by Sky Winters
“I’ve been better,” she said a bit shakily. All of a sudden, she started to cry.
“Aww, what’s wrong?” he asked, sounding so sweet to her. It only made it harder. “I’m not doing anything right now, really. Do you want me to come over?”
Isabelle felt like she should say no. “Yes,” she said, going against her immediate thought. “Yes, please… I’m fine. I’m just. I’m pregnant.”
There was a long pause. At first, all she could hear was his breathing. She wondered if he was angry about it. They had not used protection. At the time, Isabelle thought it would be fine. She took birth control pills and she was always so good about taking them at the same time every day…
Apparently, werewolf babies could not be stopped by pills.
“I’ll be right there,” he told her. Devon didn’t sound angry at all, actually. He sounded almost… happy.
It would figure. The young wolf would be happy and excited about this; meanwhile Isabelle would be stressed and scared about it. That right there was just another sign.
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she said. “You’re too young for me.”
There was no response from the other end of the call. Because Devon had already hung up.
Isabelle hit herself on the forehead with her cool, metallic cell phone. This was going to be completely unavoidable now. They were going to have this talk in person.
Making an effort to clean herself up, Isabelle took a shower. The warm, soapy water did help to lift her spirits, though she still couldn’t get over how much weight she surely must have gained in no time at all. There had been no warning signs. She had not even had time to take a pregnancy test. But there was no denying that that was what had happened. She had been impregnated by Devon.
One she had showered, she slipped on a loose black baby doll dress, and brushed her black hair. She felt ashamed of herself for letting the whole weekend play out the way it had. She should have been more upfront with him from the start. Isabelle was looking for a quick, easy thing. A rebound. She wasn’t trying to start something new… She wasn’t trying to get pregnant by Devon.
She hoped that he wouldn’t be upset that she was so shocked and upset by this. She just did not know how to feel. She didn’t want a baby. She’d never gotten that far with her ex, and now that this was happening, she thought that maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to get this far with anyone.
There was a knock at her front door about an hour later. Isabelle didn’t get very far with cleaning, but she doubted that it would matter too much. He was bound to see her in a messier state down the road. That is, if they stayed together. She still fully intended to give him an out.
She opened the front door. Devon took one look at her and grinned. He hugged her before she was expecting anything. “Come on in,” she said.
He came into the apartment and seemed to be unable to take his eyes off of her. “You look beautiful,” he told her.
Isabelle scoffed. “Now you’re just kidding with me.”
Devon shook his head. “No! It’s true. I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re even more beautiful than I remembered.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with me being pregnant with your baby, would it?” Isabelle sat on her couch, putting her feet up on her coffee table. Before, she hated it when anyone did such a thing to her precious furniture. But now that she was so far along in this sudden pregnancy, she needed to relax. Her back was killing her.
Smiling, Devon sank onto the couch beside her. “It is partially to do with that, sure. I was hoping for an excuse to see you again. This one is a great one.”
“Is it?” she asked him. “How are you so sure?” Looking over at him and admiring his baby face, she felt even worse. “When I was with you last time, I kept thinking that I’m ridiculously old for someone like you. There’s almost a decade between us. I’ve already been married and gone through my own heartache…” She sighed. “I think you should be with someone better. Someone younger who can keep you on your toes and build a life with you.”
Devon blinked at her. “Are you crazy?”
Now that he asked that, she wasn’t sure she wasn’t.
“Crazy for letting you go? Possibly, but it’s for your own happiness. You deserve to be with someone more like you.”
“More like me?” he asked, chuckling and shaking his head. “That’s a laugh. There aren’t many people like me around here. And as you’ve seen on ComeShift, they’re not so great to hang out with.”
She sighed. “There are surely young girls out there who would be interested in you.”
Devon shook his head even more. “I’m not interested in them. I’m only interested in you.”
He moved closer to her before she could protest and took her hand in his, gently squeezing it. “I know that a lot of this is just because you’re scared. You’re probably scared that you’ll get hurt by me. But fuck that. I love you. You don’t need to be pregnant to get me here to see you… It’s a nice perk, but it’s not the only reason I was happy to come.”
Isabelle raised her eyebrows at him. She was the size of a tank and she felt like she might burst at any moment, but something about the way he spoke to her turned her on. “Happy to cum?” she repeated.
CHAPTER FIVE
I’m Lost And I’m Found
Taking Devon by the hand, Isabelle led him into her bedroom. She sat on the bed and slipped out of her black dress. “I don’t know how kinky this is going to be, but I want to make you cum since you’re so happy to do so.”
He smirked at her and threw off his clothes. His gray eyes shifted into their golden wolf version. She wondered if he would be able to stay relatively tame this time. Grabbing her, he pushed her gently so she was on her side. Lying behind her, he inserted his cock into her from behind and started slowly thrusting, working up a rhythm.
“Ohhh,” he moaned. “Is it bad that I want to fuck you even more now that you’re pregnant?”
She smiled, biting her lip. “Of course not. That’s exactly what I want to hear.”
