“Am I not allowed to be happy?” he teased.
“Of course you are, you fooler. The thing is, it’s almost like you’ve been getting distracted by it. Everyone’s noticing. The other caregivers are starting to talk about it when you aren’t around.”
Robbie frowned.
That’s not good.
“What are they saying?”
Aaliyah’s smile turned sheepish and teasing. “Mostly, they just think you got laid after a dry spell. That’s certainly what you’re acting like.”
“Oh, god,” Robbie groaned. “They don’t say that in front of the kids, do they?”
“Of course not!” she said, reassuring him with her vehemence. If she had hesitated at all, he would have known she wasn’t giving him the full version of the truth. “Just amongst themselves. And you know even I wouldn’t say something like that where any impressionable little ears might hear. So, that’s all fine. It’s just that if you’ve got good news you can share, you might want to do so before they start coming up with crazier rumors.”
Robbie lifted his hand, running his fingers back through his hair. “Am I really acting so strange?”
“Not too bad. Just like you’ve gotten good news. Just, you know how people are.”
How humans are.
“I was hoping to be able to wait awhile before I made it public knowledge,” Robbie admitted. Even thinking about sharing the news, and the news he had to share, was making him feel all tingly and impatient in his stomach.
Aaliyah grinned, her expression fierce. She leaned in even closer, knowing she was very close to having her curiosity satisfied. “Does it have to do with who you’ve been seeing? Are you two getting married?”
Robbie restrained the urge to roll his eyes. The ridiculousness of humans never ceased. They got specific ideas set so firmly in their minds that it was hard for them to accept different things. They were resistant to change, which really was the underlying cause of so many of their problems.
Amongst the things Robbie always found to be stupid was the way humans were so insistent upon everything being labeled, registered, stuck into a system. Two people couldn’t simply be in love. It wasn’t enough for consenting adults to swear themselves to one another in privacy. There had to be a public ceremony, a huge affair to display their feelings for everyone to see and judge. Paperwork had to be signed.
Shifters, and especially wolves, needed no such gratification. It was enough to be mates, for an alpha to mark an omega and claim them as theirs. After all, animals had no concept of the idea of marriage. Many did choose to get married, because it was a custom of the world they were forced to live in, because it helped financially where taxes were involved.
But was it necessary?
Not at all.
“We aren’t getting married,” Robbie said out loud. “But we’re taking a huge step in our relationship.”
Technically, that could mean anything.
Aaliyah looked rather dissatisfied at the lackluster answer. Her mouth moved, like she was chewing on her lower lip, debating whether to push the topic even further.
Robbie was having his own internal debate. If he gave in to her questions, if he told her that he was having a baby, he would need to provide even more information than just that. She would be confused, because regular human men didn’t give birth.
He could tell her that he was planning to adopt with Ulysses, but he would have no explanation as to why he was ballooning up throughout the months. He wouldn’t be able to explain why the baby had some of his features.
Can I claim we have a surrogate? And I just won’t be specific about who the baby came from.
He did want to tell her. He really did.
He just didn’t know if she was ready to discover he was a wolf.
And he didn’t know what he would tell everyone else, all the other caregivers with their similar questions.
Aaliyah looked as if she was about to say something else, like she had decided she would push him, when she stopped and tilted her head.
Rapid footsteps, echoing down the hallway, approaching the office.
Robbie also stopped, puzzled, concerned. Whoever was coming sounded as if they were almost literally hurrying their ass off.
Something must have gone wrong while we were back here jabbering about good news.
He expected a knock, a raised voice asking entrance. Instead, a caregiver simply grabbed the doorknob, yanked it so hard the entire door rattled, then barged in with no regards as to what might be happening within.
Alarmed, Robbie was already standing up, reaching out to the woman, a thousand questions already forming on his lips. There were so many things he wanted to ask, needed to ask, and first and foremost amongst those was if she was okay.
And then he caught sight of the look on her face and realized, no, she definitely was not. She looked as if she had seen a ghost and was on the verge of passing out, even as her legs carried her deeper into the office.
Aaliyah was closest to the door. In one swift movement, she stood up, grabbed onto the other woman, and spun her so they were staring into each other’s eyes. “What’s going on?” Aaliyah demanded.
Robbie remembered that his most-trusted caregiver used to be an assistant in dog obedience classes. The voice she used now must have been the tone in which she spoke to disobedient animals, showing her human dominance over them.
It’s almost the same tone an alpha uses when they’re giving commands.
Sounding very confused, the caregiver said, “Someone’s here for Mr. Olson.”
Robbie moved off around the desk, reaching out to the door. His mind instantly jumped to the only conclusion he could possibly draw, which was that Ulysses was here and needed help with something. Clearly whatever was going on must have been an emergency to necessitate this kind of reaction.
“Make sure she’s okay,” Robbie said, snapping off the command to Aaliyah. He’d check on the caregiver in his own time but right now there were more important things for him to do.
“Wait,” Aaliyah said. The woman was shivering against her, her mouth moving as she said something, but Robbie couldn’t hear her. He was already lost in his own thoughts, hoping against hope that whatever situation he was walking into would be one which was easily solved.
