by Noelle Marie
Katherine nodded, but the numb sort of shock she was still suffering prevented her from actually taking much of the explanation in, the words “offspring”, “species”, and “revolutionary perspective” flying right over her head at the moment.
“Not that you have to worry much about protection with Bastian here,” Gabriela added in a blatant attempt to lighten the mood.
At the mention of his name, Katherine finally risked her first peek at the man since the image of the baby – their baby – had popped up on the screen of the sonogram machine.
His blue eyes were as intense as Katherine could ever recall, displaying a conflicting mix of joy and somberness so powerful that Katherine could almost feel the emotions in her own chest. Mostly, though, his eyes exuded concern, like he was physically resisting the urge to reach out and comfort his obviously distressed mate.
What he clearly didn’t realize, however, was just the way he watched her somehow worked to sooth her frazzled nerves and calm the nervous swirling of her belly. Katherine only wished she’d looked to him sooner. She hoped her own eyes were as good at conveying feelings as his were as she mentally flung her thanks at the man.
“Anyway,” Gabriela continued, seemingly oblivious to the nonverbal, emotional exchange taking place in front of her – or blatantly ignoring it, anyway – “it’s September. I’d wager that the baby will be here by mid-January at the latest.”
January.
Right.
And just like that, the panic was back, threatening to force her stomach to heave its miniscule contents out all over the floor. She jerked her eyes away from Bastian’s, but instead of allowing her to drown in the anxiety threatening to consume her, he gently took her by the chin and forced her to return her focus on him. “We can do this,” he assured her quietly, leaning forward and making it clear that his words were intended for her ears alone. “One day at a time, remember?”
The reminder caused a startling amount of tension to flee from her, and for the first time that morning, Katherine offered Bastian a smile, shaky and watery as it was. “One day at a time,” she agreed.
“Ah-hm.”
Katherine blinked at the sound of Briggs clearing his throat. The man had been so quiet since the beginning of the exam that she’d almost forgotten his presence altogether. She glanced his way, and to her shock, he didn’t look upset at all about the revelation that she was actually expecting. Instead of wearing an angry or defeated expression, Katherine was tempted to say that the man looked downright awed.
It was a strange look on him.
“Congratulations,” Briggs spoke after garnering their attention. He reached across the table to clasp Bastian’s shoulder, eyes traveling down to meet Katherine’s just briefly before once again reconnecting with Bastian’s. “You’re a lucky man,” he managed to mutter, shaking his head and looking so pained to admit it that it nearly startled a laugh out of Katherine.
Bastian, though, didn’t seem amused in the least. In fact, despite Briggs’s attention, his focus remained solely on Katherine throughout the entire exchange, and it was as he was looking into her eyes that he murmured softly in agreement, “I know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
As far as Katherine knew, mental illness didn’t run rampant in her family. Sure, her mother’s multiple aunts were all a bit eccentric, and before her grandfather had passed on her dad’s side, he’d developed the odd habit of scolding his beloved – and very much deceased – cat for a variety of imagined misconduct, but the last that Katherine had checked, yelling after a zombified cat named Whiskers did not quite a schizophrenic make.
But she wasn’t on drugs.
And if neither drug use nor family history explained away the unpredictable and often violent mood swings she’d been experiencing as of late, Katherine had little else to blame for the bi-polar mess she’d dissolved into over the last three weeks but the pregnancy hormones rapidly flooding her body.
Nearly every day over the past month she’d managed to either explode into a tyrannical rage or burst into passionate tears. Unfortunately for her pack mates, they were often the targets of her wayward emotions. She’d even punched Markus right in the nose for attempting to dub the little life growing inside of her with the nickname “cub”.
Like he or she was actually an animal.
She’d nearly broken his nose, and no one had uttered the nickname since.
What had been perhaps the most infamous of her many meltdowns, however, had been dubbed “the great cookie debacle”.
Something smelled divine. Not just good, but truly heavenly – like whatever was responsible for producing such an aroma surely must have been hand-crafted by God himself.
Katherine had little choice but to follow the tantalizing scent to the kitchen, where Caleb stood baking near the oven. He had a mitt covering both hands – they were yellow, floral-patterned things that looked ridiculous covering his large appendages, but obviously did their job of protecting them from the heat well enough – and was currently pulling a tray of what looked like cookies out of the oven.
And not just any cookies either. Peanut butter cookies.
Katherine didn’t think she’d ever been more appreciative of the fact that she shared a sweet tooth with the resident baker of the pack. None of the others cared one way or the other for the sugary confections he’d often make. It was her personal theory that born wolves didn’t crave sweets because they weren’t brought up on them. Why would they be when large, meaty meals were much more efficient at sustaining them? Their high metabolisms absorbed sugar much quicker than protein.
As bitten wolves, however, she and Caleb had intimately known the taste of delicacies like peanut butter before being changed, and as such, they found it much harder to abandon such foods. In fact, the large tray of peanut butter cookies before her was the first thing Katherine had actually wanted to eat in weeks.
