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I bit my lip. “I owe you an explanation.”
“You’re damn right you do.” Maggie frowned. “Anna—”
“It’s Tina,” I reminded her, my tone apologetic and glum.
She blanched a little. “Well, that will take some getting used to. Tina, we’ve always known you’d had some trouble in your life before the valley. People with expensive educations don’t take on the Dr. Moder job, isolating themselves out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of half-crazy, mostly naked people, unless they have a reason to hide. We hoped you’d open up a little, but you did your job well, so we didn’t pry.
“But to be honest, I’m not in a good frame of mind to hear your explanations right now. I’m in a bit of a panic about this whole baby thing. I just found out a couple of weeks ago, and everybody keeps telling me, ‘Don’t worry, it’s no big deal, women in our family all have easy pregnancies.’ But we’ve never had a pregnant alpha before, mostly because they were dudes. I’m terrified of shifting, for some reason, even though I know my own mother did it until a month before she had me. I can’t so much as look at coffee without barfing like something out of that Monty Python ‘wafer-thin mint’ sketch. And I’m afraid of lifting anything. Nick actually found me crying in the garage this morning, because I needed to put a gas can in the back of my truck, but I didn’t want to lift it, and I didn’t want to ask him for help for something so simple. So my husband now thinks I’m insane, which is awesome. So really, I just need you to forget about whatever excuse you were going to give me for disappearing from the face of the earth without a word, and give me an exam to show me that everything is normal and healthy and I am not giving birth to some sort of Cthulhu baby.”
I stared at my badass werewolf alpha-lady boss as she burst into tears. “Wow.”
“I hate this!” She sniffled. “I mean, I’m really excited about the baby. But I hate feeling like I don’t have control over anything, including my hormones. I mean, I watched all of my cousins cry and power-eat ice cream through their pregnancies and thought, not me. Not Maggie-Effing-Graham. I’ll be the Chuck Norris of pregnant ladies. And look at me! I don’t cry! I hate feeling so girlie and stupid about everything. And I really, really want some peanut butter fudge ripple, but I don’t want to ask Nick to go get it for me, because I don’t want to hear any of my cousins say ‘I told you so.’â??”
I circled the desk and wrapped my arms around my patient as she sobbed into my jacket. I patted her hair and rubbed her back and assured her that what she was going through was completely normal. I laughed a little as she sniffled into my shoulder, and that earned me a light punch to the kidney.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she grumbled, squeezing me. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I know.” I sighed. “But I think this will help me get back in your good graces.”
Leaving Maggie to mop up her red, runny nose, I took out her official mayoral stationery and wrote out a “prescription” for her. She read over the paper I handed her. She rolled her eyes. “Five hundred ccs of peanut butter fudge ripple ice cream, to be delivered orally and in secret.”
“You tell Nick that if he tells anybody about his ice cream run, I will find a way to erase all of his interview recordings,” I told her.
“I like you.” She knew exactly what sort of terror the threat to Nick’s recordings would inspire in her folklorist husband. “You’re kind of high-maintenance and sneaky, but I like you.”
“Come to the clinic, and we’ll get you checked out. And I’ll give you some prenatal vitamins that might help with your coffee issues.”
“I might forgive you.”
“I missed you, too, Mags.”
“Don’t push it.”
Stepping out into the snowy street, I noticed a dozen or so pack members oh-so-casually milling around the sidewalk in front of the community center. I stopped in my tracks, waiting for pitchforks or torches to come out. But the expressions on the various aunts’ and uncles’ faces were more curious than angry. My face flushed warm. How was I going to explain my absence? What had Caleb already told them?
With more mercy than I expected from her, Maggie called out, “Nothing to see here, people. Move along.”
The response was instantaneous. All of the loiterers turned their backs and walked off, as if they suddenly remembered urgent business at least twenty yards away.
Clearly, the way to reconcile with Maggie was icecream bribery. I looked over my shoulder, toward the pregnant alpha, who was waving me away with one hand while dialing her cell phone with the other.
Caleb lived in a house on the edge of the village, a low-slung, tidy structure with blue siding and white shutters that had belonged to his father before him. I’d never given it much consideration before, but now it seemed that I might be living here. Would there be room for me? Would Caleb and I be happy here?
I dropped my bag in the snow and stared at the front door. The windows were dark. What if the door was locked? What if Caleb had changed his mind and decided he didn’t want me there? The “rabbit” in me wanted to yell for Leonard to come back and get me.
This elusive instinct only ramped up as I heard the muffled thumping of wolf paws hitting packed snow. I turned to see several large wolves cantering into the town limits, nudging and nipping at one another playfully. This was the afternoon patrol, running the boundaries of the valley to check for intruders or hunters straying too far from the nearby nature preserve. I searched the thundering herd for any sign of a large gray male, but before I could spot him, a blur of dark fur and gold light came flying at me. A very naked Caleb landed on his feet just in front of me, scooping me up and crushing me against him. The other wolves made a huff-whicker sound, which translated to “Whipped!” among Caleb’s werewolf brethren.
I threw my legs around his waist, nearly bowling him over as I covered his face in kisses. Caleb’s warm mouth pressed to mine, and he murmured apologies and endearments against my lips.
Several of the loitering uncles whooped and whistled at the spectacle we were making of ourselves. “You owe me five bucks, Donnie!” Uncle Doug yelled. “I told you his truck smelled like the doc!”
I pulled back from Caleb’s kisses, so I was sure to be understood. “Just one thing,” I told him as I cocked my foot back and kicked him in the shin so hard I may have splintered a metatarsal.
He winced, but he didn’t drop me.
“If you ever keep a secret of this magnitude from me again—”
“You’ll take away my shins. I understand,” he said.
