“You’re late,” he repeated in a grumble.
She ignored him again, rubbing her face against his hairy chest and breathing in his scent. “I’m so happy to see you!”
He rolled his shoulders awkwardly, clearly unsure how to deal with his mate. After a brief moment of indecision, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.
“Why are you so late?” he asked, this time speaking to Asch.
Mila turned to look back at Asch, wincing sympathetically before burying her face back in Caim’s chest. Secretly, she was happy that Caim was directing his ire on Asch instead of her. She was dying to snuggle up against him and go to sleep, and she was way too tired to deal with his attitude.
“We got a little sidetracked,” Asch replied, coming to stand next to them. “Everything go alright?”
“I have been waiting for hours,” Caim continued stubbornly. His grip became a little too tight.
Deftly managing Caim, Asch replied, “Well, let’s get inside. It’s cold out here.”
He winked at Mila and then sauntered past, heading for what she presumed was the den entrance. Caim scowled and hoisted her up into his arms. She protested, but not with any real seriousness, as he carried her to their new den.
Far better hidden than the Cairn, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the entrance if not for the tracks—both footprints and paw prints—that led behind an obscured limestone outcropping. The inside passageway was just large enough to accommodate a medium-sized wolf. The smells of burnt wood and roasted meat wafted up, thickening as the narrow tunnel opened into a small cavern.
A dying fire crackled in the center of the room. The wolves, mostly in their human forms, were strewn throughout the room, all of them asleep. Mila tried to find Rosie and Gem in the crowd, but Caim didn’t pause, taking her down another passageway.
The passageway was dark, and Mila didn’t realize they’d entered a new room until Caim set her down on a pallet of furs. He tried to pull back, but she kept a grip on his shoulders. She heard Asch drop their bags on the floor.
“Lotus and the others asked that you wake them when you returned,” Caim said gruffly. She heard Asch groan in the darkness.
“Are you coming, too?” Asch asked.
“In a few moments,” he replied.
She heard Asch pad over to her. He crouched down, placing a quick kiss on the top of her head before excusing himself. Once Asch had left the room, Mila crawled into Caim’s lap and nestled up against him. He rubbed his nose against her hair, breathing her in.
“You will not leave without me again.”
“Okay, I promise,” she said absently.
Caim snorted. “I did not ask you to promise.”
“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
“I have things to do,” he replied, but made no effort to remove her from his lap.
“Fine,” she relented. “But can you do the thing with my neck? You know how you bite it a certain way and it makes me sleepy?” He moved his head towards her, but she clamped a hand down over her neck. “Wait.”
“What?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“Will you be here by the time I wake up?”
She heard him sigh before falling back onto the pallet and bringing her down with him. Caim carefully tucked her into his side, tossing one strong leg over her lower body and placing a hand over her belly.
“I will be here when you wake up,” he promised.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It didn’t take long for Mila to fall into a comfortable routine in the new den. She spent most of her time with her friends, with other females rotating in and out of the group on a nightly basis. Her favorite new addition to the group was Fern, a gregarious older woman with a quick tongue who could make Mila laugh until she could barely breathe.
On nights when he wasn’t out hunting, Asch would often join them in card games and even just for conversation. Caim kept his distance, spending his nights hunting or bickering with Lotus and Sable, the latter of which had healed quickly from her wounds.
Although he was aloof at night, Caim was hers by day. They made love almost every morning. Sometimes Asch would join them, and those were her favorite mornings. Other times, Caim would wait until Asch wasn’t paying attention and then abscond with her, having his way with her in private. She liked those mornings as well.
The days rolled into each other without much variation, which made things a little boring. Even her pregnancy didn’t offer much of a distraction, at least not for Mila. For everyone else, her stomach was the den’s hottest attraction, and Rosie in particular had taken it upon herself to give Mila hourly updates on the baby’s heartbeat.
Asch had been the first to confirm that there was indeed just one baby. Caim, who had been trying to detect a heartbeat for a couple weeks, hadn’t been happy that Asch beat him to it. Mila had just been disappointed in general.
From the start, she had assumed that there was only one baby, even though Rosie and Brae had told her several times that ‘pups’ tended to come in pairs. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to do with one baby, let alone two, but when Asch told her that he heard its heartbeat, Mila hadn’t felt the excitement that she should have.
There had been a teeny, tiny part of her that had wanted there to be two babies. Most women had to spend months wondering if their baby would be a boy or a girl. Mila had no time to worry about that, because all she could wonder was: Asch or Caim? It had been more of a nagging curiosity than anything else, until a morning in spring, when it metastasized into a nearly crippling anxiety.
