by Amira Rain
*
Dominic raised the rock higher, and I covered my head, screaming and struggling, but I couldn't get away. He still had my upper arm locked in a vice grip. Expecting a powerful blow to crack my skull at any second, I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut. At that moment, I heard a loud snarl, and then suddenly, I fell backward, feeling Dominic release my arm.
Opening my eyes, I landed on my rear in the sandy, rocky soil near the jungle, terrified that the snarl I'd heard had come from Dominic. I thought maybe he'd decided to kill me by ripping me limb-from-limb or something and had shifted into wolf form to do it. However, the snarl hadn't come from him.
Massive and silvery in his wolf form, Eric was charging toward us, charging at Dominic, specifically. Gasping, I scuttled away toward the trees just as Dominic shifted into a large wolf with dark, nearly black, fur. Instead of waiting for Eric's attack, he charged out to meet him, snarling and snapping his powerful jaws. The sound he and Eric made when they collided wasn't just the thud I'd expected; it was more like a boom.
Immediately, they both seemed to recover from the impact and began fighting, tearing at each other with their knife-sharp teeth. Soon, they were both bleeding, their fur becoming matted with blood in many different spots. Because his fur was so dark, the patches of blood staining Dominic's fur appeared as a dark maroon color, almost a purple. Though before very long at all, he and Eric were fighting so fast and furiously, I couldn't even see any blood spots on either of them at all. Their bodies had become a blur of silver and black.
I stood up to watch, rubbing my arm where Dominic had squeezed it, and found that my legs may as well have been wet noodles. I took several deep breaths, filling my lungs with salt air, in an attempt to steady my legs and also to stop an all-over trembling that was making my hands shake like leaves.
Meanwhile, Dominic and Eric were still ripping each other to shreds, their fight slowly moving toward the pale golden sand of the beach. And it was there that Eric seemed to take the upper hand, slashing at Dominic with one large, long-clawed paw before pinning him on his back and clamping his strong jaws around his throat. He then shook him like a rag doll, eliciting some sort of half-strangled gurgling howl from Dominic.
With my trembling lessening, I heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God."
Suddenly, Nate was charging onto the beach, too, fangs bared, and he joined the assault on Dominic, clamping his jaws around one of his legs. After that, things got very vicious and bloody quickly, and I turned my face away.
Soon it was all over, just as more of Eric's wolves stormed the beach. Eric immediately shifted into human form near them, shouted that Dominic was dead, and instructed them to now go after Dominic's men, who were still in the jungle near Black Lake. The pack took off, all except Nate, who'd now shifted into human form, too, and he and Eric raced over to me, both of them bleeding from a few cuts and scrapes on their arms and necks, and both of their faces masks of concern and anxiety.
Right before they reached me, I called out, wanting to assure them I was okay. "I'm completely fine. Just a bruise on my arm, but I'll live, I'm sure."
They pulled me into their arms, both of them groaning with what sounded like relief.
Eric pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then pulled away slightly to look at my face. "Are you sure you're okay?"
I nodded, instantly tearful for some reason. "Completely fine. And I'm so sorry I didn't tell you about meeting with who I thought was my ex-fiancé Jason. I don't know how much you heard on the phone, if that was you, but Dominic tricked me. He made me think he was Jason, and I thought I could trust him. He made me think Dominic would hurt him if I told you. I'm so sorry, Eric. I just really thought he was Jason."
Eric kissed the top of my head again, shushing me. "That was me on the phone, and I heard enough to realize what was going on. And I do wish you'd told me about meeting with 'Jason,' but you didn't know. I didn't know what he was capable of, and I should have. But it's all over now. Now the only important thing is taking you back home so that Bev can look you over and make sure you really aren't injured any worse than a bruise."
I rolled my misty eyes, fighting a smile. "I don't need Bev to look me over. I'm a doctor myself, remember? And I promise you, other than grabbing my arm, Dominic didn't even touch me. A bruise is my only injury. Although...." I paused, looking from Eric to Nate, then back to Eric. "There is something else going on with me physically lately, but it's not an injury. I've been trying to tell you both about it for over a week."
