by Seere, Diana
But her parents bought it, and that’s what mattered.
With one last, quick hug, Molly again expressed her joy in meeting Joyce and Doug, reminded Sam to hurry, and disappeared around the fireplace.
“She’s not one of Asher’s siblings though,” Joyce said. “I do wish we’d had time to meet one of his brothers or sisters.”
It had only been six weeks since Sam had told her parents about the engagement, and at first they were convinced she was either pregnant, broke, or crazy. But she’d been on her own since she was seventeen, had always been headstrong and successful—they knew better than to keep complaining about the short engagement. At least directly.
After carefully dabbing away the moisture on her lower eyelids, Sam noticed Derry and Jess walking across the opposite side of the great room, headed for the well-stocked, handcrafted bar. She called them over and wanted to laugh at the dazed look in her mother’s eyes as she took in the massive charm that was Derry Stanton.
True to character, he took Joyce’s hand in a quick, seductive move and brought it to his lips. “Such loveliness,” he murmured against her knuckles. “I am truly enchanted to meet you, Joyce Baird.”
Sam bit her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud at the hot pink that flooded her mother’s face. And neck. And fingers. Sam would bet money her mother’s pinky toes were red as cherries.
Then Derry turned his charm—minus the knuckle-kissing—on her dad. And then Jess, not to be outdone, gave him an enthusiastic hug and sloppy kiss on the cheek. When they finally left to get their drinks, both her parents were flushed all over.
Sam turned and saw Lilah and Gavin walking by on the deck outside, each holding a baby. She waved, inviting them in. So what if she was wearing a robe? What did anything matter? She realized she was more than a little nervous, bordering on hyperventilation.
Gavin was a gentleman, of course, greeting her parents with the charm of a corporate billionaire (complete with beautiful, well-behaved baby son in his arms) that awed them. Lilah moved Dellie to her left arm to shake hands, glowing with the beauty of a very happy, very loved woman. Also she was just born gorgeous. Sam could see her father was overwhelmed a second time.
“Sam, aren’t you afraid Asher might see you?” Lilah asked, looking around the room. It had been empty a few minutes ago but now was beginning to fill with wedding guests.
“We’d be happy to see the groom a little more before the wedding,” Doug said.
“Things sure did happen quickly, don’t you think?” Joyce added.
“When she’s the One,” Gavin said seriously, “a man doesn’t hesitate.” His gaze shifted to Lilah, and it was her turn to blush. Still staring at each other, they excused themselves, leaving Sam alone again with her parents.
She did sympathize with them feeling like strangers with the Stantons, but there just hadn’t been time. She and Asher just couldn’t wait to make their union official. Right after she’d told them about the engagement, her parents had invited her and Asher to dinner at the house, politely interrogated him between servings of fresh sweet corn and roast beef, and declared him a catch. A mysterious stranger, but a catch nonetheless.
They repeated this assertion even after Sam told her parents her fiancé was a werewolf. And that the rest of his family was also shifters of one form or another.
Oh, and by the way, that she was able to shift into a fox, although only recently.
After that announcement at dinner, the conversation that had followed had only been a little awkward, no more than would be expected from having a guest with an English accent and billions of dollars. Sam had kept waiting for them to freak out about the shifter thing but… nothing. Not even a flushed cheek. They’d welcomed Asher to the family, joked about Montana being closer to Lincoln than Boston, and rubbed their hands together about grandchildren.
And now her mom was at the ranch, smiling at everyone as if she hadn’t been told many of them were shifters. “Now that I’ve seen the house,” she began before Dad interrupted.
“It’s a hell of a lot more than a house,” Doug said, impressed in spite of himself.
“Now that I’ve seen the house,” Joyce repeated, patting Sam’s arm, “I can see why you were so eager to have us stay here. Maybe next time when we visit we’ll do just that.”
“Please visit,” Sam said, meaning it. She wondered if they’d thought she was joking about the shapeshifting. “Often. You can stay in one of the cabins off the pool, like Lilah and Jess’ mom. Have the whole place to yourself, room service, hang out at the pool, whatever you want.”
