Stripe for Love: Paranormal Surprise Pregnancy Tiger Shifter Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 7)

by Anya Nowlan

  When she got pregnant, Layla had done her best to seek out the man, all the way to driving to Idaho and going through the little town she remembered, asking about him. A few people remembered him but no one knew his last name, or where he had moved other than “East,” which really could have meant anything. Layla got the feeling that it had been how Atlas had wanted it.

  She’d even tracked down the house they’d stayed in, but Atlas had been renting it and had left behind nothing to identify him to the owners. It had been paid in cash, and in a place like that, no one asked too many questions if the person seemed trustworthy enough. Atlas definitely ticked off those boxes, even if he was a big mountain of a man.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been trying to stalk my babydaddy,” Layla said, trying to make it sound like a joke, but her voice was shivering too much for it.

  She took a hefty gulp of her wine, leaning forward with her cheeks lit with a blush. When she’d gone looking for him, she hadn’t wanted anything from him. The goal had always been to tell him about Adrian, show him that she didn’t expect anything from him because it had been her decision to keep the boy, but also to make it clear that if he wanted to be in the boy’s life, she’d be glad for it. Every kid needed their father. Especially a shifter boy.

  “I have. Now, do you want to know if I found him?” Lily asked, quirking a brow up and giving Layla a clever smile.

  “If you had, wouldn’t you have been crowing about it the moment you walked in here?” Layla queried, feeling her shoulders droop a little.

  Of course she would have. You’re just getting your hopes up. Even if you did find him, you only know him from one night. One hot, sexy night that gave you the light of your life, but it doesn’t mean that you know him at all. No way!

  “Maybe,” Lily said with a smirk, looking at Layla over the rim of her glass. “Or maybe I want to see you stew a little. How about that?”

  Layla remained quiet, not dignifying that with an answer. Well, it was that and also the fact that she couldn’t really make herself talk much, her blue eyes wide and staring at her sister like she’d grown three heads all of a sudden.

  With a sigh, Lily grabbed her phone, pulling it out of her pocket and thumbing it to open on SassyDate. Layla recognized the app as she fumbled to catch the phone being sent flying toward her, managing to spill a tiny bit of wine on her knee.

  “Shit,” she muttered, gulping down the rest and putting the glass on the coffee table as she got a surer grip on the cell phone. “What am I looking at here?”

  “Go to Favorite Matches. I’ve saved a bunch of lucky contestants. Maybe one of them is your man,” Lily said, reaching for the bottle to pour them both another glass.

  She’d given Layla one bottle when she’d walked in, but there’d been two more in the bag and Layla was getting the feeling she was going to need all of them that evening! Still, despite her brow furrowing and her nose scrunching, she couldn’t help herself. She flicked through the screens, coming to the Favorite Matches screen. She let out a sigh of relief.

  The first guy she saw wasn’t him, and for a moment Layla had realized that she’d been scared stiff that it would be. What would she say to him? How could she explain that he now had a baby, one he didn’t know anything about? Would he even remember her?!

  “It’s not him,” Layla said.

  “Well keep going, genius!” Lily snorted.

  “Oh,” Layla said, suddenly realizing that she probably wasn’t at her sharpest in that moment.

  Or maybe it was the wine? Either or, she started flicking through the matches with a little scowl on her face, her heart bursting and aching every time she saw a guy who was close, and yet definitely wasn’t Atlas. She was reaching the end of the matches, the count only showing two more, when she went to automatically move to the next one. Her hand stopped, her thumb hovering in the air.

  Her mouth dropped as she stared at the picture. A wide, warm smile, gleaming eyes of gray and gold, and a mop of hair that could have been well-groomed, but she had to assume never was. He had some slight stubble and even in the profile pic, she could catch a hint of his wide chest and broad shoulders.

  Holy shit.

  “It’s… it’s him,” Layla said, looking up at Lily, who almost spat out her wine.

