by Jessie Lane
Bhric had a point, though. It wouldn’t do Chrissy any good to sit there and wallow. A cat had to have her pride, didn’t she? She couldn’t let a dog run her down like this. Therefore, she looked up at the man in front of her with a new resolve.
“Thanks, Bhric. You’re right; I’ll take that beer.”
He gave her a lopsided grin before turning around to grab her a bottle. After popping the top, he placed it in front of her on a coaster. “Enjoy.”
Wrapping her hand around the ice cold bottle, Chrissy heard the door to the main entrance open and close as someone walked in. She didn’t bother to turn around to see who it was. It wasn’t like she was expecting anybody to join her. Nor did she care who came into the bar, because she wasn’t looking for company. That meant whoever it was should give her a wide berth.
Lifting the bottle to her lips, she was ready to guzzle that sucker down and wash her problems away when a someone plucked the beer right out of her hand and set it down on the bar top.
Surprised, Chrissy looked over to see a woman she knew as Kitty. She was an outcast from the cougar clan Gunn, and Alpha Rafe Comyn of the Comyn clan wolf pack’s mate. Just the sight of the woman made Chrissy jealous. The woman had a wolf shifter mate who adored her, while Chrissy’s had run away. Add the fact that Kitty had also taken her beer right out of her hand, now she just wanted to slice and dice the bitch in a good cat fight.
Chrissy glared at the woman, who equally glared back at her.
“You can’t drink that in your condition, Kinks.”
Condition? What the hell was she talking about?
The perplexed look on her face must have tipped Kitty off, because she gave a heavy sigh.
“What is it with you women around here getting knocked up and not telling anybody?”
Knocked up?
What the fuck!
Kitty must be on crack. Or catnip. There was no way Chrissy was knocked up … right?
Chrissy’s mind whirled with possibilities. Could it be possible she had conceived a baby from her short time with her missing wolf mate?
Black spots danced in front of her eyes, her head swam, and the world started to spin. Someone was talking, perhaps to her, but she couldn’t understand a word. The world seemed to tip to the left … Then everything went black.
The next thing Chrissy knew, she was lying on her back on the hard-wood floor of the bar with a small group of people hovering over her. It took her a second to get her thoughts in order, but eventually she started putting names to faces: Bhric; Dean, who was Bhric’s brother; Dean’s mate, Nikki, who held their young cub; and finally, Kitty.
Upon seeing Kitty’s face, panic hit Chrissy in thundering waves. Her gaze bounced back and forth between Dean and Nikki’s cub and the cougar shifter who had taken the beer out of her hand.
She was having a hard time getting her mind to work straight, but she was able to croak out one word to Kitty. “Condition?”
Chrissy watched as Nikki glanced over at Kitty then rolled her eyes. “You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”
Kitty glowered back. “Why do you have to say it like that?”
Nikki stood up. “Dean, please help Kinks off the floor. I’m guessing Kitty strolled in here, being nosy as usual, by telling people they’re pregnant again.”
Kitty jumped to her feet and pointed a finger at the other woman. “I was not being nosy!”
Shaking her head, Nikki scolded her, “You can’t just walk around, telling people they’re pregnant. It’s weird, okay?”
Chrissy watched mutely as Dean reached down to help her up while the other two women argued.
Throwing her hands in the air, Kitty growled, “How is that weird? She’s pregnant. It’s part of life. Not to mention, she was about to make a bad choice by drinking! That’s not good for the baby. I totally stopped her in time. See? I was being helpful.”
Chrissy might be on her feet now, but apparently, she was not stable yet, because at the word ‘baby,’ her knees buckled. Thank goodness Bhric was close enough to catch her before she hit the floor again.
Nikki, being the overly observant person she was, noticed Chrissy’s stumble, even though she still had her eyes on Kitty. Nodding her head in Chrissy’s direction, she said, “You’re only being helpful if they know they’re pregnant, genius. I would say, by her reaction, she had no idea.”
