The Lion's Pride (BBW Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance) (The True Date Agency) (3 page)

P
lacing
the last box in the car, I ran through the checklist in my head. Nope, I was pretty sure I had covered everything. Heading back up to the apartment, I mentally braced myself for what I knew was coming.

“I’m going to miss you!”

I’d barely got in the door before Tina had thrown herself at me, squashing me into a gigantic bear hug. “I don’t really live here, remember? It was only temporary while the divorce went through and everything got settled in court,” I said, my voice muffled against her chest, my breathing seriously compromised.

“But it feels like you do. You’ve been here ages! Who am I going to talk to in the middle of the night? Who’ll watch old DVDs with me and not laugh at me for crying at all the soppy bits? Who’ll—”

“A dog?” I quipped, finally managing to extract myself from her bosom.

“Or a boyfriend?” Kate added from where she lounged on the couch, munching her way through a carton of—

“What
are
those?” I demanded, snatching them out of her hand.

“Hey! Give ‘em back!”

“They smell—” I stuffed a cookie in my mouth, groaning as the taste hit my tongue. Salted caramel with chocolate chunks. “Wonderful,” I added around the mouthful.

Swallowing, I shoveled another one in.

“Lara…”

I glanced over at Kate, ready to defend the cookies if I had to.

Her mouth was hanging open, deep lines between her brows. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Wow, these taste good! Why haven’t I had these before?” I carried the packet to the other couch, cradling them in my arms.

“You
have
. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Kate replied, both concern and confusion lacing her voice.

I blinked at her. I was fine. Why wouldn’t I be?

“It’s just, the last couple of weeks you’ve been acting a little…strange?” she commented, her eyes darting to meet Tina’s.

“Yeah,” Tina added, “ever since that night at the club.”

My hand froze, cookie mid-way to my mouth. Though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, that night had haunted my dreams, Zane’s face taunting me.
What would have happened if I had stayed?
I had to keep reminding myself that nothing would have changed. He hadn’t called or texted. He didn’t care to remember, so why should I? “Guys, I just wanted to forget about him.”

“
Him
?”

Oh, yeah. I hadn’t told them.
Stupid cookies, giving me a sugar high!
“There’s nothing to tell…”

Kate crossed her arms, her lips set in a thin line. “Lara. Spill.”

And just like that, my resistance crumbled. It had half killed me not to tell them, anyway. It was just…if I was honest with myself, the rejection had been a bit too raw at first, and I had needed the time to pull myself together. To face them. “Okay! I met a guy at the club—”

“Was his name
Zane
by any chance?”

Kate’s words stopped me in my tracks. “Um, yeah. Why? How did you know?”

She grimaced and waved a hand in the air, not inspiring confidence. “Finish your story first.”

“Nothing much happened. I met a guy—”

“
Zane
,” Tina supplied.

“—and…well, we…” Heat rushed to my cheeks as I remembered being pinned against the wall by his powerful thrusts.

Kate shuffled forward in her seat, her eyes wide. “Oh, you did, didn’t you? Wow! Go, Lara!”

“And with
Zane Sarson
!” added Tina.

I didn’t get it. “How do you know that?”

Both of my friends avoided my gaze, matching looks of guilt on their face.

I put the cookies down beside me. “Tina. Kate. Tell me.”

“It didn’t seem relevant before, but now…”

“Just…tell…me,” I ground out, not liking the looks on their faces.

“Lara, we didn’t know… That night, at the club, Zane came downstairs and asked if anyone knew you—”

“We didn’t know he meant
you
, he just asked if anyone knew a Lara—”

“And we didn’t know why he was asking. And this was
you
we were talking about. I mean, it could have been any—”

I held up a hand, cutting off the back and forth. “He asked about me?”

Kate stared at the floor, but Tina met my eyes. “Yeah, he did. But we didn’t know what we know now. The way you stormed out of the place, we were worried you’d had an argument with him, or one of the staff.”

“We were protecting you!” Kate finally said, her face pleading with me to understand.

He’d asked about me, tried to find me.
I struggled to process the new information. What it meant—whether it meant anything at all. I might have been mooning over the man in my dreams, but I’d already decided he wasn’t the kind of guy to stick around. And I didn’t have the time for a new relationship. I had a new job—a step in the right direction toward a career I really cared about.

“It doesn’t matter,” I eventually said. “It was a one night kind of thing. That’s all.”

“But, why? I mean, I saw him, honey. He’s the kind you want to keep, at least for a while,” Kate said.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” And I truly didn’t. I couldn’t make sense of anything at the moment, my emotions zigzagging up and down. One minute I was still licking my wounds, unwilling to take a chance, the next…I yearned for him.