  “Seriously?!” she shrieked, scooting up to her on the couch, nuzzling really close so she could look at the picture. “Oh my God, he’s the cutest one out of the bunch! I was looking at him yesterday and thinking if I didn’t have Thad… hell, what am I saying? Thad’s perfect. But you know what I mean.”

  Lily practically beamed, while Layla had completely lost the color in her cheeks and looked like she’d seen a ghost. It was Lily who tapped on his profile, scrolling down. He’d listed his hometown. Shifter Grove, Idaho. So he had moved east. Just not too far.

  The phone fell out of Layla’s hands as she let her body collapse against the cushions, utter disbelief on her features.

  “How… I mean… when? Gah! Lily! What am I going to do now?!” she asked, exasperated, throwing her hands up like that was going to change anything.

  “What do you mean?” Lily asked, having put down her glass and who was now typing something on her phone. “You’ll message him, of course! Tell him that you looove him and want to meet him and you have a surprise, and then you’ll get a house in the suburbs and I can be an auntie two times over. You know Mom will love it!” Lily said with a giggle, finally looking up at Layla.

  “Hell no I won’t! I can’t just drop in on his life like that,” she protested.

  “Too late. Sent the message,” Lily said, turning the phone to face Layla.

  Of course she did.

  But things never worked out that well, did they? What Layla didn’t know was that she hadn’t been completely without Atlas since the day she’d met him. Someone had been keeping an eye on her the whole time. Someone who could be far more dangerous than she was prepared for.

  Three

  Atlas

  Atlas had been in a daze for days now. Ever since that little light blinked on his phone, telling him he’d gotten a message on SassyDate, everything had changed.

  The shifter-human dating app had been on his phone for ages, but he’d never really used it. What was the point? It wasn’t like Shifter Grove was teeming with women, and it was so far out in the boondocks of Idaho that getting there was no small feat. But those were just convenient excuses, Atlas knew that much.

  It was because of Layla that he hadn’t used it. Because he couldn’t get her out of his head.

  And now, suddenly, she’d reappeared. Out of nowhere. Messaging him on her sister’s account like a blast from the past, one that he’d feared he’d never hear from again.

  “I’m not sure what I’m gonna do,” Atlas said, nursing his beer as he had for most of the evening as he sat at the bar at Austin’s Texas, the one and only proper bar in Shifter Grove.

  Not that they needed any more of them. One was good enough for the rough and tumble shifter kind living in the valley, most of whom were young, fit shifters at the prime of their lives, living with their mates and oftentimes their kids, or working toward one or the other. Most of the drinking was a nightly round of beers or shots after work, before everyone happily went home to their families.

  Everyone, that was, aside from Atlas and the others who hadn’t yet found their mates congregated in the open, accepting community in Shifter Grove, one that didn’t judge or question.

  “Seems easy enough to me,” Slate commented, shrugging his shoulders. “You fly her out here and you meet her again, see what happens.”

  “She said she has a surprise for me,” Atlas mumbled, his chin squaring. “I don’t know what that’s about.”

  “You’ll never find out unless you make it happen,” Slate said, taking a swig of his own beer. “It’ll be no problem. I’ll fly out there, pick her up wherever she is and bring her to the airport. You come and drive her to Shifter Grove. If you get the vibe that th
ings won’t work out, we’ll put her back on the plane again. Problem solved.”

  “It’s not like that! I’d never send her back,” Atlas said, mortified by what the resident pilot was saying.

  How could he? She was… Layla.

  “Ahhh, so a more interesting problem!” Slate said with a grin, looking at Atlas while he was trying to do his best to avoid any eye contact lest it completely expose his bleeding heart. “Tell me, Atlas, you’ve had your heat, right? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Slade asked, his tone getting more serious now.