Kitty’s head snapped in Chrissy’s direction, and her eyes went wide. “Did you not know you were pregnant, hon?”
Chrissy opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out, so she simply shook her head.
Kitty’s face turned bright red, as if she were embarrassed, muttering a “whoops.” Shrugging, she then gave Chrissy a tremulous smile. “Guess the cat’s out of the bag, then?”
Black spots swirled in Chrissy’s eyesight once again as reality crashed over her. The cat wasn’t necessarily out of the bag, so to speak, but there was a wolf-cat hybrid growing inside the lady-bag her body called a uterus.
It took everything she had to stand up on her own two feet again, pushing out of Bhric’s grasp. Chrissy realized she probably looked like a zombie just standing there, not saying anything to the four people surrounding her, but she didn’t know what to say. All she could do was shake her head no as they offered to help her sit down, help her get home, or in Kitty’s case, help her talk by grabbing her bottom jaw and making Chrissy’s mouth open and close like a fish gasping for breath out of water. That was about the time Chrissy finally snapped out of her shock and slapped the female cougar’s hand away from her.
“Stop that!”
Kitty shrugged remorsefully. “I was only trying to help.”
Help? Help! Kitty had just respectively blown Chrissy’s world to hell in a handbasket and she was trying to help?
Anger washed over Chrissy as she snarled back at the woman, “You want to help? Then stop dropping pregnant bombs on poor, unsuspecting women, find the jackass who knocked me up since he’s disappeared, and then get me a goddamn pickle!”
Kitty went slack-jawed at Chrissy’s outburst, but Nikki threw her head back in laughter, thinking it was funny as hell.
“I don’t even know who knocked you up, Kinks. How the hell am I supposed to find him?” Kitty sputtered.
Running her hands through her hair, Chrissy started to cry. As in, actual tears ran down her face, which was something she never did. That made Chrissy get even more upset, making her cry harder.
“I don’t know how anyone is going to find him when I don’t even know his name!” she wailed. “Just like I don’t know why I asked for a pickle when I can’t stand them. But-but I suddenly want one really, really bad.”
Nikki grabbed her gently by the arm and led her back behind the bar to the Dark Moon’s kitchen. “Come on, girl. Let’s sit down, get you a jar of pickles, and then figure out what you’re going to do.”
Chapter Nine
Ezrah knocked on the door to Pearl’s little house. He was tired since he drove straight here from Louisiana, but he pushed himself, worried about the old woman. Standing at her front door, an uneasy feeling washed over him, causing the hair on his neck to stand up as the doorknob finally turned.
The door slowly creaked open, and the person on the other side didn’t look like his great-grandma Pearl. Whoever it was looked like a mummy.
Perhaps it wasn’t wearing rolls of toilet paper or gauze wrapped around its body, but the once white skin was colored a funny yellowish-beige and wrinkled to the point of leather stretched over a small skeletal frame. The only features he found familiar were the blue eyes that he had inherited from Pearl’s side of the family and a little bun of blonde hair on top of the mummy’s head. He only knew it was Pearl at all was because the mummy still smelled like his great-grandmother.
Ezrah knew that, more than likely, anyone else in the world would run screaming at the very sight of her … it—whatever she was now. Even the wolves who belonged to his great-grandfather’s pack would howl in h
orror. Ezrah was Ezrah, though, not some panicked human, confused wolf, or disgusted witch. He was a half-breed who didn’t see, think, or act like others.
Therefore, his reaction should not have been a surprise to Pearl when he said, “I renounce you, Satan. Return back to the hell from which you came.”
The mummy didn’t poof and disappear, but it did throw a hand towel at his head. “You’re not funny, Ezrah Crawford Goldsby. Lord knows I should have beaten you more as a child.”
Pulling the hand towel from his face, he saw the empty space in the doorway where his great-grandmother had been standing as he walked through the entrance into her home.
“You didn’t beat me at all, Pearl, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ezrah followed her scent into the kitchen where she stood at the counter, pouring water into her coffee maker.
