Kip arrived at his house, and he headed straight for the kennel. Everyone was in their human form, but it was easier for him to have them all gathered together in a place where they could all see and speak together, and the house wasn’t the right place.
When he came through a regular door next to the rubber flap on the wall, he looked around at the gathered crowd and gave a nod to Luca. “Thank you for getting everyone here on such short notice. I appreciate it.”
Kip walked to the platform at the front of the hall, and everyone pulled up a chair to sit and listen to him speak. His grandfather, who looked to be in his fifties or sixties in human years, was already seated on the platform and was waiting for him.
Kip’s heart began to pound as he faced his pack, and he had no idea what he was going to say to them. He only knew that it had to be said.
Clearing his throat, he began. “Pack Ardelean! I have some news that I must share with you, and then we need to discuss it. Please hold your questions and comments until I have told you everything.”
They waited patiently, and he began. “I met a girl a few months ago, before Petra and her family arrived her. She is a human girl.”
There were a few sharp looks among his mates, but not a word was spoken. “The simple truth of the matter is that I have been having an affair with her since before Petra arrived, and I’ve come to care for her. I am in love with her.”
Gasps sounded throughout the pack as their eyes went wide with shock. Kip cleared his throat a second time and did his best to speak with an even tone. “She’s pregnant with my child.”
Protests, outcries, and questions erupted from the people in front of him. Kip looked around at the crowd and saw that he was going to have to find a way to bring some order to the chaos swirling around him. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. Everyone stopped speaking and arguing all at once and looked up at him.
“I have more to say. I realize what a tremendous honor it is to be in my position with what I have before me, but I don’t want Petra. I want my lover and my child that she is carrying within her.” Kip sighed. It was done. They knew. There were no more secrets that he was keeping from his family, nothing that they should know that they didn’t, and even though it was very clear to him as they all started arguing and yelling amongst each other that they weren’t happy with the news, he had a sense of relief inside him that he had been missing, and with his secret out, he knew that he would finally feel at peace with them all.
The massive pack before him was growing louder with their fight amongst each other, and Kip whistled again, shattering the noise until there was silence. He gave them all a sharp look and they wrestled with knowing that their prince expected better of them and the feeling of disrespect toward their prince because he had broken a time-honored tradition of never, ever mating with a human.
Kip turned to his grandfather and nodded. “King Nicholai. What have you to say?”
Nicholai stood up and looked out over the sea of confused, saddened, and angry faces before him. “I say that this is an unusual and complicated situation, and it requires some thought.”
Just then Dimitri walked in from the outside door and spoke loudly and clearly to all of them. Every face in the entire hall turned toward him to hear him speak.
“Unfortunately, there is no time for thought.” Dimitri’s narrowed gaze took in all of them. “The Stroian have learned of the situation and are coming to handle it.”
The entire pack was shocked. Luca stared at Dimitri. “All of the Stroian?” he gasped in astonishment.
Dimitri nodded solemnly. “All of them. They will be coming here to convene, in this very hall.”
Kip stared at his pack, his mind a tumble of questions. “But how did they even know about it? I only just found out myself, and the only people that I’ve told are all of you, just now!”
The crowd was about to launch into another debate when Kip’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket and looked at it. Every eye in the room was on him.
He answered it and everything in him froze at the sound of the terror in her voice. “Kip! Kip, you have to come fast!” she was sobbing and hysterical. “A wolf attacked me! I need you here now, please, please come!”
Kip’s heart stopped for a full second as he tried to gather himself. “I’ll be right there. Don’t move!”
He ended the call and all eyes were on him. “She’s been attacked by a wolf. I’m going to her now. We can talk this out when I return.”
The pack was horrified at the news of the attack. “That’s against the law!” someone shouted. “Babies, children, and pregnant females are never to be touched!” shouted another. The debate was relaunched, and Kip didn’t stop to listen, discuss, or argue. He zipped through them all and ran to his car as fast as he could. Moments later, he was shooting down the highway toward Seattle.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kip went straight into the house when he arrive, immediately crunching over the broken glass that covered most of the floor in the living room. His heart pounded violently inside of him.
“Janine! Janine!” he cried out, and he heard a sound from the kitchen. He hurried to her and found her sitting on the kitchen floor, covered in blood. Panic flooded through him, searing his senses.
“Oh my god… oh my god… Janine are you…” He knelt down beside her to try to assess the damage swiftly.
“I’m okay.” She shook her head and waved her hand. “It’s not me. I’m not hurt.” Tears flowed in steady streams down her cheeks.
Kip was confused. He blinked and looked at her in surprise. “Well, if it’s not you, then where did all this blood come from?”
She looked down into her lap, and that was when Kip noticed for the first time that she was holding a bloody towel that was soaked in blood and wrapped around something. “What… what is that?” Kip asked, sniffing the air. He knew immediately. “Oh no… Snowball.”