The snow melted in March, but it wasn’t until April that it was warm enough for Mila to stay outside for extended periods of time. Her mates had become weird about her leaving the den, and she couldn’t step a foot outside without one of them holding her hand. It was cute in the beginning, but as spring wore on it became more of an annoyance than anything.
After breakfast, Mila headed out to the lake with several of the women. Asch came along with them, making casual conversation with Fern and Brae as they walked.
The path to the lake wasn’t well-worn yet, and Mila had to wear her boots to avoid stepping on pine needles and briars. Used to walking barefoot around the den, the boots felt awkward and uncomfortable, especially with her swollen feet. She was relieved when the trees broke, revealing the glassy surface of the lake.
The days were longer now, and the late-afternoon sun still hung brilliantly on the horizon. Brae and Gem raced one another to the water, Rosie and Fern following close behind. Mila kicked off her boots and padded over to a long rock that extended into the water. Gem had nicknamed the rock ‘Mila’s dock’ because Mila could sit there for hours, soaking her feet in the water while lying back on the warm, flat surface of the rock and sunning herself.
Today, her feet were especially sore. She put them in the water, leaning over as best she could to massage them. Asch lowered himself into the water next to her dock.
“Let me,” he said, taking her foot into his big hands.
“Gladly,” she said. She leaned back on one hand, draping her other arm over her belly.
It was painfully clear that she wasn’t going to be one of those fashionable pregnant women—the ones that looked like models smuggling basketballs under their blouses. Early in her pregnancy, she’d been excited for the baby to start growing, but she was pretty sure that if it kept growing at this rate, she’d be giving birth to something the size of a toddler.
“Do you want to wash up?” Asch asked, kneading his thumb into the arch of her foot. Mila let out an appreciative sound and shook her head.
“No, not today. Just want to get a little sun before—”
She stopped speaking abruptly, grabbing Asch’s hand and placing it on the side of her stomach. Asch looked anxious for a split second, and then warmth flooded his face.
He asked, “Is that the first time?”
Mila beamed at him. “Yup.”
It was a total lie
. The baby had started kicking at least two weeks ago, during one of her rare moments of alone time. She’d been in her room, struggling to squeeze into a dress that was a dozen sizes too small for her, when she’d felt the soft thump for the first time. She’d felt it move a few times before that—or at least she thought that she had—but that was the first time the baby really made itself known.
At first, Mila was sad that Asch and Caim hadn’t been there to feel it. But after she sat down for a few minutes, and the baby had kicked her a few more times, she found that she was actually really happy about it. The pack had known that she was pregnant before she had, and they’d all gotten to hear the baby’s heartbeat, but its first kick was something that belonged exclusively to her. It was the first milestone that was just between her and the baby.
There was only so long she could keep it to herself, and Asch’s reaction was worth the wait. A look of wonder spread across his face, and then pure satisfaction.
“She’s tough,” he said, his eyes full of affection.
Mila grinned. Asch was on Team Girl, along with Rosie, Gem, Kallie, and Fern, though she suspected Fern had joined just to annoy Caim, who was certain beyond reasonable doubt that the baby was a boy. The sex of Mila’s baby was probably the most divisive issue in the pack, and she could hardly sneeze without someone purporting it as evidence of one gender or the other.
Asch pulled back Mila’s shirt, revealing her rounded belly. He lowered his head, placing his ear against her flesh. A cool breeze tossed her hair, and she stared out over the water. The others had given them privacy, and she could see them bathing and chatting farther down the lake.
“I love you,” Asch said, drawing her attention back to him.
He said it often, always when they were alone. Mila always said it back now, and she somehow just knew that she meant it. Today, however, when she looked into his loving eyes, the words stuck in her throat.
It struck her then, that in a few months, she was going to have a baby that would be either Asch’s or Caim’s. She realized that while she had spent a lot of time wondering who the father would be, she hadn’t thought about who he wouldn’t be. Since she’d started to show, they’d both become so attached to the baby. These days, every other sentence out of Caim’s mouth was ‘my son, this’ and ‘my son, that’. At the end of winter, when Asch had ventured into the nearest town for prenatal vitamins, he had come back with a stuffed pink teddy bear for the baby.
When the baby was finally born, one of them would be devastated. Mila knew that it wasn’t the end of the world. They were all young; there was plenty of time to have more children. Still, she knew that in their minds, each one of her mates was forming a picture of his child. What she would look like, what his personality would be like, and all the things they would one day do together—for one of the men she loved, all of that would be gone in an instant.
Asch lifted his head and reached up to swipe the corners of her eyes. She realized that she was crying, and immediately set out to ease the concern on Asch’s face.
“Sorry, it’s just emotional, I mean, I feel emotional, because of the kicking,” she said lamely.
