My Alpha Rejected Me for a Dare, So I Walked Away novel · Chapter 8 of 16

Chapter 8: Home

Bowen looked at her.

"You're what?"

"Two months." Evangeline was crying for real now, or close enough. "I was going to tell you on your mother's birthday. It was supposed to be a surprise."

"Those cramps, Bowen. That's what they were. Our baby."

Bowen put his hand over his eyes.

Odile looked at Evangeline's stomach for a long, long moment.

Her nostrils flared once.

She didn't say anything.

She just turned on her heel and walked back toward the rooms.

"Come see your son, Elodie."

I went.

I didn't look back at either of them.

Asher was sitting up in a bed far too big for him, an oxygen tube under his nose.

His face was covered in ointment. The three cat scratches had already scabbed.

He saw me and held both arms up.

"Mommy."

I climbed right into the bed and pulled him onto my lap.

He smelled like antiseptic and apples and my son.

Lucan came in a minute later.

He knelt beside the bed, so his face was level with Asher's.

"Hey, bud."

"Daddy!"

Asher launched himself across the gap. Lucan caught him one-handed, oxygen tube and all.

"Did you bring the digger?"

"It's in the truck. It's yellow. It has a real scoop."

Asher squealed.

Lucan closed his eyes and put his face in our son's curls.

He stayed that way a long time.

We took him home that evening.

Silvermoor House sits on a hill above the river, all stone and big windows, with a porch that wraps all the way around.

Lucan built half of it with his own hands.

Asher fell asleep in the truck, clutching the yellow digger.

Lucan carried him upstairs and tucked him into his little bed and sat on the floor beside it until he was sure he was breathing slow and even.

I stood in the doorway and watched.

When he came out he closed the door without a sound.

Then he backed me up against the hallway wall.

Not like Bowen.

Nothing like Bowen.

His hands were on my waist, careful.

Only for a moment.

Then he bent his head and put his mouth to the side of my throat and breathed me in, long and slow.

Every mate does it after a separation.

Lucan did it like a starving man.

"Three weeks," he said against my skin. "I could smell you on my pillow up north for exactly four nights. Then it was gone."

"I slept on your side," I said. "The whole time."

"I know. I can smell that too."

His mouth opened on my pulse.

My knees went loose before I'd decided anything.

I got my hands under his shirt, onto the warm skin of his back, and pulled him in until there wasn't any wall left to be careful about.

He made a low sound in his chest.

His wolf, not him.

"I was gone three weeks," he said quietly.

"And some Alpha I've never met put my son in a cage."

"He's not some Alpha," I said. "He's the one."

"I know who he is."

His voice dropped.

"I want to take the Ironwood pack house apart board by board."

"I know."

"But you'd tell me not to."

"I'd tell you not yet."

That got the smallest smile out of him.

He pressed his forehead to mine.

"I missed you so much it made me stupid. I nearly drove the truck into the river on the way home."

I laughed. It came out shaky.

I took his hand.

I put it flat on my stomach, under my sweater.

He went completely still.

"Elodie."

"Seven weeks," I whispered. "I found out the week you left. I wanted to tell you to your face."

He didn't say anything.

His eyes went gold. Not Alpha gold. Soft.

His wolf was right up against the surface, and it was listening.

He bent his head.

He could smell it now. Now that he knew to look.

"A second one," he said.

"A second one."

He kissed me.

Slow at first, his hand still spread over my stomach like he was holding something.

Then not slow at all.

I pulled his shirt up and he dragged it off over his head one-handed and dropped it on the hall floor.

His mouth found the mark on my shoulder through my collar.

It warmed under his lips, the way it only ever did for him.

"Bedroom," I said into his ear. "I want you. Right now. I'm not asking twice."

"You don't have to ask once."

He lifted me off my feet. I wrapped my legs around him. He carried me down the hall to our bedroom, still kissing me, and kicked the door shut behind us.

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