“Got it!” Tina squealed, bouncing up and down. “He’s a shifter, right?” Not waiting for an answer, she carried on, striding back and forth with agitation. “Which means he has a true mate, remember? Once they find their true mate, that’s it! No more playing around.” She grinned triumphantly, not knowing that she had just slashed through the hope I hadn’t even known I’d held.

“I’m not his true mate.”

“Wha—”

“Don’t you think he would have mentioned that little fact? Like,
before
we fucked like bunny rabbits?”

“Fucked…bunny rabbits…” Kate was staring at me like I’d grown a second head.

Okay, I’d admit it—that had come out a little snarly.

Tina winced, her hands dropping from where she was waving them in the air. “He…didn’t?”

“No. He didn’t.” Which meant I
wasn’t
his true mate, and that it
had
been a one-night stand. My gut wrenched at the confirmation, saliva pooling in my mouth. Leaping to my feet I sprinted through the apartment, slammed open the bathroom door, and proceeded to eject every single cookie crumb I had just eaten.
Not again!
Dragging myself back to my feet, I rinsed my mouth out. Whatever the hell this bug was, it’d better be gone by Monday—I was due to start my new job.

“Hi, Lara! Have you settled in okay?” Sarah, the school principal, made her way across the cafeteria toward me, a welcoming smile on her face. “Sorry I wasn’t around when you arrived on Saturday. I trust that you’ve found your way around the apartment?”

Pushing away the sandwich I had been picking at for the last half hour—cheese and tomato, usually my favorite, so what the hell was that about?—I smiled back at her. “It’s fine, honestly! I’ve spent most of yesterday finding my bearings and taking a look around the grounds. It’s a beautiful place, I think I might have gushed on about that at the interview?”

She dragged out a chair, collapsing into it with a sigh of relief. Taking off one shoe, she rubbed her toes, pleasure radiating from her. “Gush away. I still can’t believe it myself. We’re very lucky here at Pridewell Academy, and we know it.” She leaned forward, a conspiratorial gleam in her eye. “I couldn’t have done it without the help of a very generous financial supporter. They gave us the land and helped pay for the build. Even now, we receive monthly cash donations to help with the upkeep and running of the place.”

“Wow! Some sort of corporation looking for a tax break?”

“No. I can’t say too much, as confidentiality is one of the clauses to continue receiving donations. The only thing we were asked to do is to take every child that comes our way and never turn them away. Which is fine by me! It’s why I wanted to set the school up in the first place.” She took a deep breath, then started coughing, her eyes wide.

“Are you okay?” I shoved my glass of water at her.

She flapped a hand in the air. “I’m fine. How are
you
feeling?”

“Me?”

“With…you know?”

I stared at her. What was she—

“You don’t know, do you?” she said slowly, finally taking a sip of water.

“Know what?”

“You’re pregnant.”

“
Y
ou didn’t know
, did you?”

I could hear the words, but they seemed a million miles away, a strange buzzing masking them.

“Lara?”

I think I nodded. That was me.

“Do you need to lie down?”

“No!” I forced the word out past dry lips. I didn’t want to move. If I just sat here, I could try and process this.
I was pregnant?

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

How did I feel?
I was pregnant, after all this time. After all the failed attempts, the tests, the humiliation, then devastating news that it might never happen. And now? My hands drifted to my stomach.
There was a baby in there…

“I’m happy.” Beyond happy—ecstatic, elated, scared, confused—all of the above, and more. “But…my job?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that! This is wonderful news! A little shifter baby to play with all the other kids; it’ll be fine.”

Shifter?
“You can smell that?”

Sarah tapped the tip of her nose, chuckling. “Never underestimate a shifter’s sense of smell. The baby’s a big cat, from the smell of him.”

“Him?”

“Oh, balderdash! Did you want a surprise? I’m sorry, I forget that humans can’t tell, so I didn’t think about it—”

I laid a hand on her arm, interrupting her mortified babble. “It’s fine. Really. I’m having a baby boy!”

“I’m surprised the father didn’t tell you.”

Oh, yeah. The father. My sunny mood came crashing down at the thought of Zane. I didn’t know a hell of a lot about shifters, but I was pretty sure having a baby with someone who wasn’t your mate wasn’t the done thing. “He doesn’t know,” I admitted.

Her eyebrows arched, a frown furrowing her brow. “You’re not mated?”

“No.”

“Lara—”

“And I’d appreciate it if we could keep this between us, just for the time being, until I get my head around it.”

“It’s going to come out, you know, and soon. Shifters can smell a pregnancy, and they can tell what kind of baby you’re carrying—”

“But not whose, right?”
Please…please…please…

Her lips twisted, then she eventually answered, not meeting my eyes. “Most wouldn’t be able to. They’d have to have met the father
and
have a good read on his scent.”

“Do you mind if I—?” I gestured vaguely at the door.

