The Werewolf CEO's Pregnant Boy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Read It Out Loud

Perry throws Dolores out and tells his sister everything, Garret apologizes and reads the carrier clause aloud, and Rodney tells the whole pack the pregnancy is a con.

The retired mailman was the first one to move.

He stepped between Dolores and Perry in his rented tap shoes.

"Ma'am, I think the class is over for you."

Dolores looked at him.

Perry took the Moon Book off the front desk with both hands.

It weighed more than his nephew.

He walked it to the door and held the door open with his hip.

"Mrs. Burkhart."

She didn't move.

"My mother built this floor," Perry said. "She sanded it on her knees. You don't get to stand on it and tell me what's mine."

Six women in leggings watched him from the barre.

"You don't understand what you're carrying," Dolores said.

"Then I'll find out. Without you."

He held the Book out across the doorway.

For a second he thought she'd make him drop it on the sidewalk.

Then she took it under her arm, turned, and walked out to the black car without touching her cane to the ground once.

The car pulled away.

Perry shut the door.

"Okay," he said. "Shuffle-ball-change. From the top."

Nobody laughed at their own feet for the rest of the hour.

One woman squeezed his arm on her way out and said, "Congratulations, honey. I think."

When the last of them was gone, Brianne locked the front door, flipped the sign to CLOSED and pointed at the office.

"Sit."

Perry sat. Brianne crossed her arms over her purple scrubs.

"Who was that, what is a moon-born pup, and why does a rich old lady think she owns my niece or nephew?"

He looked at the framed photo of Mom on the wall, mid-kick in a sequined top hat.

Page nine of the contract said he'd never tell anyone what Garret was.

If he did, he'd pay it all back.

He had already torn up half.

"He's a werewolf," Perry said.

Brianne didn't blink.

"Garret is. His whole family is. There are about three hundred of them in Chicago, and he's the boss of all of them."

"Perry."

"I'm not done."

He told her everything, start to finish.

She didn't interrupt once, which was how he knew she was worried.

When he finished, Brianne picked up the pregnancy test from the desk and looked at it again.

"Okay," she said. "So the grandmother wants the baby, and the father doesn't get a vote."

"Yes."

"And you signed a paper saying you'd never tell me."

"Yes."

"And you told me anyway."

"You're my sister."

She put the test down.

She came around the desk and hugged him so hard his ribs creaked.

"I always knew rich people were monsters," she said into his hair. "I just didn't think it was literal."

Perry laughed, and then he cried a little, and she let him.

At ten o'clock, somebody knocked on the glass.

Garret stood on the sidewalk under the streetlight with no coat on.

He had the Moon Book under one arm.

Perry unlocked the door and didn't open it all the way.

"What."

"I'm sorry," Garret said.

Perry waited for the part where Garret blamed the shock, or the board, or Rodney.

It never came.

"I said a cruel thing to you in front of everyone," Garret said. "I knew it was cruel when I said it. I'm sorry."

The wind came down Irving Park and went through Perry's sweater.

"How'd you get that?" He nodded at the Book.

"I asked her for it."

"She gave it to you?"

"No one's ever asked her for it." Garret looked down at it. "I don't think she knew what else to do."

Perry stepped back and let him in.

Brianne stood at the office door with a mop handle like a bat.

Garret nodded to her.

"Ms. Mulvaney."

"Werewolf," she said.

Garret looked at Perry.

"She knows," Perry said. "I told her. Sue me."

He pointed at the middle of the floor, the worn spot where Mom used to stand and count the kids in.

"Stand there. Open it to the red ribbon. Read it out loud."

"Perry..."

"All of it. Out loud."

Garret stood on the worn spot and opened the Book.

He read the way Perry had once heard him read quarterly numbers, flat and fast.

"When the moon chooses a human for an Alpha, the human will carry as an omega carries."

Then he slowed down.

"The moon-born heir is raised in the den by the pack from birth."

He stopped.

"Keep going."

Garret didn't look up.

"The carrier is honored, paid and released."

Brianne set the mop down very quietly against the wall.

"Released," Perry said. "Like a fish."

Garret closed the Book.

His knuckles had gone white on the leather.

"I've never read that line," he said. "I've been Alpha for nine years. I never read it."

"Well, now you have."

Garret's phone buzzed in his pocket.

Then Perry's buzzed on the office desk.

The number was one he'd saved in June as DO NOT ANSWER.

Rodney.

Garret took his phone out and read it, and Perry watched his face go back to the boardroom face.

"What is it?"

Garret turned the screen around.

It was a message to every wolf in the pack, and somebody had added Perry to the list on purpose.

The rented boy is faking a pup to get at the Burkhart money. Our Alpha paid him once and he's back for more. Friday night, the Burkhart ballroom, the pack votes on whether Garret was conned.

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