Eric frowned, drawing his dark brows together. "What is it? What's wrong?"
I took a deep breath, glad to be able to finally say what I'd been planning to for days. "I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant already. It actually probably happened very early on...either our first night together, Eric, or the first night the three of us ever shared my bed together."
Eyes wide as saucers, Eric and Nate looked like they'd both seen a ghost. Either that, or had been slapped completely out of the blue. Their expressions might have been comical, if I didn't know what they were both thinking.
Eric asked the question first. "And you don't know whose baby it is yet?"
I shook my head. "No. No, I haven't even looked at the equipment in the lab to run it yet. I'll honestly probably have Bev and the technicians do it. I just don't know if I have the nerves or the patience to do it myself right now. I just want someone to do it for me and tell me the results."
Eric glanced at Nate, then returned his gaze to my face, nodding. "Let's get back to the village."
He soon shifted back into wolf form, and I rode back to the village on his back, as if he were a horse. Nate, who'd also shifted back into wolf form, ran parallel to us, through the jungle, on alert for any of Dominic's men who might be attempting to flee from the area of the lake back to Wulfric Palms.
Over the next several days, while Bev and the lab technicians set up the equipment for the paternity test, then began the process of running the test twice, just to be sure the results were accurate, I had thoughts of talking to Nate privately, to tell him how I felt. I'd begun thinking that even if he turned out to be my baby's father, it wasn't fair to him not to tell him the truth, that I cared for him deeply, but I loved Eric.
However, Nate entirely steered clear of me after the fight at the beach, only checking in on me once or twice, and even then, only when Eric was with me, as if he didn't want to talk to me in private. At least not until the day that Bev was expected to deliver the paternity test results.
Too nervous to do any sort of work or see any patients at the clinic that day, I was at home picking at some lunch by myself when Nate came over. Eric was taking a run through the jungle in wolf form to clear his head and calm his nerves before the results.
I ushered Nate inside the bungalow and invited him to follow me into the living room, but he declined, shaking his head.
"This will only take a second."
"What will?"
He looked deeply into my eyes for a long moment. "Saying goodbye to you. I'm in some pain, Liz, and I don't want this to go on a moment longer than necessary. Please just respect that, and let me go quickly."
"But what are you talking about? What do you mean you're saying goodbye to me? We haven't even gotten the results back yet, so-"
"Doesn't matter. I'm going to live with either the dragons or the bears for a while, and the results of the test won't change that."
Shocked and incredulous, I couldn't respond right away. "But...what if you're the father?"
"It really doesn't matter, except that my heart might hurt a little worse than it already does. But regardless of who's the biological father, your baby will grow up with Eric as his or her father, since he'll be your mate for life. I'm not blind. It's obvious you love him, and you want a future with him, so he should be your mate regardless of what the paternity test says.
“And, yes, I know...Eric's a fair man, and you're a kind woman. I know that if the child is biologically mine, the two
of you would let me be a part of the child's life, but I just can't do it that way, Liz. I can't hang around the village and watch my alpha and the woman I love raising my child as a happy family of three, with me looking in from the outside, maybe having time with my son or daughter on the weekends. I just can't do it."
"But-"
"My mind's made up. If the child is biologically mine, maybe he or she can visit me at some point, so we can have some sort of a relationship. But it can't happen here. Too painful. And now...I'll ask you to please let me go, without another word. I can't talk to you any more, Liz; I can't stay here a minute longer. I just came to say goodbye."
With his eyes becoming decidedly pink and shiny, Nate leaned in and pressed a kiss against my cheek. He then immediately turned, went through the doorway, and strode away from my bungalow and out of my life, leaving me sniffling in the foyer, with tears of both loss and gratitude streaming down my face.
