BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (138 page)

Sarelle hugged Maria – apparently they were closer than I’d thought – and turned. She froze when she saw me. Her eyes were hostile immediately, and she stared at me. I counted in my head. One, two… she looked down just before I reached three. She hadn’t wanted to submit to me. I could see it. But she did.

At least we’d come that far.

“What is she doing here?” she asked Maria.

“She just needed to talk about something,” Maria said, and I was relieved she didn’t say more than that. Sarelle looked up at me.

“Since when does she turn to number nine of advice?” she asked. It wasn’t supposed to be insulting to Maria. Just to me. It was both. Maria looked taken aback. I was suddenly angry. Sarelle has always been a problem. I tried, I really did. For Reid’s sake, for the sake of the pack. I tried to accept her and play by the rules even though I really just couldn’t stand her.

Anger washed through me and heat crawled over my skin. That same wave of power I usually felt with Reid was suddenly there. He wasn’t even here. Usually it happened when we touched each other.

Sarelle felt it too. Her usually gray eyes suddenly turned black, the color draining out of her eyes until her eyes were black holes.

“Sarelle?” Maria asked. She saw it too.

“Since when do you have your own power?”

Her words knocked me like she’d physically punched me. I could see her beast sliding behind her eyes, an animal that wanted to claw it’s way out. I looked at Maria. Her eyes were wide, and she’d backed to the other side of the room. Whatever was happening, she was feeling it too. Her wolf seemed under control, but she wasn’t going to come any closer.

My breathing came faster. I took a deep breath and tried to hold it for three counts. I had to pull myself together. Reid losing it was tough but it wasn’t the first time. Sarelle was standing opposite me and her wolf glared at me through her eyes. This was new.

“I don’t know how to deal with this,” I said, glancing at Maria. “How am I supposed to deal with this?”

Sarelle looked at me like she was trying to figure something out.

“You’re not a wolf,” she said, but it sounded like a question. “I smell you right through this all. You don’t have an animal. I know you don’t.”

She took a deep breath and it was like the black in her eyes started eating at the white. The black grew until there was so little white left it was just pure animal eyes inside a human face. It was unnerving.

Hell, this whole thing was unnerving and scary. And I had no idea what was going on, except that werewolves were suddenly losing it around me because my baby had some power that challenged them.

Hearing you’re pregnant when you weren’t trying isn’t easy. Hearing your baby has a power source that challenges the alpha is even worse. This was going to take some getting used to. Somehow we were going to have to try and get around it.

I didn’t know how we were going to do it, but this wasn’t the first time things were completely strange in my life.

Chapter 6

We didn’t talk about it. I knew that it wasn’t a good thing. We were about to have a baby, and we didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about his loss of control, either. It was like if we didn’t mention it we could carry on like none of it had happened.

We could ignore his violent change. That was a once of thing. But a baby? My tummy was going to grow and at some point the little bundle was going to arrive. We could only ignore that for so long.

Reid was called up to duty again. He kissed me when he left.

“We’re going to be okay,” he said. I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, us or the baby, but I like to think it was both.

I didn’t know how long he was going to be away for. I wondered if the baby would be born before he was back. I wondered who would sit by my side, and hold my hand the way I’d done for Charlene, but that was still months away.

And suddenly the months were gone, and it was almost time. I was severely pregnant, with a tummy that felt heavy every time I moved. My back hurt and my ankles were swollen and it had been weeks since I’d been able to cut my own toenails.

“Sometimes I think I just want this baby out so that I don’t have to go to a nail bar to get my toes prettied up,” I said to Charlene. She was bouncing baby Carla on her lap. She was eight months all, a chubby, beaming baby that crawled and drew on all the walls. She would be walking soon.

“I know exactly how it feels. And then when its out you feel so relieved, and before you know it you’re broody again.”

I laughed. I couldn’t think about doing all this again. Not now.

A pain shot through my body. I cried out and grabbed my tummy.

“What’s wrong?” Charlene asked, concern all over her face.

“I don’t know.” I’d never felt something like this, and I knew enough about my body to know that this wasn’t contractions. It was too early anyway.

“I’m sure it was just a once off thing,” I said, forcing a smile. The words were barely out of my mouth when a second pain shot through my body, and it was excruciating. I cried out and felt to the side on the couch. Charlene swore and then followed it up but saying, “sorry baby, sorry baby,” to Carla because she swore in front of the baby. She put the baby in the playpen and hurried to me.

“Call my doctor,” I gasped.

“I’m calling the hospital,” she answered but I shook my head.

“Call my doctor. I need to find someone that knows about werewolves.”

Charlene stared at me.

“Just do it,” I ordered. My words were cut off my another scream of pain, and Charlene did as I asked. I knew she wanted nothing to do with the pack, but this was happening. With Reid gone we didn’t have any more magic issues, but I knew deep down inside that this wasn’t normal pregnancy issues. And I need to find someone that could tell me what the hell was going on.

Charlene was on the phone, babbling in a panicking tone. As far as I could tell from the conversation she wasn’t finding out anything. The doorbell rang. Charlene glanced to the door.

“Ambulance?” I asked.

“I didn’t call one,” she answered.

Sarelle walked into the room. Charlene looked at her with something between confusion and hostility. I didn’t have time for such luxuries.

“I need to get to a werewolf that can tell me what’s going on,” I told her.

“I know someone,” she said. “Come.”

She hoisted me to my feet. She had strength beyond any human woman and she practically carried me to her car. Charlene pranced behind us and it the background I could hear baby Carla squealing.