Janine nodded and began weeping anew as he drew her to him, and she cried on his shoulder. “It is! It’s Snowball. Right after you left, I felt this… this coldness. Some kind of awful…” she sniffed, and he wiped at the tears on her cheeks, “dread, like I was in mortal danger! I’ve never felt anything like that in my life! It was horrible! It was like death was here for me! I don’t know how I felt it; it was so bizarre.”
Kip looked at her in relief. “It was the baby. This baby does have my werewolf genes. You have heightened senses because of the baby. I read about it.”
“Well, thank god because I was so afraid of the feeling that I went into the kitchen and grabbed this silver dagger.” She pointed to the bloody silver blade on the floor beside her. “I don’t think I would have ever known if the baby hadn’t let me know, and we would both be dead!” She began to weep again, and Kip held her shoulders in his hands and did his best to calm her down.
“Please, Janine, tell me what happened,” he pleaded, fairly certain that he knew most of what happened just by the look of the place, but he wanted factual details.
Janine did her best to calm herself, and then she shared the story with him, though her emotions were rioting all throughout her. “I grabbed the blade from the kitchen. It’s a silver blade, and I remembered what you told me about silver being lethal to werewolves. I didn’t know if it was a werewolf, but I thought it didn’t matter if it was human or werewolf or something else, a pure silver dagger was going to be my best protection. I’ve never felt so scared and so close to death in my life, and that was before the wolf jumped through the living room window!”
She began to tremble in his hands, and he looked back over his shoulder at the big open window. It was a window no longer, but more a gaping hole in the wall, letting in everything from the outside.
“Then what happened?” he pressed further.
“Then this huge wolf crashed through the front window and attacked me. I was fighting it off with the dagger, and I got a good clean cut in or two, I think, before Snowball just came rippi
ng out of the kitchen and jumped on its face, clawing it and biting it. She was such a little thing, but she was hellbent to take the wolf down. I couldn’t believe it. They were fighting and then all of a sudden it clawed at her and the next thing I knew her body was in its jaws and it just…” she wept some more as the fresh memory carved deeply at her heart, “chomped its fangs down on her and crushed her. This is going to sound weird, but the wolf threw her at me. I know that’s what it was doing; it wasn’t like the wolf was tossing her aside. It threw her right at me, and suddenly it was like I could hear the wolf’s thoughts, and it was telling me, ‘this is what I’m going to do to you’, and I freaked out and tried to cut it again with the dagger, but it just turned and jumped out of the living room window again. It took off into the woods and hasn’t been back since. Does that sound weird? That I could hear its thoughts?”
Kip shook his head. “No, that doesn’t sound weird at all. I can communicate with other werewolves by speaking, but I guess if you aren’t a wolf, then would sound like thoughts. I’m betting that was the baby again, making that possible for you by being inside of you. I am pretty sure we’re going to have a werewolf and human baby on our hands.”
Janine looked up at him in desperation. “What am I going to do? What if it comes back? I’m so scared!” Tears filled her eyes again and rolled down her cheeks as Kip held her closed and stroked her back.
“I know you are. I know. Please don’t worry. I’m going to take care of this,” he promised with absolute certainty.
He stood up and lifted her to her feet gently, and she laid Snowball, wrapped in a kitchen towel, on the floor. Kip looked at her seriously. “Go and pack whatever you want to take with you. Anything of value, anything important to you. Pack whatever clothes and things you need. I’m not leaving you here to wait for another attack. I can feel the danger here. It’s not safe. Let’s get going. I’ll help you.”
Janine shook her head in panic. “I can’t leave! I have nowhere to go!”
“I do,” Kip answered sternly. “Now, go pack.”
“Where?” she asked stubbornly, worried about herself and the new life growing inside of her. “What place do you have that will be safe for me to go to where that wolf won’t come after me again?”
He gave her a half-smile. “You’re finally going to see my house. Let’s go.”
Kip helped Janine pack the things that she needed and wanted, and the moment she was ready, he put her in his car and drove her to his house. She was nervous all the way there.
“Did you tell your family about me?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“I did,” he answered, reaching for her hand and giving it a squeeze as he drove.
Janine held her breath. “What did they say?”
Kip was honest with her. “They said that they need to think about it.”
“They need to think about it? Oh no. That can’t be good. I’m so nervous to meet them. I hope that they like me,” she spoke just above a whisper.
Kip sighed. He was going to have to tell her. There was no way around it. “Janine, there’s something that I have to explain to you. Something that you don’t know yet, and it’s going to change the way that you’re received at the house.”
She narrowed her eyes at him curiously. “What is it?”