Once she was done putting the pot in the machine to start brewing, Pearl turned around and pointed a gnarled finger at him. “That’s what I mean, boy. I should have beaten you.”
Ezrah pulled out a chair at her kitchen table and sat down. “How about we stop talking about whether or not you should or shouldn’t have beaten me and start talking about why you look like a walking corpse?”
“I am not a zombie!” Pearl snapped back angrily.
He held his hands up in surrender. “Didn’t say you were a crypt keeper.”
Pearl held her pointer finger in the air as small sparks of energy shot out the end like mini fireworks. “Sass me one more time; see what I do.”
“Put your magic away, woman, before you hurt yourself.”
She cocked an impervious eyebrow that told him she’d had enough, so Ezrah conceded.
“Okay, okay, I’ll behave. Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”
The smell of coffee filled the air as it percolated on the counter. Pearl pulled out a chair and sat down across from him. Folding her hands primly in front of her on the table, she looked him dead in the eye and said, “This is all your fault.”
Ezrah’s left eye twitched in irritation. Leave it to Pearl to drag things out.
“So you said on the phone. Want to tell me why it’s my fault?”
Heaving a weary sigh, Pearl said, “I guess I should start from the beginning.”
It took all of Ezrah’s restraint to avoid saying something smart-ass like, “God created the heavens and the earth. Then he made you.” However, he must have accidentally given Pearl a look because she pointed that finger at him again with her little sparks flying out in warning.
“When you were little, you always asked me how I managed to outlive your grandmother. Remember how I answered those questions?”
Ezrah nodded. “You said, if the time was ever right, you’d let me know.”
Pearl sniffed. “Seems the time has come. I guess it all started when I met your great-grandfather, Cherokee Bill. That was his outlaw name. His real name was Crawford Goldsby, and he was a rogue wolf. The man didn’t get along with that pack of his, not one bit, so he spent his time running around, robbing banks, and causing trouble. That’s how I met him, I guess you could say. He came into town with that little gang of humans he ran with, and they stayed the night at the saloon my father owned.
“There I was, serving drinks and cleaning up because my mother was sick at home, and in walks in a dark man. Now, I don’t say he was dark because of his skin color, but because of his aura. It was muddy red and this somber murky pink. I knew right away he was no good when he had dishonesty and anger clinging to him like that.”
Pearl slapped her hand down on the table. “Then he looked across the room, and the moment our eyes locked, even over that noisy crowd, I could hear him say the word ‘mine.’ I was too young and naive to know what he was or why he would say that, but it didn’t matter a bit in the end. It was like we were two ends of a string, the tension pulled taut between us. No matter how much my mind told me to run away, the rest of my body wanted to be next to him.”
Pearl folded her hands on the table again as she took a deep breath. “I’ll spare you all the details, Ezrah. Just know, in the end, Cherokee Bill got what he wanted: me. He called me his mate and talked me right out of my knickers. Back then, I didn’t know what a mate was, but I thought it meant he was serious about me.” She snorted. “The only thing that boy was serious about was himself and what he wanted. I gave him a week of love before he left. Then the fool ran off, got himself caught, and then hung. In the end, he gave me a child.
“There I was, eighteen and pregnant with no dadgum ridiculous reality show to pay me for my plight. My parents loved me unconditionally, so they let me stay with them and helped me out. It wasn’t until after I gave birth to your grandfather that my mother saw the difference in his aura and told me what my son was: half wolf.”
“How did she know what a wolf shifter was?” Ezrah asked.
Pearl shrugged. “Apparently, she’d had some dealings with them in the past as she travelled west with her witch family. It took us a while, but we tracked Cherokee Bill’s pack down and asked if we could stay on the outskirts of their pack for the baby’s sake. They agreed, hoping the baby would grow up to be a regular member of the pack. They were very disappointed when your grandfather grew up to act just like his father. The boy couldn’t stand being around the pack and was always running around, causing problems. I guess you could say that’s where you come in.”
Confused, Ezrah asked, “How so?”