From his office was a hallway, which was riddled with various doorways. Bathrooms for men and women, supply closets, a tidy little break room where caregivers could take some time to get themselves together if it was necessary -kids could be damn mean- and then, of course, his door.
The hallway opened up to the regular activity room, which had a small section at the front where the main door to the daycare was.
There was no door or gate separated the hallway from the activity room, allowing Robbie to see a slice of the area even as he was approaching.
He couldn’t see anyone.
That wasn’t very unusual.
The thing which struck him as odd, which gave him a bad feeling deep in the pit of his stomach, was the fact he couldn’t hear anything.
No children. No caregivers. No guest who might have come in, needing his assistance. There was only silence.
Gritting his teeth, fighting the urge to panic, Robbie stepped out into the activity room.
At once, he became aware of two things.
The first thing was that the guest was a person he had never seen before. And the second was that every single child, every caregiver but for the two in his office, were crowded against the back wall. None of them were making a single sound, not even when they saw he was there.
The reason no one was making a sound was probably because of the gun, which was pointed right at the group as if the guest had every intention of using it.
The guest was a man who resembled a mouse more than a human, with a pointed nose, round face, and small, bright eyes which flicked and darted all around the room.
Moving very slowly, Robbie held both of his hands up in front of himself. “I don
’t have anything,” he said. “So don’t shoot, okay?”
His heart was hammering so hard inside his chest he could barely breathe, but he struggled to sound calm. With any luck, he could throw this gun-toting guest off and get the upper hand.
“Are you Robbie?” the uninvited guest asked. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched for a man, which really didn’t help with the whole mouse-like image he had going on.
Robbie bit his tongue on the sudden, uncontrollable urge to laugh. “Yes. I’m Robbie. And you are?”
The man’s eyes flicked around again. “No one important. I need you to come with me, or else I’m going to start shooting these kids until you do.”
At his words, a caregiver shifted slightly as if to put herself more in front of the children, who were cowering behind her.
“Don’t move!” the man shouted, the gun wobbling crazily in his hand. Robbie tensed up, preparing to shift and move in while he had a chance, and then he hesitated.
He didn’t care that everyone here would see him transform into a wolf. This was not a situation where he could care.
He did care that the man might flinch, might tense up, might accidentally fire the gun at any moment. The stray bullet might harmlessly break a window, hit the wall, or it might strike a person. It might only graze an arm or leg, or it could hit a stomach, a neck, a head.
He couldn’t take that chance.
The moment passed. The man gripped his gun properly again, keeping it trained steadily on the group once more. Still, there had been that lapse. He had shown he was unskilled and reckless with the weapon. The chance to attack him might come up again and Robbie would be waiting for it when it did.
“It’s okay,” Robbie said, talking to the caregivers, the children. To the man, he said, “I’ll come with you. There’s no reason to shoot anyone, okay?”
“Good,” the man said. “Very good. Now, let’s go. Head out the front door. Don’t look back. Don’t stop. I’m going to be right behind you the whole way and if I see anything weird, I’m going to put a bullet in your spine.”
Whether or not that bullet would be put there on purpose, or as a result of a deliberate decision, Robbie wasn’t quite sure.
“It’s okay,” he said again. Then, bracing himself, still trying to act normally, he turned to face the door and started to head out. He heard movement behind him but it was only the sound of the guest turning to follow him.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t look back. He didn’t even hesitate, not even when he felt something cold and round press hard against the small of his back as he stepped outside into the open air. He had never had a gun being shoved against his back before, but that was unmistakably what this was.
A chill wind fluttered across his face as he left the building. The sky was dull and overcast. For Pensacola residents, this weather meant it was time to cuddle up inside, to bundle up, to spend as little time out in the fierce Florida elements as possible.
Across the street, and far off to the right, Robbie saw pedestrians. They hurried along like their lives depended on it, dressed for the blizzard in their minds rather than for the frail sense of cold in reality. They wore jackets with the hoods up, their faces turned down to protect sensitive skin.
No one was nearby. No one would notice his plight.
And he was glad for that, just as much as he was disappointed by it. If someone noticed something was wrong, maybe this inexplicable situation would come to an end that much sooner. Then again, if this mousey man realized he had an audience, he might be apt to lose what little cool he still held onto.
Robbie reached the end of the short path that led up to the front of his cute little daycare, where he helped young lives flourish.
The cold steel muzzle of the gun pushed hard against his spine. “Go right,” the man hissed underneath his breath. “The Ford Focus. Get in.”
He didn’t know a Ford Focus from a fork in the road. He scanned the cars in front of him with desperation, hoping to figure out which one was the right one before he hesitated or did something else to attract the wrath of his captor.
The car almost all the way at the end of the row was a black Ford Focus. Robbie could tell nothing else about it, not the year it had been made or if it was special in some way. It just looked like a generic car to him, the kind of thing he would immediately think of if someone asked him to think of a car.
Ulysses would know.
Robbie walked up to the passenger side door, reached out, and grabbed the handle. The handle pulled out, but the latch didn’t disengage. The door stayed shut.