Her dad sipped his favorite beer from a pub glass, which Sam had made sure he’d been handed upon arrival. Her mother drank her usual iced tea, sweetened with stevia, a taste she’d picked up over the past few years.
“We’d love to come if we’re welcome,” Joyce said. “Isn’t that right, Doug?”
“If it’s not too busy at the firm, sure.” Her dad shot Sam a smile. “Considerate of you to pick August for your wedding. That’s usually a quiet month for both of us.” Her mom worked side by side with her dad at the insurance firm, although they could never agree on a title for her. “Boss” was what Dad called her, but she preferred “CFO.”
Watching her parents act so damn normal after what she’d told them was adding a few dozen more butterflies to the swarm she already had in her stomach. She wasn’t going to be able to go through with the ceremony without telling them again. They needed to be prepared for what might happen later. How could she walk down the aisle if she was obsessed with what her parents were thinking?
She sucked in a deep breath. “Mom,” she began. “Dad.”
Her dad looked at his watch. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed or something? I assume you’re not wearing that robe to the wedding.”
“She’d be dressed already if we hadn’t shown up so late,” Joyce said. “She wanted to show you your fishing hole so you’d have something to look forward to tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to the cake,” Doug said. “There’s cake, I presume?”
“There’s cake,” Sam said weakly. It was getting late. She really did have to get dressed. And there was a crew of beauty specialists there to touch up her makeup and hair again. “Listen, remember when I told you about, about that thing? It’s kind of related to the work I do in Boston?”
Oh my God, she was fifteen again. Why did her parents always make her feel like a child, no matter how old she got?”
“Thing?” her dad asked, sipping his beer.
“I thought you were moving the lab here to Montana,” her mother said.
“Yes, I mean, the work I’ll be doing here in Montana but had started in Boston,” Sam said. “I’ll also be flying back frequently as needed for research and whatnot—” Oh, this was ridiculous. She had just come out and say it again. “On the shapeshifters I study, such as Asher, who is a werewolf? Remember?”
“Oh,” her dad said. “That thing.”
“Yes, that thing!” Sam exclaimed. “And, by the way, did you also hear me when I mentioned I can turn into a fox?” She was practically shouting now.
“Of course we heard you,” Joyce said, looking out the window at other guests milling around the deck outside. “Although if you want anyone to not hear you, you might want to lower your voice a little.”
“Aren’t you going to say anything? Ask any questions? Tell me I’m crazy?”
Doug set his empty beer glass on a side table. “You’re a grown woman. Even when you were a girl, you always made your own decisions. Like greeting your wedding guests in a bathrobe.” He smiled at her, shaking his head. “I’m damn proud of you, Sam, always have been.”
Her mom was also beaming at her. “Did you know this house is only a seventeen-hour drive from Lincoln? And a much nicer drive, too.”
Sam flagged down a server and snagged a glass of white wine off his tray. She drank half of it before saying, “You don’t believe me.” She ducked her head
, fighting tears, afraid of the future. Her life wouldn’t be complete if they couldn’t accept her—all of her, including her One and his family—as she was now.
Her mother’s voice changed slightly, lowering in pitch, dropping the playful mother-of-the-bride act. “You’ve underestimated us,” Joyce said.
Sam looked up, glancing between the two people she’d loved most her whole life. “What? I have?”
Joyce nodded. “If you were old enough to know Great-Aunt Elspeth, you’d realize we’re people of the world. Maybe you’ve lived on the east coast too long, start thinking everyone back home is an idiot.”
Sam’s butterflies struck the wall of her stomach. “Great-Auntie Elspeth?”
“You wouldn’t remember her,” Joyce said. “She disappeared when you were a baby.”
“Disappeared?”
“She loved to watch the local foxes from her window at the nursing home. One night she walked out and never came back. The next day, other ladies in the home said that she’d told them she was finally ready to join them. The foxes. The authorities assumed Auntie had gone senile, but the family never believed that. She was sharp as a tack.”