After not even a half-hour had gone by, Bev sat Eric and me down in my living room and delivered the news that Eric was, without a doubt, the biological father of my unborn baby. I dissolved into tears for the second time that day, burying my face in his chest while he cleared his throat repeatedly with his eyes just as pink and shiny as Nate's had been.
A month later, Laura announced that she was also pregnant, to everyone's amazement and delight. Her and Matt's little son Liam was finally going to be a big brother. Somehow, miraculously, it seemed the fertility drugs had worked for Laura. Either that, or Dominic's death had somehow changed the supernatural energy on the island enough to allow pregnancies to become possible once again, as some people in the village thought.
People seemed to be divided into two camps, one side thinking science was responsible, and the other thinking something supernatural was surely the real reason. Believing in medicine, yet knowing what an incredibly strange place the island was, I myself didn't have an opinion one way or the other.
However, whether it was caused by the fertility drugs or Dominic's death, the effect on the fertility rate of the women in the village wasn't that profound, unfortunately. In the month after Laura's announcement, two more women became pregnant, one right after the other, but then the pregnancies stopped. But still, the three women besides me who'd become pregnant gave hope to everyone else, and all the women who still wished to become pregnant were determined to enjoy trying with their husbands until it happened.
The day Eric's and my baby was born, a quick rain shower drenched the island, though the dark clouds soon parted to reveal rainbows, at least a half-dozen of them. Sitting up in a bed in the clinic a while after Bev and Laura had helped me deliver my newborn son, who Eric and I had named Sebastian, I looked from the scene outside the window, to Sebastian's little face, to Eric's face.
With my eyes filling with tears, I felt like I should say something meaningful and poignant, but I couldn't even speak. I was too overcome with emotion to think of anything right then, and I was too choked up to form words.
Eric, who was sitting in a chair by my bedside with his own eyes appearing to be just a tad misty, seemed to understand and covered one of my hands with his own. "This is it. The day we're going to remember forever. The day our love story turned into our happily-ever-after."
Blinking back tears, I just nodded, my heart feeling as if it could soar high enough to join the rainbows arcing across the clear blue sky.
THE END
Message From The Author:
Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end, I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did I would love it if you could leave me a rating at the below links. This helps other people find my books :)
YES, AMIRA I WILL RATE YOU!
This is the first book from the “Island Of Shifters” series and the next one coming up is entitled “The Island Of Bears” so I hope you check that out when it is released!
Details of my other books are on the following pages :)
*
SOLD
TO THE BEARS
#1 Bestseller
In a dystopian future where fertile women are treated like commodities, curvy Lila is preparing to be the latest in a line of women to be SOLD.
However, unlike most women who are sold, Lila is looking forward to it since she knows who she is going to be sold to.
Adrian and Grant are bear shifters and are part of the “Bears of Sun Creek” tribe. They are impossibly handsome with perfectly chiseled bodies. Long steamy nights of passion and menage-filled ecstasy are a guarantee for a woman that is owned by these bears.
With that in mind, surely any woman in her right mind would jump at the chance of being sold to Adrian and Grant?
Only problem is, Lila is not just any woman and the reason she is eager to be sold is nothing to do with the sex. Lila actually has revenge in mind and the Bears of Sun Creek are her targets....
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ALSO BY AMIRA RAIN....
SOLD
TO THE DRAGONS
#1 Paranormal Romance Bestseller
In a dystopian future, fertile women are so hard to come by that they are now bought and sold for huge sums of money across the world. You could say that women are the new currency.
Curvy Kira Southerly is one of the few remaining fertile women left on the planet and she has resigned herself to the fate of being SOLD.
However, she had no idea she would end up being sold to two young and handsome bachelors named Blake and Steven. They are both dragon shifters and they are intent on mating with her and producing a baby as soon as possible.
With not enough fertile women to go around the brothers have no choice but to share the curvy beauty among themselves. Something that allows Kira to fulfill her every sexual fantasy....
Being sold to dragons should not be this much fun, should it?
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