Reaching forward, he grabbed her swollen breasts and gave them slight squeezes. They were throbbing because they had grown overnight, but it felt nice to feel them teased and groped like that.
After a few moments of slowly moving in and out of her, getting her prepared, Devon grabbed her right leg, and held it over his hip almost as if she was a ballerina. He sped up his movements, grabbing onto her hips as he slammed himself into her.
“Ahhh,” she sighed, licking her lips and closing her eyes. She imagined that she was still her usual weight. She didn’t want to imagine a wolf fucking a whale… “Are you sure about this?”
“What?” he asked, laughing softly. “Of course I’m sure. It’s a little too late to not be sure.”
She smirked and slowly, carefully rolled herself over so she was facing him. “I mean about us being together… dating. It’s not too late for you to turn around and go. I wouldn’t blame you.”
He suddenly pinned her down harder, bringing his big cock deeper. “That’s what I meant too,” he said in a low growl. “It’s too late. I’m not changing my mind. I love you!” He howled the last part as he came inside of her again.
There was no worry about a baby this time. He’d clearly worked himself up into a frenzy already.
They kissed each other and he fingered her until she saw fireworks, and convulsed with a heavenly orgasm of her own. There was no question, in Isabelle’s mind. Devon was the sexiest man she had ever been with.
Later, when they’d cleaned themselves up and gone back out to her living room, Isabelle finally felt struck by the full force of the truth. She was not going to have to say goodbye to him. He was refusing to leave. And the thing about it was that she did not make a convincing case for him leaving… She didn’t want him too. Not deep down. Not really.
“My ex and I never really talked about it before,” she told him as they cuddled on her couch. “Babies
, I mean. We never got that far because we never got close enough. It’s hard to think about babies when you’re already thinking about divorce a year in.” Isabelle sighed.
“Hey,” Devon said, using a finger to gently move her head so she had to look him in the eyes. “You spend entirely too much time worrying about things you can’t change. It’s over with him. He’s a dick. And you’re not too old for me. No one is too old for anyone, as long as that spark is there.”
Isabelle smiled. “Don’t tell twelve-year-old me that,” she said. “I used to think I was destined to marry Jeromy Irons.”
He laughed loudly at that. “See? Why does it matter so much now, if it didn’t matter then?”
“Because then it was a fantasy.”
That just made Devon grin at her and give her a devilish look. He morphed back into his human form. “And I’m not a fantasy to you?”
“Well,” she said with a laugh of her own. “When you put it like that…”
They kissed each other deeply.
Once Isabelle gave in to the idea that her boyfriend was staying with her, she started allowing herself to enjoy her time with her sexy young werewolf instead of letting things like doubts and prejudice get in the way. Society was not going to rule her. Society didn’t know the half of it.
“Of course, you’re going to need to stop working,” Devon pointed out to her.
She hadn’t thought of that, and she wasn’t too fond of him stating it like it was such an absolute. “Oh?” she asked. “I was going to keep working until my symptoms made it too difficult.”
Devon shook his head. “You can’t go into work like this. People will know something is up. No one should know about this. I want you and the baby to be safe.”
Isabelle frowned at him. “So what would you have me do? Pack up my things and move into hiding until our kid’s in college?”
He smirked. “Leave this place and your job, and come be with me in my cabin by the lake. You liked it, didn’t you?”
It did not take any convincing. Of course she liked his cabin. The time she’d spent there that weekend, was some of her favorite time she’d spent anywhere… “But I can’t stay in a paradise like that forever. What about you? What do you do when you’re not living the life of a cabin-dweller, riding motorcycles and being gorgeous?”
“I guard the land there,” he said. “I keep unwanted animals away from the populated areas. I guess you’d say I’m a park ranger, kind of.”
Isabelle laughed. “That’s better than what I expected.”
Because the young wolf of hers was dominating her body and soul, she did as he requested and resigned from her job in an email the following morning. Isabelle did not exactly sight a reason why she was quitting. She simply said she’d found something better for herself, in a position for which she was better suited.
After that, she and Devon packed up her most important possessions and moved them out to the lake house. It felt weird to her to drive in a car behind him, not on the back of his motorcycle, but he had snapped at her when she mentioned the idea.
“It’s too dangerous,” he’d cautioned, his face growing dark at the suggestion. “No risk is worth taking right now.”
Isabelle didn’t know if it was just his possessiveness taking over now that she was fully his, or if he was full of extra bite because she was pregnant with his cub. But either way, she found it sexy that he was such an alpha towards her now. Her ex-husband had been such a passive person. She had grown used to it, but that only made Devon’s attitude more thrilling.
He never spoke too unkindly to her and he never struck her. The dark looks he gave her was all it took to make her do his bidding.
When they arrived at the lake house, they moved her things inside. She was to sleep in his bedroom, obviously. They set up a nursery next door. Devon seemed to know something she did not.
“What’s with the hurry?” she asked him as they positioned a black wood cradle in the room. She had placed it near the center, by the wall, and he had moved it so it was right by the window.