  That made Atlas look up and meet the imploring gaze of the other tiger shifter in town. Tigers were not like other shifters. They did not get a choice in the matter of their own heirs and how love was to play out with them. Upon reaching the right age, every male tiger Alpha would go through a short phase of intense hormonal activity, during which he would bond to a mate and she would be the only one he could have children with.

  Usually, this was a highly regulated, carefully controlled thing in tiger societies. The leading Alpha would pick the mate for each strong warrior, and it had nothing to do with whether or not they were compatible, simply about how strong the heirs would be and whether it would make for fortuitous ties between different streaks—the term for a group of tigers.

  It was exactly that which Atlas had been running from. Andreyi ‘Atlas’ Novikov, the firstborn son Sergeyi Novikov, one of the fiercest Siberian tiger shifter Alphas in the country. Since he was eighteen, it had grated at Atlas that his fate was so clearly cut and written out for him.

  It took many more years for him to realize that he would rather be without a mate and an heir than to continue with that archaic custom. So the moment he realized his heat was near, he had left.

  He was a rarity in that, though. His younger brother Grayve had never understood his desire to choose things like that for himself. Before he had left, Atlas and Grayve had a big, explosive fight, hurtling insults at one another and even getting into a physical altercation. It was an unpleasant memory. Especially because he had been so close with his little brother.

  Another sacrifice he’d had to make.

  And here he was now, in Shifter Grove, knowing full well that he had found his mate during the heat, and that he’d taken her and then he’d let her go like a fool. But now she was coming back and he didn’t know what the hell to do with that. Sing from the tops of the buildings? Rush off and work three times as hard at the gold mines set up near Shifter Grove so he could buy a bigger house?

  Or, you know, calm down and actually meet this woman he was so madly in love with already and hope that she’d give him the time of day. While Atlas and his tiger had no doubt that they were completely in love, Layla didn’t have that luxury.

  I hope it’s her real name, he thought with a hint of trepidation.

  “I have,” he replied sourly, looking at his beer glass again like it would give him all the answers in the world.

  The damn thing was holding out on him. Where was the supreme wisdom he was supposed to find in the bottom of a glass, huh?

  “And tell me, what happened during that heat?” Slate asked, a sly grin forming on his lips.

  Atlas didn’t need to look at the other shifter—a married, happy father of two with a mate he chose for himself—to know that he was understanding far too much about the situation already.

  “I found her,” he said, his voice breaking a little.

  “The girl who tracked you down now?”

  “Yup,” Atlas said, picking up the beer and drinking long and hard before putting it down again. “And I let her get away.”

  “Well, she’s coming here now, right? There it is, your shot at happiness.”

  “My only shot at happiness,” Atlas commented glumly.

  He’d wanted a family, always. It was what kept him with his previous streak for so long—his inability to choose a possibly loveless future with children over none at all. There was so much he could teach and share with his young, to show them that tradition didn’t have to rule their lives as much as their heritage might tell them. But ultimately, he had chosen the option to run instead of giving in to a lifetime of misery.

  It was blind, dumb fate that had brought him Layla together at the right time. But wasn’t that how fate always worked?

  “It doesn’t have to be so dire. But if that’s what makes you move, sure, why not? It’s your only shot. What are you going to do about it?” Slate asked, cocking a brow at him.

  “Probably gonna finish this beer,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, earning him a grin from his friend.

  “And then?”

  “Probably gonna go call my girl. You straight about doing the trips for me, if I ask?” Atlas queried, lifting his eyes from the glass rather painfully and slowly.

  Lately it had felt like everything in his life was a damn struggle. Even coming to Shifter Grove and finding people like him, droves of them, refugees from the lives they had led before, from what their packs, clans, and streaks had forced on them, hadn’t made it much better. He now understood that all the while, he had had a burning twitch in his heart, something gnawing away at him. He’d let Layla go. And if he had to do it again, it just might kill him.

  “Of course,” Slate said, clapping Atlas on the shoulder. “Anyone will tell you that I’m a sucker for a good love story around here. And Shifter Grove thankfully has plenty enough of those.”