“Sure! Of course, if you need anything…” Her voice trailed off as I stood up, grabbed my bag and nearly ran from the room.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Sarah and her infallible nose. Nope. I just needed some good, old-fashioned medical confirmation.
Had it been five minutes yet?
The test said to wait three, but I wanted to be sure, so I wasn’t looking until five had passed. I paced my small bedroom, darting suspicious looks at the innocuous white plastic stick which sat on the dresser.

A piercing sound filled the air, making me jump. I willed my thudding heart to slow; it was just the timer on my phone. Well, it was now or never. Taking a deep breath, I picked the test up. This was it—if I was to believe Sarah, then everything I had ever wanted was about to come true. All my life, all I ever wanted was to be a mother. It was one of the reasons I had chosen the career I had, working with children every day, strengthening their minds while nurturing their souls. Being a teacher was all I had ever wanted.
And a mother.

Just do it!
Turn it over.

Rotating the test in a shaking hand, I forced my eyes open. Two pink lines stared back at me. Stumbling back in shock, I sank down onto the bed.
It was actually true!
I was going to have a
baby
! Joy soared through me, filling me full of the kind of hope I had not felt in… I blinked, the reality of just how unhappy I had been hitting me. It had been a very long time since I had actually looked forward to the future. Had not just pretended while
really
trying to convince myself that somehow everything was going to be okay, was going to be worth the effort of getting through the day. Yeah, a very long time.

With the confirmation in my hand, there was no reason to doubt Sarah’s prediction, and the image of a little baby boy formed in my mind. What would he look like? Would he have my caramel skin, my eyes? Then it hit me—he would be a shifter. A lion shifter. Just like his dad. The brown eyes in my vision faded to be replaced with a piercing green, the imagined dark hair lightening and tufting with gold.

I flopped back on the bed, questions firing in my mind. What did I know about raising a shifter baby? What if he shifted in public? Would I know how to help him? I stared at the ceiling as though it were going to give me the answers. I wanted to be a good mom, but how could I if I didn’t know where to start?

I gave myself a mental shove.
Lolling around like this feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to help!
I could let doubt take over or I could hold on to the fact that every woman out there who had a baby for the first time went through this, through the uncertainty of not knowing how they were going to cope. They trusted that they were going to know what to do or, at least, figure it out when they had to. I sat up, determination steeling my spine. I would learn the old-fashioned way—with hands-on experience.

Wow!
I was knocked up and sitting on my own, but I was grinning so much my cheeks were starting to ache. I was really going to do this! This was
really
happening! Okay, it wasn’t exactly how I had envisioned it—I was missing the perfect husband, a house in the suburbs, and the compulsory family dog, but hey, life wasn’t perfect.

I stroked a hand over my stomach. One day soon, I would feel little feet kicking! For the first time in my life, I wished I were a shifter—if I had their senses, I would be able to scent the baby, I would know him already…

For over an hour, my mind danced, imagining the new possibilities, the ideas, considering and rejecting possible baby names. Planning out our future together.
Avoiding.
Because no matter how hard I tried to block out the one question I didn’t want to face, I kept coming back to it.
Should I tell Zane?
No, I told myself firmly, my conscience pricking at me. It wasn’t really a question of
should
, it was a question of
when
. I couldn’t not tell him; it wouldn’t be fair.

I’d already known the answer, I just hadn’t wanted to face it, hadn’t wanted to think about it right now. Not when I was so happy. But facts were facts. I had to go back to the club knowing that there would never be a future between us, knowing that I wasn’t the one who could make him happy.
I wasn’t his mate, and he wasn’t my perfect husband.
If I was being brutally honest with myself, what I had done was so out of character for me I still had trouble believing it had actually happened! I wasn’t the kind of woman that had a one-night stand. I just didn’t. I had to connect on an emotional level before getting naked.

I stifled a snort. Not that there had been much getting naked—we hadn’t been able to wait that long. The mirth faded as I forced myself to really think about that night. The pull between us had been so intense, so
real
, it had been like we had connected on some unconscious level.
Like our souls had called to one another.
Since that night, an ache had grown inside of me, a constant reminder.

I pushed the thought away for the complete nonsense it was. Sure, we had a connection, only it was of the more permanent and binding kind—the baby. And that was all it ever would be.

I rolled onto my side, sliding my feet up the bed and curling into a ball. Tugging a pillow down, I scrunched it under my head.

I was going to tell him…just not yet. I needed some time to pull myself together before I could face him. Whatever happened, I couldn’t let him see me like this; I had to be calm and in control. After all, he would have a mate one day, so it was better to let go of any hope I might be carrying now, rather than let it grow only to hurt ten times more later.

That’s decided then—I’ll go see him next week at the club.
My conscience finally silenced, I gave into the sleep that tugged at me, dragging me into dreams filled with love and joy and laughter.

And piercing green eyes.