The dozen or so perfectly round morsels, each about as large as the palm of her hand, looked as good as they smelled. They were that perfect shade of golden brown that implied a warm, chewy inside and an outside with crunch. The tops were dusted with a thin layer of crystalized sugar. And were those...?
Yes, the cookies were liberally sprinkled with what looked like chocolate chips.
In short, they were everything that peanut butter cookies should be.
A loud, sudden cough to her right had Katherine blinking, temporarily losing focus on the cookies as she turned to take in the person responsible for the unexpected noise.
Markus and Zane sat at the kitchen table looking amused. While both of their eyes shone with humor, Zane, at least, had the forethought to hide his grin behind a mug of some sort of steaming liquid. Markus, on the other hand, wore his smirk proudly, his lips stretched so widely across his face that it almost looked like it hurt.
“What?” Katherine demanded, folding her arms defensively across her chest.
“Oh, we were just wondering if we ought to leave the room,” Markus quipped.
Katherine frowned, irritated with herself that she’d been so distracted by the heavenly-smelling confections in front of her that she not only hadn’t noticed that there were people other than Caleb in the room, but that she had no idea what they were talking about.
“Huh?”
“So that you can be alone with the cookies,” Zane clarified.
“You look like you want to do unspeakable things to them,” Markus added. “Don’t worry, we won’t tell Bastian about your adulterous slip.” He threw in a wink for good measure, and while Zane sniggered at his antics, Katherine merely rolled her eyes, hoping that the blush she could feel creeping up her neck stayed firmly hidden under the high neck of her blouse.
“Haha,” she offered dryly while subtly thumbing the small bit of drool she could admit had formed at the corner of her mouth.
Not subtly enough, though, judging by the matching smirks the two jackasses at the table shot each other.
“Don’t mind them
,” Caleb interjected from where he continued to work near the oven, rolling globs of cookie batter into perfectly formed balls between his palms before plopping them down onto a greased pan. “Peanut butter is my favorite too. My mom used to make them for me all the time before...” Caleb trailed off, a frown suddenly pulling at the corners of the mouth as he relived what was undoubtedly a painful memory. Sympathy welled in Katherine’s chest. “Well, before,” Caleb finally finished, stressing the word.
Katherine opened her mouth, wanting to say something encouraging or offer some sort of condolences to the man, but the words got stuck in her throat. After all, what could she say? Unlike Caleb, she was lucky enough to have both her pack and her blood family in her life. Sure, she couldn’t actively see her parents, but she could contact them basically whenever she wanted. Unlike Caleb.
“Caleb-”
“Anyway,” he continued a bit too brightly, voice practically drenched in manufactured cheer as he cut her off before she could even really begin to speak – not that she knew what she was going to say, anyway. “I think these have cooled enough,” he said, gesturing at the pan he’d been busy taking out of the oven when she’d first walked into the kitchen. “Want one?”
“I’d say. Even more than Bastian’s dick-”
A harsh glare in Markus’s direction had the man shutting his mouth before he could finish the suggestive statement. It didn’t stop him from offering Katherine a lude, however.
The brunette huffed, turning her attention back to Caleb. “I’d love one, thanks.”
She meandered over to the pan of cookies, making sure to take her time to pick out the biggest one. To prove a point, she didn’t immediately shovel the thing into her mouth, but took a moment to admire the treat. The cookie was warm and crumbly between her fingers, and she slowly brought it up to her lips, her taste buds practically tingling with excitement.
A moment later, they were rewarded for their patience. The cookie was everything Katherine imagined it to be as she finally dug in and took a bite. It was buttery, moist, and... wait.
Katherine snapped open her eyes, not even aware that she had closed them in anticipation of the exquisite taste of the cookie – three-quarters of which she still held between her fingers.
She stared at the confection as an awful realization hit.
Those hadn’t been chocolate chips she saw decorating the cookies, but... raisins?
She gnashed one of the tiny, dried out grapes between her teeth, trying to stifle her gag reflex as she forced herself to swallow the vile thing.
“What’d you think?” Caleb asked a nanosecond later, and as Katherine’s dismayed eyes met his, she imagined she resembled almost perfectly a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“I... I...” she stumbled over her answer, tears filling her eyes at the prospect of either hurting his feelings by admitting she disliked his mother’s recipe or forcing another bite of the raisin-infested cookie down her throat.
She blinked down at the treat in her hand, feeling stupidly betrayed by it. Especially when she glanced back up to see that all three of the men in the kitchen looking mildly horrified by the sight of the oncoming waterworks shining in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked, more than a hint of alarm in his voice.
“I... well, I mean...” Katherine furiously tried to bat away the tears, but to her horror, she could feel one, and then another, trickle down her cheek. “I don’t like raisins!” she finally managed to spit out, the words infused with much more passion than the situation called for. “I-I’m sorry!”
Utterly embarrassed by the emotional display, Katherine dropped the remainder of her cookie down onto the counter before fleeing the room, wasting no time in escaping back to her bedroom, where she promptly shut the door and threw herself down belly first onto her bed.
She buried her face in the pillow like it would somehow shield her from her internal embarrassment.
What in the hell was wrong with her? What would Bastian think if he’d seen her completely illogical meltdown?