  Slate gave him a beaming smile, one that Atlas was sure was supposed to incite confidence in him. It didn’t quite do the trick, though Atlas appreciated the effort. He thrust out his hand to Slate and they shook on it, a deal made between men of equal standing, no matter how much money one or the other of them made, or how big of a streak they’d come from before Shifter Grove. Here, they were men like any other and past achievements meant very little. Only what a man could do with his future would be the measuring stick he could live and die by.

  Atlas hoped that he could one day look back at his and feel that everything he’d done had been worth it. Including living without Layla for a year and a half.

  Four

  Layla

  It was a chilly day in Idaho when Layla boarded a plane in Idaho Falls, after having gotten another from Seattle before that. Adrian had been sleeping for most of the way—a perfect angel when he was usually a supreme little demon—and that meant that Layla was left alone with her thudding heart and the endless questions within her.

  Would he like her? Would she like him? Had he changed much? What would he think of the baby? Would she leave Shifter Grove soon after she got there, seeing the disappointment and regret in the eyes of a man she’d built a pedestal for in her mind?

  Her throat was dry when the tall pilot with the playful smile helped her and Adrian into his little plane and closed the hatch behind them. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her, as if measuring her up against some sort of a measuring stick, and then at her son, a wry, but not unfriendly smirk appearing on his lips.

  Layla had frowned the moment she’d seen it, but she hadn’t pried and asked what it was about. And he hadn’t offered any explanation either, but the whole flight, Slate had been doing his best to keep her mind at ease. That was his name, Slate, which he said was a short form of a convoluted name from the depths of Siberia that no one needed to twist their tongue around. That it was a relic from another time.

  Layla could understand that. She’d run from Seattle once looking for something better, and maybe she’d still be running if she hadn’t ended up missing her family so much. But for a time, the desire to leave everything behind and take on something entirely new had been pretty damn strong in her. Now however, her family was a lot easier to bring along.

  She looked down at Adrian, sleeping in the seat next to her, and put a hand on his back, feeling his warmth. As much as she loved her parents and her sister and her family, this was now Layla’s. Just Adrian. Wherever he was, she’d be at home too.

  “So are you from
Idaho?” Slate asked, twisting his head to look over his shoulder with a friendly smile.

  “Me? No. I’ve been to Idaho a few times, though. You?”

  “You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone really from Idaho where we’re going,” Slate said with a chuckle, pulling a hand through his hair for a moment.

  He had the same wide, strong build that Atlas had, although perhaps a bit more wiry. But that probably came with the job. There wasn’t so much room in the plane to move around to begin with, it being little more than a puddle jumper, and having magnificently wide shoulders would have probably made it harder.

  “Yeah? A town of immigrant shifters?” she asked with a smile.

  “A town of shifters looking for a new start. There’s a difference. At least these days there is, I think. Not a lot of people go anywhere because they want a new start, just a better one. The people in Shifter Grove don’t care so much for ‘more’ as they do for ‘happier,’ you know?” Slate mused, giving her a thoughtful look over his shoulder before looking back at the controls.

  Layla nodded quietly. She did. But why was he telling her this?

  She bit the inside of her cheek, wondering how much this man knew about Atlas, or her. If anything at all! Layla knew that Atlas was a tiger shifter, because she’d known when Adrian was born that he was. But she still didn’t know much about the man she’d gone to see, because they’d messaged one another on Lily’s account and Layla had purposefully kept her own account inactive.

  She didn’t want to tell him too much before she could explain in person. Atlas? He just seemed tight-lipped, which wasn’t a big surprise.

  “Do you know Atlas?” she asked after a measure of silence, her curiosity getting the best of her.

  “A little,” Slate answered noncommittally, though Layla could hear the smile he must have been wearing on his lips.

  “What do you think of him?” she asked after another pause, her heart beating wildly as she made the words come over her lips.