“You’re late,” he repeated in a grumble.
She ignored him again, rubbing her face against his hairy chest and breathing in his scent. “I’m so happy to see you!”
He rolled his shoulders awkwardly, clearly unsure how to deal with his mate. After a brief moment of indecision, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.
“Why are you so late?” he asked, this time speaking to Asch.
Mila turned to look back at Asch and winced sympathetically before burying her face again in Caim’s chest. Secretly, she was happy Caim directed his ire at Asch instead of her. She was dying to snuggle up against him and go to sleep, and she was way too tired to deal with his attitude.
“We got a little sidetracked,” Asch replied and came to stand next to them. “Everything go all right?”
“I have been waiting for hours,” Caim continued stubbornly. His grip became a little too tight.
Deftly managing Caim, Asch replied, “Well, let’s get inside. It’s cold out here.”
He winked at Mila and then sauntered passed, heading for what she presumed was the den’s entrance. Caim scowled and hoisted her up into his arms. She protested, but not with any real seriousness, as he carried her to their new den.
Because it was far better hidden than the Cairn, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the entrance if not for the tracks—both footprints and paw prints—that led behind an obscured limestone outcropping. The inside passageway was just large enough to accommodate a medium-sized wolf. The smells of burnt wood and roasted meat wafted up, thickening as the narrow tunnel opened into a small cavern.
A dying fire crackled in the center of the room. The wolves, mostly in their human forms, were strewn throughout the room, all of them asleep. Mila tried to find Rosie and Gem in the crowd, but Caim didn’t pause. He took her down another passageway.
The passageway was dark, and Mila didn’t realize they’d entered a new room until Caim set her down on a pallet of furs. He tried to pull back, but she kept a grip on his shoulders. She heard Asch drop their bags on the floor.
“Lotus and the others asked that you wake them when you arrived,” Caim said gruffly. She heard Asch groan in the darkness.
“Are you coming, too?” Asch asked.
“In a few moments,” Caim replied.
She heard Asch pad over to her. He crouched down, placed a quick kiss on the top of her head, and excused himself. Once Asch had left the room, Mila crawled onto Caim’s lap and nestled up against him. He rubbed his nose against her hair, breathing her in.
“You will not leave without me again.”
“Okay, I promise,” she said absently.
Caim snorted. “I did not ask you to promise.”
“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
“I have things to do,” he replied but made no effort to remove her from his lap.
“Fine,” she relented. “But can you do the thing with my neck? You know how you bite it a certain way and it makes me sleepy?” He moved his head toward her, but she clamped a hand down over her neck. “Wait.”
“What?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“Will you be here when I wake up?”
She heard him sigh as he fell back onto the pallet, bringing her down with him. Caim carefully tucked her into his side, tossed one strong leg over her lower body, and placed a hand over her belly.
“I will be here when you wake up,” he promised.
8
It didn’t take long for Mila to fall into a comfortable routine in the new den. She spent most of her time with her friends, with other females rotating in and out of the group on a nightly basis. Her favorite new addition to the group was Fern, a gregarious, older woman with a quick tongue who made Mila laugh until she could barely breathe.
On nights when he wasn’t out hunting, Asch joined them in card games and even just for conversation. Caim kept his distance and spent his nights hunting or bickering with Lotus and Sable, the latter of whom had healed quickly from her wounds.
Although he was aloof at night, Caim was hers by day. They made love almost every morning. Sometimes, Asch would join them, and those were her favorite mornings. Other times, Caim would wait until Asch wasn’t paying attention and then abscond with her, having his way with her in private. She liked those mornings as well.
The days rolled into each other without much variation, which made things a little boring. Even her pregnancy didn’t offer much of a distraction, at least not for Mila. For everyone else, her stomach was the den’s hottest attraction. Rosie, in particular, had taken it upon herself to give Mila hourly updates on the baby’s heartbeat.
Asch had been the first to confirm there was indeed just one baby. Caim, who had been trying to detect a heartbeat for a couple of weeks, hadn’t been happy that Asch beat him to it. Mila had been disappointed in general.
From the start, she had assumed there was only one baby, even though Rosie and Brae had told her several times that “pups” tended to come in pairs. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to do with one baby, let alone two, but when Asch had told her he heard its heartbeat, Mila hadn’t felt the excitement she should have.
A teeny tiny part of her had wanted there to be two babies. Most women had to spend months wondering if their baby would be a boy or a girl. Mila had no time to worry about that, because all she could wonder was: Asch or Caim? It had been more of a nagging curiosity than anything else until a spring morning when it had metastasized into a nearly crippling anxiety.
The snow melted in March, but it wasn’t until April that it was warm enough for Mila to stay outside for extended periods of time. Her mates were weird about her leaving the den, and she couldn’t step a foot outside without one of them holding her hand. It was cute in the beginning, but as spring wore on, it became more of an annoyance than anything.
After breakfast, Mila headed out to the lake with several of the women. Asch came along with them, making casual conversation with Fern and Brae as they walked.