Asch was always so easy to talk to, but this was one subject that she just couldn’t broach. She couldn’t take his daughter away from him, or Caim’s son away from either of them, at least not yet. She hoped though, that when the time came, she could be strong.
CHAPTER NINE
Caim was glaring at her stomach. Mila tried—honestly tried—not to laugh. She truly felt bad for him, but it was just too funny. When her fit of hysterics finally subsided, she peeked over at him to see that he was now directing his glare at her.
“This is not amusing,” he said with a level of contempt that almost had her laughing all over again.
She threw up her hands. “I swear, it was just kicking. I’m not messing with you.”
He looked back down at her stomach, a muscle in his jaw ticking. It had been over a week since Asch had felt the baby kick for the first time, and it was pretty much all he talked about in Caim’s presence. The baby was very active, and by now almost everyone had felt it kick, with the exception of Caim. For whatever reason, the second he put his hand on her stomach, the baby wouldn’t so much as twitch. He had tried for days to pretend it didn’t bother him, but it was clear that his patience in the matter was wearing thin.
They were in their chamber, the small room that the three of them shared. It was early morning, and though they were too deep underground for outside light, they had a supply of candles that they lit in the mornings and evenings, so that Mila could see while they spent private time together.
Private time with Caim almost always ended in sex, even now that her stomach was becoming huge. Today was no different. Caim had snagged her from the main room while Asch was having a conversation with a couple of the beta wolves, spiriting her away to their fur pallet. It was as he was lighting the candles that the baby began kicking enthusiastically, only to abruptly stop as soon as she called it to his attention.
“You’ll catch him eventually,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. She had taken to calling the baby a ‘he’ lately, mostly just placate Caim, who had been a little too high-strung the past few days.
He shrugged her hand away. “Do not patronize me.” He lay back on the pallet, a sour look on his face. “It does not matter.”
She smiled, leaning over him and brushing the dark hair from his forehead. “You know what I think?”
“I would not presume to understand your mind, mate.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. “I think that maybe he just respects you too much to kick you.”
He gave her a dry look. “What does a pup know about respect?”
“I dunno,” she said, stroking his hair. “But you’re the only person he doesn’t want to kick. That must count for something.”
Caim rubbed his stubbled jaw, seeming to consider the prospect. She had more or less pulled the excuse out of thin air, but she did believe that the baby had a unique awareness of Caim. Whether that meant that the baby was his, or it was just partial to Caim’s deep baritone, she wasn’t sure and tried not to think about too often, lest she drive herself insane.
“My voice does command authority,” he said, sounding contemplative.
Mila smiled, leaning down to kiss him. He immediately took control of the kiss, staking his claim on her mouth with a deep thrust of his tongue. A gnawing emptiness expanded inside her as Caim worked his tongue within her mouth.
He sat up, careful not to break their kiss, and pulled her into his lap. She had already undressed, but Caim didn’t take advantage of her nudity, carefully positioning her so that his large erection rested between them.
Brute though he was, Caim was beginning to understand her needs in the bedroom. He had always been able to turn her on and make her climax, but it was the thrill of having such a big, aggressive male taking her in such an animalistic way that had always excited her the most. Since her stomach had started to swell he had been surprisingly conscientious of being overly rough with her in bed, opting to try his hand at more subtle ways of arousing her.
He moved to run his mouth down the curve of her neck, grazing his canines over her fragile flesh. She moaned, and he pressed his fangs down a little harder, skating the line between pleasure and pain. Mila squirmed restlessly in his lap, eliciting a low growl from her mate.
“Be still,” he said gruffly. “Or else I will take you right now, and I will not concern myself with your release.”
Mila laughed out loud and swatted his head. “Well lucky for me, you’re not the only mate that knows how to make me come.”
Caim pushed her down onto the furs and gave her a sly look. “It is hardly a challenge. I could bring you to completion just by breathing on you.”
She smirked, spreading her arms out to give him full access to her body. “I’d like to see you try, big guy.”
His eyes gleamed with excitement. Wi
thout another word, he lowered himself back to her neck and trailed his hot breath upwards and over her delicate skin. Her nerve endings tingled in anticipation of his touch, and she was disappointed when not so much as a stubble of hair grazed her flesh.
Need clenched her gut as he blew gently on the shell of her ear. His breath stoked her desire, but gave none of the fulfillment of a touch. It make the emptiness inside her grow, until she was throbbing with the need to be filled.
Determined not to be the first to crack, she remained rigid, feigning disinterest in his ministrations, even as he began to dip down her body, heading for her breasts. Her toes curled at the mere thought of his breath over her nipples, which had been tender and oversensitive the few weeks.
Claimed by the Alphas: Part Six Page 4