The cold muzzle of the gun shoved hard against his spine, so hard he wondered for a moment if he wasn’t going to have a bruise in the shape of a perfect circle. “Get in the fucking car.”
“I can’t.” He tried to sound calm, would have said more if given the chance.
The gun shoved against him again and now he could feel vibrations pulsing through it as the man trembled, reflecting the anger in his voice. “I’ll shoot!”
“I can’t get in,” Robbie snapped, losing some of his fear in the wake of his frustration. “The door’s locked. You’re not very good at this, are you?”
Silence, filled with dreadful, tremulous possibility. Then, the man behind him sighed and the pressure of the gun eased a fraction at a time before falling away entirely. There was a rustling of fabric, and then the headlights on the car flashed just once. There was a faint click at the same moment, as the lock disengaged. “Just get in.”
The man moved away, heading around the front of the car to get to the driver’s side.
Robbie hesitated for a heartbeat, adrenaline surging so fiercely through his veins he nearly went running before he’d even had a chance to think the idea through. He was technically in the clear now. He could run. He could try to get away.
But the man still had the gun. Even if Robbie got away, the kids would still be in danger.
I have to go with him. Get him away from anyone else before I make my move.
Robbie grabbed the door and yanked it open, then slid inside. He shut the door, then reached for the seatbelt. Only when he finished buckling up did he realize how stupid that had been for him to do. And now he couldn’t undo the belt, because that would call attention to it.
Feeling very bitter, Robbie leaned back and waited while the man got himself in the car, found his keys again, and turned it on. Nothing more was said until they were on the road. Robbie tried to pay attention to where they were headed, the twists and turns that they took.
The man stirred around in Robbie’s peripheral vision. “You don’t know who I am, right?”
“No, I don’t,” Robbie said.
Where’s the gun? How soon could he get to it if I attacked? If I grabbed the steering wheel and crashed us, how bad would our injuries be?
Too many variables for him to make a move.
With a surge of horror, he suddenly realized that he had forgotten about something very important. He was pregnant. There was a baby inside him. If he did something drastic, the child might get hurt.
He clenched his hands into fists, partially to hide the fact that he had brought his claws out, partially to try and get ahold of himself. His claws dug into his palms, hurting him, causing just enough pain to slice through some of his fear.
“I guess I should go ahead and tell you,” the man said. He drove with the practiced slightly-above-the-speed-limit recklessness of a man who is a little too comfortable with cars. It was the sort of behavior another person might consider careless, as if this man had grown so used to what he was doing that he forgot to pay attention. “I’m not heartless, okay? I’m not some random jerk off doing this for no reason. You deserve to know what’s going on.”
With quite a lot of effort, Robbie managed to hold off on making a smart remark. He was beginning to understand more than ever the way Ulysses used to act. Instead of feeling defenseless, or dealing with any emotion that was even remotely negative, why not shove all th
at aside and pretend to be brash and bold? Fake it ‘til you make it.
But he wasn’t Ulysses. That wasn’t his defense mechanism. If he wanted to get out of this situation, he had to play to his own strengths.
So, Robbie stayed quiet and listened, hoping to find out some bit of information that would be useful to him in the near future.
“I’m Wheeler,” the man said.
Robbie’s mind went blank for a moment, and then he remembered just who the hell that was. “You’re Lee’s boss.”
“Yeah, I am.” Wheeler kept driving, both hands on the wheel. The gun was nowhere in sight still. Robbie couldn’t locate it no matter how hard he tried. “And you’re his boyfriend.”
“Mate,” Robbie automatically corrected, then winced.
Wheeler just shrugged. “Sure, that’s cool. Call yourselves whatever you want. Point is, you and him are a thing. That’s the only reason you’re involved in this, you know. If not you, it’d be some other guy. Or girl.”
Despite all the turns they were making, Robbie was pretty sure they were heading in a general northwest direction. Pensacola didn’t have much of a skyline in comparison to other cities, and its few towers in the business district could not rightfully be called skyscrapers. It was harder to become disoriented, unlike in New York City or Chicago, where a wrong turn could turn into an entire navigation fiasco.
He would have been even more certain about the direction if he was able to see the sky.
“Ulysses ratted out my operation to the cops. I sent him off to pick up that blue truck, and then I called in a tip to the cops so they’d find him. Give me just enough time to clear out of my shop, along with all my documents and everything I sure wouldn’t want anyone to find.”
“But why?”
“Yeah,” Wheeler said. He nodded, seeming unusually sage-like for someone so mousey. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Why? You might as well know. I might as well tell you everything, because this is all going to come to an end soon anyway.
“Look, years ago, I started losing business. I blame the internet. People were starting to figure out how to do repairs for themselves. Videos and online manuals and forums. People who knew were spreading their knowledge around, for free. I was going to lose my business, made some bad financial investments that fell through. Good service and regulars just weren’t going to be enough. And that fucking sucks, because I made that shop. It was my baby.”
Taming The Alpha: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance (Savage Love Book 3) Page 19