The path to the lake wasn’t well worn yet, and Mila had to wear her boots to avoid stepping on pine needles and briars. Used to walking barefoot around the den, she found the boots to be awkward and uncomfortable, especially with her swollen feet. She was relieved when the trees broke, revealing the glassy surface of the lake.
The days were longer now, and the late-afternoon sun still hung brilliantly on the horizon. Brae and Gem raced one another to the water, Rosie and Fern following close behind. Mila kicked off her boots and padded over to a long rock that extended into the water. Gem had nicknamed it ‘Mila’s dock’ because Mila could sit there for hours, soaking her feet in the water, while she lay back on the warm, flat surface of the rock, sunning herself.
Today, her feet were especially sore. She put them in the water and leaned over as best she could to massage them. Asch lowered himself into the water next to her dock.
“Let me,” he said and took her foot into his big hands.
“Gladly,” she said. She leaned back on one hand and draped her other arm over her belly.
It was painfully clear that she wasn’t going to be one of those fashionable pregnant women—the ones who looked like models smuggling basketballs under their blouses. Early in her pregnancy, she’d been excited for the baby to start growing, but she was pretty sure that if it kept growing at this rate, she’d be giving birth to something the size of a toddler.
“Do you want to wash up?” Asch asked, kneading his thumb into the arch of her foot.
Mila let out an appreciative sound and shook her head. “No, not today. Just want to get a little sun before—”
Abruptly, she stopped speaking and grabbed Asch’s hand, placing it on the side of her stomach. Asch looked anxious for a split second, and then warmth flooded his face.
He asked, “Is that the first time?”
Mila beamed at him. “Yup.”
It was a total lie. The baby had started kicking at least two weeks ago, during one o
f her rare moments of alone time. She’d been in her room, struggling to squeeze into a dress that was a dozen sizes too small for her, when she’d felt the soft thump for the first time. She’d felt it move a few times before that—or at least, she thought that she had—but that was the first time the baby had really made itself known.
At first, Mila was sad that Asch and Caim hadn’t been there to feel it, but after she sat down for a few minutes and the baby had kicked her a few more times, she found she was actually really happy about it. The pack had known she was pregnant before she had, and they’d all gotten to hear the baby’s heartbeat, but its first kick was something that belonged exclusively to her. It was the first milestone that was just between her and the baby.
She could keep it to herself for only so long, and Asch’s reaction was worth the wait. A look of wonder spread across his face, and then pure satisfaction.
“She’s tough,” he said, his eyes full of affection.
Mila grinned. Asch was on Team Girl, along with Rosie, Gem, Kallie, and Fern, though she suspected Fern had joined just to annoy Caim, who was certain beyond reasonable doubt that the baby was a boy. The sex of Mila’s baby was probably the most divisive issue in the pack, and she could hardly sneeze without someone purporting it as evidence of one gender or the other.
Asch pulled back Mila’s shirt, revealing her rounded belly. He lowered his head and placed his ear against her flesh. A cool breeze tossed her hair, and she stared out over the water. The others had given them privacy. She saw them bathing and chatting farther down the lake.
“I love you,” Asch said, drawing her attention back to him.
He said it often, always when they were alone. Mila always said it back now, and she somehow knew that she meant it. Today, however, when she looked into his loving eyes, the words stuck in her throat.
It struck her then, that in a few months, she was going to have a baby that would be either Asch’s or Caim’s. She realized that, while she had spent a lot of time wondering who the father would be, she hadn’t thought about who wouldn’t be. Since she’d started to show, they’d both become so attached to the baby. These days, every other sentence out of Caim’s mouth was ‘my son, this’ and ‘my son, that’. At the end of winter, when Asch had ventured into the nearest town for prenatal vitamins, he had come back with a stuffed pink teddy bear for the baby.
When the baby was finally born, one of them would be devastated. Mila knew it wasn’t the end of the world. They were all young; there was plenty of time to have more children. Still, she knew that in their minds, each one of her mates was forming a picture of his child—what she would look like, what his personality would be like, and all the things they would one day do together. For one of the men she loved, all of that would be gone in an instant.
Asch lifted his head and reached up to swipe the corners of her eyes. She realized she was crying and immediately set out to ease the concern on Asch’s face.
“Sorry, it’s just emotional. I mean, I feel emotional, because of the kicking,” she said lamely.
Asch was always so easy to talk to, but this was one subject she just couldn’t broach. She couldn’t take his daughter away from him, or Caim’s son away from him, either, at least not yet. She hoped, though, that when the time came, she could be strong.
9
Caim was glaring at her stomach. Mila tried—honestly tried—not to laugh. She truly felt bad for him, but it was just too funny. When her fit of hysterics finally subsided, she peeked over at him to see he was now directing his glare at her.
“This is not amusing,” he said with a level of contempt that almost had her laughing all over again.
She threw up her hands. “I swear it was just kicking. I’m not messing with you.”
He looked back down at her stomach, a muscle in his jaw ticking. It had been over a week since Asch had felt the baby kick for the first time, and it was pretty much all he talked about in Caim’s presence. The baby was very active, and by now, almost everyone had felt it kick, with the exception of Caim. For whatever reason, the second he put his hand on her stomach, the baby wouldn’t so much as twitch. He had tried for days to pretend it didn’t bother him, but it was clear his patience in the matter was wearing thin.