“Seventy-three years ago, on the same night, there were two babies conceived. It was a full moon night. That’s a rare thing. Then, seventy-five days later, again on the same night, those two babies were born into this world, and it just so happened that there was a full moon on that night too, which is an even rarer thing,” he began. Janine listened closely to him.
“Because this was such a very special and rare event, the families of the two people decided that since their regions, or I guess you might think of it as a kingdom, were side by side, they would betroth the two babies, a girl and a boy, and when they were adults, they would marry and join both regions and both packs, creating a super pack. It is also widely believed that these two people would have very special children, as they were such extraordinary births themselves.” Kip let out a sigh, knowing that what they were both headed into was not going to be easy.
Janine watched him as suspicion grew on her face. “Who are the two babies?” she asked, fearing the worst.
Kip held his breath a moment and then reached out a hand to take hers, holding it gently in his. “Myself and a woman named Petra. We were conceived on the same full moon night, born on the same full moon night, and our families decided that we needed to be married. There is a special full moon coming up in a couple of weeks, and that’s the moon that we are supposed to marry under.”
Janine yanked her hand away from his and glared furiously at him. “You’re engaged to another woman? You’ve been engaged to another woman this whole time and you dated me anyway? You made love with me anyway? What were you going to do? Just see me and have a fling and then break up with me and go marry her?” she shot at him bitterly.
Kip sighed in exasperation. “It’s not like that, okay! I don’t want her! I don’t even like her! Listen to me, Janine, I didn’t choose her! She was chosen for me the night that I was born by people much older than me! She was never my choice! I chose you! I fell in love with you, and I want to be with you. I can’t even begin to tell you how glad I am that it’s you carrying my baby! I want you, Janine, no matter what anyone else says or what rules and traditions and things they try to control my life with, that’s the truth and the way it is.”
Janine smiled a little and eyed him curiously. “You don’t like her?”
Kip shook his head adamantly. “Not even as a friend. I mean, I’m sure she’s nice, but she is just not my cup of tea. I wanted to tell you about it so that you could walk into the house knowing what’s going on and not be blindsided by it. She and her family came here two months ago, and they’ve been staying in one of the other houses on our property. The idea was that we would spend these three months getting to know each other, kind of a courtship, and then we would get married under the full moon at the end of the three months. Well, we’re closer to it now than ever and I still don’t want anything to do with her. All that I want is you. I love you, Janine Ellison.”
She reached her hand back to his and curled her fingers around his. “I love you too,” she told him with a smile. Then she grew curious about something. “So, you don’t want the lady Petra, but does she want you?”
Kip nodded. “Yeah, she does. She loves this idea of making a super pack, and she’s into me, but I won’t talk to her or hang out with her, so she’s mad at me right now. She thinks I’ll change my mind about her once we’re married.”
Janine’s face grew still and stoic as she stared at him. “You said that like you’re still planning on marrying her. I know you said you don’t want to, but you never said you aren’t going to. You aren’t going to marry her, are you?” she asked with all of the courage in her. She didn’t want to ask the question, and more than that, she didn’t want the answer, but she needed to ask it because more than anything, she needed to know it.
Kip sighed and shook his head. “You’re right, I don’t want to, but because this is pack politics that have been in the making for seventy-three years, I’m not sure what my choices are and if I’ll be able to get out of it. The pack is discussing it. We have things to figure out and go over, and you are a now a huge part of that change and the decision about what will happen because you’re carrying my baby. A human and a werewolf procreating is even more rare than Petra and I being conceived and born on the same nights. You’re actually an anomaly. I couldn’t find another instance of a human and a werewolf mating in this millennium.”
Janine was shocked. “I can’t believe all of this. It’s crazy. It’s so crazy, and just three months ago, my life was normal. Now… now I’m vying with some werewolf queen for my lover. It’s insane. I’m going to have to face all of that when I get to your home, and that’s a lot to face.”
Kip knit his brow and
looked over at her sympathetically. “I’m really sorry to tell you this, but there’s more.”
Her mouth fell open. “More?! Are you kidding? How could there be more?”
Kip took another deep breath. “The Stroian are coming to discuss the issue of your pregnancy.”
She lowered her brow some. “Who are the Stroian?”
“They are a governing body over all of the wolf packs and regions in the United States. There are ten regions. The Olympic pack, which is us, and we’re led by a king, my grandfather, and that region is the entire Pacific Northwest to the California border. Then there’s the West Coast pack, which is California and Nevada. They have a king as well. King Grigor, and he’s Petra’s father. He and his packs are staying on the mountain with us for the courtship. Going eastward geographically, there is the Southern Desert pack which is the Arizona and New Mexico area roughly, led by a queen. The Mountains packs, which is about the area of Colorado and Utah; they are also led by a queen. Then the Texas pack, who have a king.”
P.S I'm a WOLF! (Paranormal Shifter Romance Book 1) Page 11