Pearl ran her thumb over the wrinkled skin of her hand in circles, the scent of nervousness rolling off her. “When my son went and got himself killed because he was dabbling in bad things, I was heartbroken. My parents had already passed, and all I had was my boy. Then he was gone, and your grandmother showed up on my doorstep four months later. Round, little belly, pregnant as can be, she was holding a good-bye letter in my son’s handwriting. The poor woman stood there with a small bag containing everything she owned and claimed your grandfather was the father of her child. She was young, black, and penniless since she lost the job she had where she was making meager wages due to her ‘condition.’ Not exactly a good situation to be in during the early 1900s.
“I was terrified of being hurt again, but also desperate not to be alone. I let her live with me, helped her through the pregnancy, and prayed for the day the baby was born. When he was, I knew the second I laid eyes on him that he was my grandson. It wasn’t just there in his father’s dark features, but also my blue eyes. From that day on, I promised myself I was going to stay around until the lone wolf traits of Cherokee Bill’s line ran out.
“Of course, then your grandfather started to get older, and I saw all of those lone wolf traits in him, as well. It scared me that I might never see the day of Cherokee Bill’s lineage broken, so I made a decision. It took a spell I won’t talk about and almost all of my power, but I cast enough magic over myself that I would live frozen in time at the age I was when I cast it.”
Ezrah wasn’t entirely surprised. He knew Pearl’s witchcraft had been the reason she was still alive and kicking at one hundred and thirty-eight. What he didn’t understand was why she suddenly looked like she was exactly that old and why she was blaming it on him.
“What’s this got to do with me, Pearl?”
His great-grandmother lifted up her little chin and looked him square in the eye. “The spell I cast would keep me alive until the descendant of Cherokee Bill who could break the lone wolf trait met his mate. About a month ago, I went from feelin’ fit as a fiddle to waking up the next day, lookin’ like this. I think you have some explaining to do, boy.”
Ezrah couldn’t have been more flabbergasted if Pearl had whipped out rabbit ears and declared she really was the Easter Bunny.
“What?”
Bringing her hand up in between them, she shook that finger at him as if he were a naughty child. “Explain, mister!” She waved a hand down at herself. “This wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t trip the spell. So here I am, lookin’ like I�
�m on death’s doorstep because, technically, I am! You must have met your mate and triggered the spell. Only, I didn’t die because you left her. Now why would you go and do a fool thing like that?”
The sound of silence in the room was deafening, along with his racing heartbeat banging away in his head. Of all the things he had expected Pearl to say, telling him he had found his mate hadn’t been one of them. If that weren’t bad enough, his wolf was going frantic on the inside, desperate to get out.
As if the entire situation had been one giant puzzle laid out before him, the last pieces fell into place, giving him the bigger picture: his wolf’s unusual behavior, the emerging emotions he hadn’t understood, plus the desire to wrap himself around a woman and stay. Now at least he knew why his wolf had been so damn surly with him since they had left Deals Gap. The beast had been trying to tell him all along that they had found their mate, and Ezrah’s dumbass had missed it.
The sexy, crazy feline Kinks was his mate!
His entire body started trembling. Need, adrenaline, awareness of his mate alone and vulnerable in another state—all of it was crashing down on him like an avalanche.
Finally, he focused back on Pearl’s face. “You’re absolutely sure about this?” Already knowing the answer, he felt the need to ask, anyway.
His great-grandmother nodded back. “Now, what are you gonna do about it, boy? You going to take after Cherokee Bill, denying yourself the possibility of a life filled with love and companionship, leaving me looking this way to boot? Or are you going to kiss me good-bye and go find your mate?”
A sudden pang of sadness overwhelmed him, pain the likes he hadn’t experienced since his mother had died. He knew what he was going to do, but he also knew what it meant he was losing.
Slowly, he slid his hand across the tabletop and gently grabbed his great-grandmother’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
Pearl’s eyes teared up, but she didn’t let them spill down her face. Laying her other hand over Ezrah’s, she squeezed back. “Don’t be sorry, sugar.”