They were in their chamber, the small room that the three of them shared. It was early morning, and though they were too deep underground for outside light, they had a supply of candles that they lit in the mornings and evenings so that Mila could see while they spent private time together.
Private time with Caim almost always ended in sex, even now that her stomach was growing huge. Today was no different. Caim had snagged her from the main room, while Asch spoke with a couple of the beta wolves, and spirited her away to their fur pallet. It was as he was lighting the candles that the baby had begun to kick enthusiastically, only to stop as soon as she called it to Caim’s attention.
“You’ll catch him eventually,” she said and patted him on the shoulder. She had taken to calling the baby a “he” lately, mostly just to placate Caim, who had been a little too high-strung the past few days.
He shrugged her hand away. “Do not patronize me.” He lay back on the pallet, a sour look on his face. “It does not matter.”
She smiled, leaned over him, and brushed the dark hair from his forehead. “You know what I think?”
“I would not presume to understand your mind, mate.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. “I think that maybe he respects you too much to kick you.”
He gave her a dry look. “What does a pup know about respect?”
“I dunno,” she said, stroking his hair. “But you’re the only person he doesn’t want to kick. That must count for something.”
Caim rubbed the stubble on his jaw and seemed to consider the prospect. She had more or less pulled the excuse out of thin air, but she did believe the baby had a unique awareness of Caim. Whether that meant the baby was his, or it was just partial to Caim’s deep baritone, she wasn’t sure. She tried not to think about it too often, lest she drive herself insane.
“My voice does command authority,” he said, sounding contemplative.
Mila smiled and leaned down to kiss him. He immediately took control of the kiss, staking his claim on her mouth with a deep thrust of his tongue. A gnawing emptiness expanded inside her as Caim worked his tongue within her mouth.
He sat up, careful not to break their kiss, and pulled her into his lap. She had already undressed, but Caim didn’t take advantage of her nudity. He carefully positioned her so that his large erection rested between them.
Brute though he was, Caim was beginning to understand her needs in the bedroom. He had always been able to turn her on and make her climax, but it was the thrill of having such a big, aggressive male taking her in such an animalistic way that had always excited her most. Since her stomach had started to swell, he had been surprisingly conscientious of being overly rough with her in bed, opting to try his hand at more subtle ways of arousing her.
He moved to run his mouth down the curve of her neck, grazing his canines over her fragile flesh. She moaned and he pressed his fangs down a little harder, skating the line between pleasure and pain. Mila squirmed restlessly in his lap, eliciting a low growl from her mate.
“Be still,” he said gruffly. “Or else I will take you right now, and I will not concern myself with your release.”
Mila laughed out loud and swatted his head. “Well, lucky for me, you’re not the only mate that knows how to make me come.”
Caim pushed her down onto the furs and gave her a sly look. “It is hardly a challenge. I could bring you to completion just by breathing on you.”
She smirked and spread her arms out to give him full access to her body. “I’d like to see you try, big guy.”
His eyes gleamed with excitement. Without another word, he lowered himself back to her neck and trailed his hot breath upward and over her delicate skin. Her nerve endings tingled in an
ticipation of his touch, and she was disappointed when not so much as his stubble grazed her flesh.
Need clenched her gut as he blew gently on the shell of her ear. His breath stoked her desire but gave none of the fulfillment of a touch. It made the emptiness inside her grow until she was throbbing with the need to be filled.
Determined not to be the first to crack, she remained rigid and feigned disinterest in his ministrations, even as he began to dip down her body, heading for her breasts. Her toes curled at the mere thought of his breath over her nipples, which had been tender and oversensitive the past few weeks.
When he reached her breasts, Caim stared down at them, his eyes intensely curious, as if he were seeing them for the first time. He sniffed her once then twice. Without warning, he latched his mouth onto her nipple. He sucked, not overly hard, but her breasts were sore and it hurt a little too much to be pleasurable.
“I win,” she told him and tried to push him away. “Cut it out. I told you, you need to be careful with—” Mila’s eyes widened. Incredulously, she said, “Are you breastfeeding?”
Caim continued to suck. His only reply was an affirmative grunt. Mila gave him a hard smack on the shoulder.
“Stop it. That’s so weird!” When that didn’t faze him, she added, “It hurts, Caim.” That was true, but what mostly concerned her was that, in spite of the pain, it was strangely arousing, which was something she so did not want to explore.
Caim pulled back and licked his lips. She sat up, her hands flying to cover her breasts. “You can’t do that,” she told him, her face heating.
Being his usual, stubborn self, he said, “You are mine. I can do as I please.”
She pursed her lips at him. “No, you can’t. That’s for the baby.”
“My son will not have need of it for several more months,” he said matter-of-factly. He started to lower his head again. “I will be gentle.”
“Not so fast,” she chided and grabbed his ear. He narrowed his eyes and pushed her hand away, but didn’t try to go for her breasts again.
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