touch, how her body had become one with his. There were times when he could still taste her on his lips, on his tongue. But it wasn’t just that night that he thought about. He found himself thinking about how their futures could have been entwined together in any other circumstances. If she had been a dragon, or if he hadn’t been one, or even if King Xavier wasn’t such a threat and he could have maybe turned her into a shifter.
It didn’t matter how much Nix told himself that he was just torturing himself, that no amount of thinking ‘what if’ changed anything, he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. He spent his life in a state of half-arousal and half-despair as Eve took over his mind.
When he had left her apartment that fateful morning, he had thought it was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. How little he had known in that moment. Because having to ignore Eve’s message later on that day and block her on social media had been even harder, and neither of those could even touch how hard it was to spend every day thinking about her and not be able to reach out to her. What made it even harder was knowing that she had felt something for him too. Maybe she didn’t feel the connection like he did—she couldn’t know she was meant to be his—but the fact that she had reached out the next day even after he had sneaked away without saying goodbye to her told him that she had felt something for him. Something deeper than just a physical attraction.
Nix had debated going to King Xavier’s mansion and confronting him. If he could overthrow the king, he didn’t think the rest of Xavier’s pack would cause too many problems. King Xavier wanted to rule New York, to have his pack be the only dragon pack in the state, and most of the pack members went along with it out of a sense of loyalty, but most of them wouldn’t care one way or the other if other packs existed in the state.
He knew he couldn’t do that, though. His own pack was down to just twelve members after the last battle with King Xavier and his army, and Nix knew that even the most blasé members of King Xavier’s pack would fight to the death on the king’s orders. The twelve of them didn’t stand a chance against the army, and although right now Nix would have been willing to take his chances, he wasn’t willing to risk the lives of the rest of the pack for his own personal gain.
It had been Nix who had convinced the remaining pack members to lie low when King Xavier’s army had killed his parents. It had been him who had warned the pack members against staging a fight and risking their lives. It had been him who had t
old them to bide their time—that King Xavier would let his guard down eventually and they would strike then. He couldn’t tell the others he had done an about-face now, especially when he would have to admit it was all over a girl.
Nix was pulled out of his thoughts when the intercom sounded. He got up and went to the door. He pressed the talk button on the intercom system.
“Hello?” he said.
“Nix? It’s Mitch. I know it’s late, but I have something important I need to talk to you about. Two things, actually. Can I come up?”
“Sure,” Nix said, pressing the door open button.
He wondered what could be so important that Mitch had come to his apartment at this time of the night, or more accurately, this time of the morning. Mitch was his second-in-command of the pack. King Xavier’s last attack had taken out all of Nix’s family, and Mitch had been his closest friend for as long as Nix could remember, so while he wasn’t pack royalty officially, in Nix’s mind, he was like a brother to him and the obvious choice to become his beta.
Nix had asked Mitch to keep an eye on Eve for him. He was confident that King Xavier had no idea about Eve or how he felt about her, but he needed to be certain, and while he knew watching from afar and not being able to talk to Eve, or to hold her and kiss her, would be too hard for him, he knew he needed eyes on her. Mitch also kept an ear to the ground for any moves coming from King Xavier’s pack. He was friendly with a couple of rebels from King Xavier’s pack who were only too happy to feed him information in exchange for a handsome sum of money. And money was the one thing Nix had in spades. His parents’ estates had both been passed down to him when they had been killed, and he had enough money to ensure he never had to work again.
Nix pulled the apartment door open and went to the kitchen where he poured two large mugs of coffee, then headed back to the living room. He had just sat down when Mitch came in. Mitch was a little taller than Nix, but where Nix was well built, Mitch was on the verge of skinny. His fair hair was always a little too long, and he was constantly pushing it back from his face.
“Hey,” Mitch said.
Nix nodded at him, noting from the way he moved and the grave expression on his face that there was something seriously wrong.
“What’s up?” Nix asked as Mitch sat down opposite him and picked up his mug of coffee.
“Where do I start?” Mitch said. “I’ve spoken to Katie, one of the rebels from King Xavier’s pack. He’s ready to start moving in on you. He doesn’t have your location yet, but he has the full pack at his command, and it’s most likely not going to take too long to hunt you down. His plan is to execute you and take the rest of us captive, giving us the choice to either be killed, or join up with his pack.”
“I figured it wouldn’t be long until the king got restless and came looking for me,” Nix said, nodding his head. “For all our pack is so small now, the king knows he can never fully rule the state while we exist. And bear in mind he’s judging us by his own standards. He’s probably waiting for us to start turning humans and forcing them to join our pack.”
Mitch looked down into his lap for a moment and then he looked up at Nix.
“There’s talk from a few of the pack members that it might come to that,” he said.
Nix shook his head quickly.
“No way. It might come to the point where we recruit willing humans, but I draw the line at forcing someone to become a shifter and then risk their lives for us. It’s as good as enslaving them and I won’t go there, Mitch.”
“That’s what I said you would say. The pack get it, but they need a way out, Nix. They need some hope,” he said.
“Don’t we all,” Nix muttered under his breath. He looked at Mitch, speaking loud enough to be heard now. “I’ll come up with something. Now, you said there were two things. What else is there?”