He’d think she was insane, that’s what.
Thank God Sophie had dragged him off that morning to talk with Haven Falls’ clothing vendors about stocking up on baby clothes of all things. The blonde had wanted Katherine to come, too – to peruse the tiny selection they did have of newborn clothing, she’d explained – but Katherine had feigned a headache to get out of it. She didn’t feel bad about it either.
Thinking back on the scene she’d just made in the kitchen, however, maybe she should have gone.
Seriously, poor Caleb.
Knock. Knock.
Katherine was forcibly dragged from her sulking by the sound of two soft knocks on the door. “Yes?” she called, seriously considering ignoring whoever was on the other side of it. Especially if it was Markus come to poke fun of her for her latest meltdown.
“Katherine?”
Great.
It was the soft tenor of Caleb. She could hardly ignore him; she felt bad enough about her behavior as it was. Heck, he was probably coming to apologize to her for some inane reason. Like he was supposed to somehow know that she had despised raisins since she was three-years-old and had nearly choked to death on a glob of them.
Thank God her father knew the Heimlich.
Katherine sighed, pulling herself out of bed to go open the door. “Caleb, look, I’m really sorry,” she immediately began to ramble, “I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, I mean... What’s this?”
Katherine finally slowed enough to notice that Caleb was holding a plateful of peanut butter cookies out to her like a peace offering. A plateful of raisin-free, peanut butter cookies.
“I had plenty of batter left over to make an extra batch,” he explained bashfully. “I just made sure to leave the raisins out of these ones.”
To Katherine’s dismay, and to Caleb’s panic judging by the widening of his eyes, Katherine could once again feel tears filling her green orbs. This time, though, they weren’t disappointed, but unbelievably grateful ones. “You didn’t have to...”
“I don’t, I mean, I-I could...” Caleb stuttered, clearly thinking he’d done something wrong to inspire the sudden onset of tears... again.
Before Caleb could escape, Katherine took the plate of cookies from his still outstretched arms, quickly pivoting to set them on top of a nearby dresser before turning and pulling him into a fierce hug. “But I’m really glad you did. Thanks, Caleb. Don’t tell Bastian, but I think you’re my new favorite.”
She felt the man relax in her arms, and he returned her embrace in his usual gentle manner. “For my own sake, I won’t... and you’re welcome.”
Unfortunately, the whiplash from her own sporadic emotions wasn’t even the worst part about being pregnant. No, that was reserved for the plethora of stares she received whenever she dared to venture into town.
Honestly, it was like they’d never seen a pregnant person before.
Okay, so it’d been nearly an entire year since anyone in Haven Falls had, but still...
Katherine wasn’t even showing yet!
And the townsfolk kept getting bolder. In fact, the last time she’d gone into town – Sophie had finally managed to drag her out to check out the baby clothes, and while the blonde was distracted, she’d wandered over to the shop’s selection of patchwork fabrics – she had been cornered by two middle-aged women with wandering hands.
Katherine stared at the swatches of fabrics before her, hesitantly reaching forward to finger each one in an attempt to gauge the quality.
She hoped it wasn’t glaringly obvious that she no idea what she was doing.
Sophie had been attempting to convince her of the necessity of frills whether the baby was a girl or a boy – although she insisted it was a girl – when her eyes had caught hold of the sewing supplies stocked in the back of the store, and Katherine had mindlessly wandered over to them.
She could hardly help it; the urge to make something
warm for the baby – maybe a blanket or a quilt – had struck her as soon as she’d lain eyes on the piles of fabric. It was weird the way her instincts could become so suddenly insistent on ideas regardless of how problematic they were. After all, Katherine had no clue how to knit or even use a sewing machine. She supposed she could manage to poke some thread through the eye of a needle if she needed to, but that was about the extent of her homemaking abilities.
Heaven forbid her mind attempt to explain that logic to her hormone-driven instincts.
Sophie, whom had merely sighed at her lack of interest in children’s fashion, hadn’t protested and had merely reabsorbed herself back into the stack of clothing catalogues the store owner had managed to drudge up for them at the blonde’s insistence.
Katherine watched from the back of the store as Sophie engaged said owner in a discussion that probably involved debating whether ballerinas or the pink and purple owls that seemed to be featured on most of the girls’ clothing Katherine had seen in the catalogues was cuter.
It hardly mattered what the clerk thought, Katherine suspected that Sophie would just end up ordering whatever she wanted regardless. So, like, all of it basically.
Who cared that the baby would probably only be in newborn clothing for a handful of weeks?
But Katherine supposed she could hardly blame the blonde for her lack of rational thinking when there she was seriously considering making a quilt. She didn’t even know how to start such a project.
Should she buy cotton or linen fabric? What colors worked best together? Did she need any special equipment to make the quilt? And if so, how the heck did she use it?
She was pondering this, considering whether or not asking the store owner for assistance was worth the risk of getting pulled in a discussion that would undoubtedly lead to debating the merits of firetrucks or dinosaurs on baby boy clothing when two shrill voices suddenly sounded behind her and nearly caused her to jump out of her skin.