Devon looked at her and smiled. “It’s going to be a full moon tonight,” he said.
Isabelle did not take long to figure out what that meant. “Does that mean I’m…?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not definitely. Though werewolf births do happen more often in conjunction with the full moon. Don’t get yourself stressed about it.”
She stretched and rubbed her lower back. “My back is getting stressed. I’m going to go lay down.”
Going out to the living room, Isabelle plopped herself down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes. This pregnancy had been a whirlwind. It was not so unlike her relationship to Devon Howard in that regard. It seemed like only yesterday that they were hitting on each other via a dating app, and now here they were.
Things moved faster with werewolves. Ramona had declined to let her know that useful bit of knowledge.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she texted her friend. “I have a lot to catch you up on, but I’m having werewolf’s baby. Big as a house right now. Hope to see you again soon.”
It was not long after she’d sent that message that the contractions started. “AHHH!” she shouted, clutching her belly. “DEVON!”
The young wolf rushed into the room. “What is it?”
“What do you think??” she asked. The contraction pain was making her lash out at him. That seemed relatively normal. It was weird to find normalcy in all of this.
“Okay,” he said. “Uh.”
His wording reminded her of his age and she threw her head back. She was going to have a cub with a cub. But he was strong and he was capable. He came into the room, and lifted her up into his arms as though it was nothing even though she was pretty sure she weighed over two hundred pounds now.
“Do you want to have him on the bed or outside?”
Isabelle looked at him as if he’d gone insane. “Outside?” she asked, breathing steadily. “Where would I have him outside?”
The corners of Devon’s mouth twitched a little bit and then he smiled. “You could have him in the lake… I was born in the lake.”
She looked at him, surprised. “Then… Then why aren’t you the creature from the black lagoon instead?”
Devon laughed. “Because we’re not in a 1950s horror movie. Now tell me what you want.”
Isabelle could tell that he was pulling for the lake. It made sense, if he was born there. She’d never thought about having a water birth. But, then again, she’d never thought about having a birth at all until a few days ago.
“The lake,” she said. “Argh and hurry!”
She clutched his open leather jacket as Devon carried her out the cabin’s back door and slowly walked, with Isabelle in his arms, into the lake. The water was cold enough to send a shocked shiver through his body.
“Be prepared,” he said. When he realized he’d echoed Scar – a Jeremy Irons character – he smirked at Isabelle, but she was a trifle preoccupied at the moment.
She let out a shriek and a squeal as he brought her into the water. He let her down onto the sand and rocks, getting her into the correct position for having a baby. She lay on her back, knees bent, looking up at him as his head was haloed by the stars.
And the moon.
The big, beautiful moon.
Isabelle had never noticed how stunning the moon was when it was full. She imagined that she would have ample reasons to appreciate it now.
Finally, the moment arrived where all Isabelle could do was push and try not to murder Devon. She pushed and shouted and he worked to make sure their baby came out in one piece, with all of his fingers and toes.
“It’s a boy,” he announced, grinning and getting emotional. Somehow, they had already known that. They’d been referring to their baby as a boy all evening.
The baby started to cry as he was brought up from the water and Devon held him so Isabelle could see. “A beautiful boy,” he added.
She
was crying, both from the pain of the delivery and the fact that they really had a son now. That had happened. Devon placed the baby into her arms as she sat up in the water, still wearing her black dress, but not caring about how wet it was.
“What do you want to name him?” Devon asked her. “Keep in mind; he’s a shifter so he should have a bad ass name that makes people fear him.”
“Like Devon?” she asked, smirking at him. She looked from the bright moon to her son’s face. “Jericho,” she said, gazing at him lovingly and petting his small face with her fingertips.
That was a name that meant moon city. She’d done her research.
Then, satisfied, she looked back up at him and added, “Jericho Devon Howard.”
Devon knelt beside her, smiling at his girlfriend and their baby. “I like it,” he said. “And I love you.” He kissed her softly, and then kissed Jericho’s head.
“Can I ask you something kind of random?” she asked.
He looked at her as though he was not sure if he should be afraid or not. “Yeah…?”
“When we went out the first time, I was wearing a Jem and the Holograms shirt. Do you even know what that is?”
Devon scoffed at her. “Of course I do. It’s a band, isn’t it?”
Isabelle sighed a little, feeling slightly disappointed. Her feelings were still somewhat valid.
“A band on the show called Jem,” Devon added. He narrowed his eyes at her as she looked at him, pleasantly surprised. “I have the internet, too, you know.”
She let out a laugh and kissed him. He’d passed her silly little test.
THE END
Bear Protector
CHAPTER ONE
ComeShift With Me
“Good riddance!” Sabrina shouted, slamming the door and locking it, even though she knew that no lock could keep a werewolf out for long, especially not one as young and strong as Victor Esparza was. Her now ex-boyfriend was handsome and sexy as hell, with raven hair and piercing blue eyes that were ice when he was angry. He was a terrific lover, but he was too possessive of her. He was half dog, so go figure.