“You get back to you baby,” Sarelle said over her shoulder. “I’ve got her.”

She got me into the car.

“How did you know?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You’re pack. It calls to me. You’re in trouble so I came.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know I could call them. I had a vague idea it might have been because the baby had power, not me. I was more surprised that Sarelle had actually come.

She drove in the opposite direction of the hospital, and we ended up in front of a small medical center that I hadn’t know existed.

“Come,” she said again and helped me out of the car. Nurses rushed out with a wheelchair. She lowered me into it and they turned to wheel me away. I looked over my shoulder.

“Thank you,” I said. She just looked at me, and her eyes were that awful black again. She didn’t follow me in. Instead she just got back in her car. I heard her drive off before they wheeled me through the doors.

I was booked in and assigned to a bed before I knew exactly what was happening. The pains got worse and worse and I curled on the bed in agony. Ten minutes later a woman with a white coat walked in. She had red hair pulled tightly against her head in a ponytail and a no-nonsense face.

She pushed a stethoscope against my tummy and listened. The pain was bad but I could hold still. She nodded as if confirming something to herself, then pulled out a syringe.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Something to calm you down without causing harm to the baby,” she said and prick the needle into the crook of my elbow. The effect was immediate. I felt like I was suddenly underwater, a gentle pressure all over my body. The doctor pulled a chair closer and sat down. She put both hands on my tummy and blew out her breath, becoming still.

The same feeling of power that I usually felt with Reid flowed over me, but it was soft soothing, not charged with authority. The pains started subsiding slowly, until it was just the pressing feeling over my body and the warmth that flowed from the doctor.

“What was that?” I finally asked.

“I’m Doctor Wyatt. You can call me Amelia.” When she looked at me her eyes were so light, almost white, so that her pupils looked like pinpricks in the middle of her eyeballs. As I looked at her, color bled into them again until they were a deep blue, like the ocean.

She was a werewolf.

“You’re just a human,” she said as if she was unsure how that was possible. “But your baby isn’t. I don’t know how that happened, but the baby is going through the same things grown wolves go when they’re changing. If you were a werewolf the pregnancy would be almost twice as long, baby would have time to develop the lycanthropy properly. You’re carrying to human term which I nine months, but with a wolf baby. It’s causing complications and in turn, pain.”

“Is it dangerous?” I asked. Amelia shook her head but not in a way that made me feel like the answer was no

“To be honest with you, I’ve never seen this before. We’re going to have to keep you here just to make sure you’re okay. I calmed the change down and I gave you something that should keep your power at bay. But you’re an amplifier of sorts. You tune into power and make it stronger. That might be what brings the baby’s change on.”

I lay back on the pillows.

“Will the baby be okay?”

“I think so, but we just have to keep checking to be sure. And we’re keeping an eye on you. If we do lose the baby, we don’t want to lose you too.”

Chapter 7

Reid

We’d been away from home for seven and a half months, and we were finally heading back. I was going to be in time for the birth. I’d spent the first couple of few in cold sweat, terrified of being a father. But a lot of things can help with that sort of fear.

Time was one of them. Thinking was another. And I’d been doing a lot of that. The last few weeks we hadn’t been in contact. We were out in the wilderness with no kind of signal. I was excited to see her again. Even if this was scary. I just wanted to be back with her. We’d left on such a somber note, without really talking about anything.

And that had been wrong, but we were going to be okay.

I sent her a message the moment I had signal. I was coming home in two days. She didn’t reply. Strange.

When I got off the bus, feeling hot and sweaty and drained from the trip, I couldn’t find her. I looked around, looking for her in the crowds. Everywhere there were women and children, waiting for the last part of their family before they were complete again. There were smiles and tears, and a lot of hugging.

But she wasn’t there. She didn’t stand where she usually did. I sent out my feelers, tried to sense her in the crowd. Her power was a little different than mine, an amplifier, which meant that if she didn’t have something to amplify she had nothing of her own.

Except the last time I’d seen her. The last time I’d seen her. Her power had riled me up every time. She’d said something about it being the baby, but I hadn’t wanted to hear it. I think she knew that, because she’d stopped trying.

I felt terrible about that. I was going to fix it now. I focused on finding her, on picking up the source of her power, if she had her own. Or the flow of mine that she threw back at me.

I felt a lot of other wolves. Most of my pack was still around and it was like invisible ties curled through the crowd to them. There were more wolves, foreign to me, their power like a taste I wasn’t used to.

But she wasn’t there. The crowd started thinning and I waited. Still there was no one.

I took a shuttle service home. The house was cold and dark, locked up, and there hadn’t been someone home for a while. Fear clawed at me. I hadn’t heard back from her when I’d told her when I was coming home. She usually checked her e-mail every day. I should have taken it that something was wrong then already. I should have known.

I called John.

“Where’s Allegra?” I asked when he answered the phone. “She’s not home.”

“I’ll ask Charlene as soon as she gets home. She couldn’t pick me up, Carla has a raging fever. I’ll phone as soon as I know anything.”

I hung up and paced the room, feeling useless. Where was she? I felt sick to my stomach, like something was very wrong. I felt it in the air, like black fog that clouded around me. Something faint tugged at me, pulled me in a direction. Something I didn’t know. It spoke to my wolf, not me as a person. I felt it roll around inside me, and the wolf didn’t like it.

It was restless, straining to get out.

I couldn’t do nothing. So I picked up the phone and scrolled through my phone book. The only people I knew I could turn to was the pack. But they were all with me on duty. All of them but Sarelle.