Sam felt light-headed.
“And there was Great-Grandpa Wilkes, of course,” her father said.
“What about him?” Sam asked weakly. The only thing she remembered about ancient Great-Grandpa Wilkes was the picture of them together on the mantel, in which three-year-old Sam was dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween.
Oh no. It couldn’t be.
“That was my mother’s side,” Doug said, grinning. “Nobody liked to talk about him too much—they locked him up in a mental institution for howling at the moon—but my grandpa believed it and told me so, so I did too.”
Sam reached out to her mom for support. “They were… Elspeth and Great-Grandpa…”
“He’d be your great-great, of course,” her father said.
“They were…” In spite of their location at the Stanton family home, Sam lowered her voice. “Shifters?”
Joyce shrugged. “Nothing like these Stantons, but they were something out of the ordinary all right.” She squeezed Sam’s arm.
“You and Dad…?” Sam ventured.
“Not us,” Doug said. “I guess you never know when that stuff will pop up.”
Sam blinked hard, wondering if she was dreaming. It wasn’t possible. She’d looked at her blood, studied her cells for any evidence of shifter ancestry. But she knew better than anyone that there was still so much they didn’t know, didn’t understand.
Like her dad had just said, you never knew when that stuff would pop up.
“We’re just starting to figure out the science,” Sam said softly. “Not all traits manifest themselves every generation.”
Her father put a supporting arm around her shoulders. “Looks like you drank that wine too fast, honey. You’re wobbly. Joyce, how about you give her that tea of yours? And get some real food in her. I was at a wedding once as a kid where the bride fainted right on the altar. The priest didn’t even stop his sermon.”
“That’s a great idea, Doug. Save me a seat, won’t you?” Her mother took her arm and pulled her toward the doors to the private quarters behind the great room. More guests were arriving through the massive entrance hall. “Let’s get you a ham sandwich or something before you put on the dress. Are the kitchens back here?”
Sam was too dazed to argue.
An hour later, a sandwich and iced tea inside her, her hair and makeup refreshed, Sam stood outside the vaulted room on the second floor that had been decorated for the ceremony and thought…
Fated. Everything had been fated.
She had nothing more to worry about.
Ready, darling? Asher asked.
I’m ready, she replied.
Their hearts beat as one, louder than the music that swelled to welcome the bride.
Epilogue (Part 2)
His hand was about to fall off.
No—not fall.
It was about to be squeezed off and roll under the hospital bed.
The blood supply to his elbow was down to a faint drip as his wife gripped his hand with the strength of a thousand Greek gods.
“Three, two, one… breathe,” Jess urged Samantha, as the contraction subsided. Derry’s wife had decided to specialize in shifter medicine, her dual-education difficult but rewarding. A second-year medical student back east, she spent as much time as possible apprenticing with Dr. Santino.
This was her first shifter birth.
His wife’s red hair was soaked through, plastered to her face by birthing sweat. And likely some of Asher’s mixed in, to boot.
Her waters had broken in bed, a middle-of-the-night surprise that started with his dream about swimming in the ocean and ended with her screaming for Asher to wake up and call Dr. Santino, the bedsheets an afterthought as he helped her to the small room off the ranch’s lab, a special hospital facility designed to meet any shifter’s needs.
“Another contraction is coming, Sam,” Jess said, staring at a machine that tracked them. “I saw the head this time. You’re so close.”
“Where’s Sophia?” Jess murmured, stretching her neck to one side, wincing. “I could use some help. She said she’d be here.” Gripping Samantha’s leg, she prepared for the next one.
Asher wiped his beloved’s head with a washcloth, then mopped his own brow, keeping his thoughts to himself. Perhaps the old ways, when it came to labor and delivery, were not so bad. Fathers being in the room were a fairly new initiative in the shifter world, but Samantha had insisted.
Demanded, even.
And thus here he was, helping her to sip Gatorade through a straw as he held her hand and, at times, one beautiful thigh on this final journey to parenthood.
