The Werewolf CEO's Pregnant Boy novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Any Wolf in the Room
Perry walks into the pack gathering and lets Dolores hear the heartbeat in front of everyone, but Rodney reads that the last human carrier died, and the pack doctor agrees.
"Don't go Friday," Garret said.
He was still standing on Mom's worn spot with the Book under his arm.
"I'll handle Rodney."
"Like you handled him in the boardroom?"
Garret didn't have an answer for that.
"It's my vote," Perry said. "They're voting on whether I'm a liar. I'll be there."
"You weren't invited."
"I've been uninvited to nicer places than a hotel."
Friday night Perry wore his good cream sweater and his mother's old tap shoes, the black ones with the worn heel taps.
Brianne drove him down Michigan Avenue in her Corolla and parked in a loading zone.
"If anybody bites you," she said, "I'm a vet tech. I know where the rabies shots are."
"Stay in the car."
"Absolutely not."
The night doorman at the Burkhart Hotel knew Perry.
He'd opened the door for him at nine galas, and every time he'd said, "Evening, Mr. Mulvaney," and smelled of menthol gum.
Tonight he stood in front of the ballroom doors and didn't move.
"Pack only, sir."
"I'm carrying the pack's heir. Move."
The doorman looked at Perry's stomach.
He moved.
The ballroom was the same room where Perry had thrown a glass of champagne in Garret's face at the Harvest Moon, on cue, in front of everyone.
Three hundred people turned around when the doors opened.
They looked like any rich crowd in Chicago. Cocktail dresses, good haircuts, men in suits.
Except every one of them lifted their chin a little and breathed in.
Rodney stood on the low stage at the front with a microphone.
Dolores sat at the head table with the Moon Book closed in front of her.
Garret stood at the side of the stage, by himself.
"Well," Rodney said into the mic. "The rented boy came to his own trial."
A few people laughed.
Perry walked down the middle of the room.
His shoes rang on the parquet with every step.
He stopped in front of the stage.
"You can all hear a heartbeat through a wall," he said. "I know you can. I watched you do it at dinner for ninety days."
Nobody said anything.
"So come listen. Any wolf in this room. Put your ear here and tell me I'm faking."
He lifted the hem of his sweater an inch.
The room stayed perfectly still.
Three hundred wolves, and not one of them would walk across that floor in front of Rodney.
Then a cane tapped once on the parquet.
Dolores was coming around the head table.
She walked to Perry slowly, without leaning on the cane.
She stopped, looked at his face for a long moment, and then she got down on her knees in a cream silk suit in front of the entire pack.
Somebody gasped.
She laid her ear against his stomach.
Her pearls were cold through the knit.
She stayed there a long time.
When she stood up, her hand found his elbow and didn't let go.
"There's a heartbeat," she said, loud enough for the back of the room. "Two of them. His and the pup's. The pup's is fast and strong."
The room broke into noise.
Garret came off the side of the stage.
He walked through the crowd to Perry, and the crowd got out of his way.
He stood next to him.
Not in front of him. Next to him.
"I said in my boardroom that humans can't carry," Garret said. "I called Perry a con in front of my board. I was wrong. I was wrong, and I was cruel, and everyone in this room should know I said it."
Somebody near the bar started to clap and stopped when nobody joined.
Perry didn't look at Garret.
But he didn't step away either.
Rodney laughed into the microphone.
"Okay. Fine. Let's say it's real."
He stepped down and picked the Moon Book up off the head table.
"Then we have a bigger problem, don't we, Grandmother?"
He opened it to a page near the front.
"The year 1843. The last human the moon ever chose. A man, like this one." He read it out like a weather report. "The carrier died at the birth."
The room went quiet again.
"Human bodies aren't built for our pups," Rodney said. "So the merciful thing, the lawful thing, is to take the pup out by surgery at the third moon. The pup goes to the den. The boy goes home alive. Everybody wins."
"At the third moon," Perry said. "That's a month early."
"Pups have lived smaller."
"Have they?"
Rodney smiled at him.
"Ask the doctor."
A gray-haired man near the stage stepped forward. Perry had seen him at every gala, always holding a club soda.
The pack doctor.
He didn't look at Perry.
He looked at Garret.
"I've read the 1843 entry," he said. "I've examined the scent. A human frame can't hold a moon-born pup to term."
Garret's hand closed around Perry's wrist.
"Say it plainly," Rodney said.
The doctor finally looked at Perry.
"He won't live to the fourth moon."
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