Nix waited for Mitch to speak. He had thought nothing could be worse than learning the king had put a bounty on his head, but judging by the look on Mitch’s face, he was wrong.
“It’s Eve,” Mitch said.
Nix felt his stomach lurch with dread.
“What about Eve? What’s happened to her? Is she okay?” Nix demanded.
“Yes, she’s fine,” Mitch said quickly.
His words eased Nix’s mind a little, but the expression on his face kept him on the edge of his seat. Eve was okay and that was something, but there was more.
“As you asked, I’ve kept a close eye on Eve since the day after you were with her. She hasn’t so much as looked sideways at another guy since that day,” Mitch said slowly.
Nix felt his stomach lurch again. Had Eve finally found someone else? Was Mitch about to break his heart into a thousand tiny pieces? He wanted Eve to be happy, of course he did, and he knew he could never be with her, but the thought of another man touching her, another man holding her, made his skin crawl.
“Nix, Eve is pregnant,” Mitch said.
Nix’s mouth dropped open in surprise. That definitely wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. Why had Mitch spent time talking about her dating life first? And why… It all fell into place suddenly for Nix. Mitch had told him that so one thing would be clear to Nix. The baby was his. Eve was carrying his baby, the rightful heir to the pack.
“Who else have you told about this?” Nix demanded.
“No one except for you,” Mitch said.
Nix nodded.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
He fell silent for a moment as thoughts and scenarios whirled through his head. Mitch sat quietly, waiting, knowing better than to interrupt. It didn’t matter what ideas went through Nix’s head, only one kept coming back to him. He didn’t like it one little bit, but it was the only solution he could think of.
“I have to leave the state,” he said.
“What?” Mitch demanded. “You can’t do that. Xavier will take over the pack if you do.”
“I know. And believe me, that pains me more than I could ever describe. But it’s the only way to make sure Eve and the baby are safe. If the king’s pack are planning on taking me down, they have to have been watching us for a while. At the minute, Eve has probably only been on the periphery of their radars, but how long do you think that will stay true now? I can’t stay away from her if I’m so close geographically, not when she’s carrying my child. I’ll lead Xavier straight to her. And no doubt they’ve seen you watching her. That means they’ll use her and the baby one way or the other to draw me out of hiding. But if I leave the state, they have no reason to care about Eve. King Xavier will have got what he wants—full control of the state of New York. And that’s all he really wants. If I leave the state, it’s his.”
“But this state is our home, Nix. The pack is the legacy your parents left you,” Mitch pointed out.
“I know. And I hate that it’s come to this. But I would sooner Xavier get his hands on my state than any more of my family. It’s the only way. Please tell me you understand that,” Nix said.
“I do,” Mitch said. “But I’m not sure how the rest of the pack will take it.”
“They won’t be happy about it, but they’ll get over it. And I’ll be leaving them in very capable hands,” Nix said. He thought for another moment and then he nodded. “Okay, here’s what you need to do. I’m going to leave the state on the next flight out of here. Call a pack meeting and tell the pack you felt that the price on my head was too much of a risk to the whole pack. Say you ran me out of town and now you’re the pack alpha. Get the pack on your side, and then go to King Xavier. Tell him the state is his and join his pack.”
“What? I can’t do that to you, Nix,” Mitch said.
His protestation was weak. Nix saw that Mitch knew as well as he did that it was the only way to ensure there was no more bloodshed.
“Yes, you can. And that’s an order,” Nix said. “Team up with the rebels. Bide your time, and if you get a chance to take Xavier out, then do it. And until then, keep your head down and give Xavier no reason to do
ubt your loyalty to him.”
“That’s a good plan, Nix, and I get why it has to be this way. But choose someone else to take over the pack and I’ll come with you,” Mitch said.
Nix shook his head sadly.
“We both know there’s no one else who can get the pack to agree to this. They’ll rebel against anyone else who says they’ve taken over the pack from me. And that means they’ll want to fight. They’ll all end up dead, and I can’t have their blood on my hands, Mitch. I just can’t. They’re like family to me.”
Mitch nodded his head slowly, his face becoming set in a firm expression.
“If this is really what you want, then it will be my honor to lead the pack until you return. Because make no mistake, Nix—I will find a way to take Xavier down, and you can come back then, and the pack will be yours once more.”
“I can’t ever come back, Mitch. Not now,” Nix said.
Mitch raised a questioning eyebrow.
“If the pack find out about the baby, you know what will happen. He or she will be the rightful heir to the pack, and his or her children next, and so on. If I come back to the pack and they find out about the baby, then someone will turn him or her. You know it and I know it. And I won’t force my child to live a life of danger. They’re better off with Eve, living as a human.”
“How can you be so certain they will be human?” Mitch asked.
“Because I know guys who’ve made this same mistake as I have. Fallen for a human and gotten them pregnant. And the baby is always human. Sometimes, they carry a few dragon-like characteristics, but to become an actual shifter, they have to be turned. Do you really think my parents would have risked the pack dating humans at all if they thought there was any chance they could spawn a dragon baby outside of the pack?” Nix said.
Mitch nodded slowly.
“Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. So as long as you stay away and no one associates you with Eve or the baby, then the baby is safe.”