“You’re sure the labor serum has been given to her?” he asked Santino for what was surely the millionth time. He would not tempt the darker side of fate by mentioning the word BirthDeath itself.
“Yes,” the doctor said, patient as ever.
“And you’re sure it will work?” he asked him.
“I invented it, Asher!” Samantha snapped. “Of course it will work! Don’t you trust me? You’re doubting my abilities as a highly trained scientist! I—” Bearing down, she lost her words in the contraction.
Contractions were good.
“I love you,” he responded, unsure what else he could do until Jess tapped him across Samantha’s shoulders and nudged her chin at his wife’s knee.
Pulling it back, he was rewarded with the sight of a large, round spot coming out of his wife, the baby’s head covered with slicked-back red hair.
Like mother, like—
Sliding out like a seal on a rock, tumbling into the ocean, his son—their son!—made his entrance into the world with grace, making Dr. Santino earn his pay as the doctor quickly grabbed the baby, whose eyes remained shut, mouth tight.
“Is he— Can he? Why isn’t he crying?” Asher called out, the baby’s blue skin a terrifying sight, his eyes unable to look away as he pushed to be closer.
Samantha reached for his hand and said, “Shhhh.”
And then it happened.
The baby peed in a straight arc, the urine hitting Asher straight in the nose as he leaned over, getting pissed on in his worry just as his son opened his mouth and began a mewling cry. Santino discreetly handed him a washcloth, muttering something about urine being sterile as he laughed.
“It’s a boy!” Jess cried. “Too bad Sophia missed it!”
“He’s alive!” Asher choked out, overcome by emotion as Jess tenderly rolled the newborn into a towel, Samantha openly weeping as Jess reached forward to hand the baby to her.
“No,” she said, looking up at Asher, who felt an inexplicable wetness on his cheeks. “Asher first.”
Curling his arms as Jess handed his son to him, he marveled at the baby’s open mouth, eyes screwed shut in emotion, the small, goatlike crying ceasing the second Asher sa
id, “Shhhhh, my child. Shhhhhh. I am here. Your father is here.”
Eyes flying open, the baby hushed at the sound of his voice, staring up intently, blinking but once. As Asher stared into the sapphire-blue eyes of his very own child, the baby breathing in soft waves of beauty, some piece of Asher Stanton’s heart healed.
For good.
One tiny, beet-red hand came out of the towel and grazed Asher’s finger, the bones of his baby so delicate. Stroking his cheek, Asher lost himself in the babe.
A fracas at the door made them all turn to find a disheveled Sophia standing there, hair in a hasty topknot, shrugging out of a cardigan.
“I’m so sorry! I was nursing the baby and he took forever, and I assumed it was a first birth so there would be plenty of time…” Her voice wound down as she took in the sight of her oldest brother cradling his son.
“Meet your aunt,” Asher told the baby, who stared up at him, unblinking. “She is a thorn in my side and a pain in the ass, but she married well.”
Sophia’s hands flew to her mouth, tears filling her eyes, which darted between newborn and brother.
“Ahem,” Samantha said, half joking as Jess eased her legs down, Dr. Santino taking her blood pressure, their ministrations all medical as Asher stood there, holding his entire heart in a towel, Sophia now next to him, cooing at her new nephew.
Samantha reached out for the baby, arms as greedy as his.
“My God, Samantha, you did it! You made me a baby!” Asher thundered, his child jolting as he gave his wife exactly what she wanted.
“Welcome to the world, little boy,” Samantha whispered, Asher sitting on the side of the bed, left arm wrapped about her shoulders, right index finger being clung to by his son, who watched his mother as if she were a goddess.
Smart boy.
“His eyes are so blue. Bright blue,” she marveled. “Like yours.”
“Normally they’re darker,” Jess noted. “How interesting.” Jess wrapped her arm about Sophia’s waist, the two women hugging, grinning like fools.
Samantha winced, making Asher’s pulse suddenly rev. “What’s wrong? Santino! What’s wrong?”