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She walks her fingers across my chest, gazing up at me through her eyelashes. “Oh yeah?”
The corner of my mouth kicks up in a half-grin. “Yeah,” I muse, stroking my fingertips through her hair. “I’d stay locked in here all day like this if we could.”
Mischief flashes in Juliet’s eyes, mixed with the silver shimmers of her wolf. “Why can’t we?” she asks, pushing up against my chest and waggling her eyebrows. Her hair falls down in a waterfall around her face. “Even alphas get a day off once in a while, right?”
“Well yeah, but…”
“But what?”
I reach up to push her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. “My sister.”
Juliet’s mouth forms an ‘o’, realization flickering across her features. “Right,” she murmurs. “They’re leaving this afternoon.”
“Yeah” I sigh, sweeping an arm around Juliet as she drops back down to rest against my chest. “I wish Astrid could stay for the full moon run,” I mumble, thinking out loud. “Then again, she’s pregnant, so she wouldn’t be able to run with the pack, but still.”
“Brock probably has to get back for his pack,” Juliet points out- which is fair, since a pack’s alpha traditionally leads the full moon run every month. “And Astrid’s their Luna, so they’ll need her just as much.”
I blow out a breath that ruffles Juliet’s hair. “Yeah, I know. I just miss her around here. We all do.”
The two of us are quiet for a long moment, hands exploring one another’s skin, hearts beating almost in unison. It must be all the incredible sex over the past twelve hours that has me so loose lipped, because I find myself thinking out loud again as I stroke my fingertips down Juliet’s spine.
“I can’t believe Astrid is having a pup,” I muse, trying to picture my little sister with a big pregnant belly.
“Yeah,” Juliet agrees. “Fallon and Gray are having one, too. And it’s only a matter of time before the other alphas and lunas over there start popping out kids. I hope Jax and Quinn do, I can’t wait to be an auntie.” Her lips pull into a grin as she tilts her chin to look up at me. “Do you want kids?”
“I need an heir,” I mutter.
Juliet rolls her eyes, giving me a little nudge. “Well sure, but do you want them?”
I stare at the ceiling as I turn over her question in my mind. “Guess I’ve never really thought about it,” I say, wetting my lips with my tongue. “But I think I do, yeah. I mean, I almost had one.”
The admission just slips out- it’s something that only Sam and my closest advisors know about; I’ve even kept it from my own sister.
Juliet jerks her head up, sucking in a sharp breath as her eyes collide with mine. “A pup?”
I give a single nod, tucking an arm behind my head to prop it up. This isn’t something that I planned on sharing, but spending the night with Juliet has shifted things between us somehow. Suddenly my walls are breaking down, my secrets slipping out.
“This past winter, I made a poor judgment call,” I confess, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It was all the stress of the war with the shadow pack, all the pressure I was under at the time. I had a one night stand with a woman at one of my clubs. A human. And it was nowhere near the full moon, so I didn’t even think about using protection.”
I shake my head at the stupidity of my own actions. For shifters, safe sex is a no-brainer; our quick healing means we don’t carry diseases, and all she-wolves ovulate with the full moon. Humans are a different story. Their ovulation isn’t synced with the moon, which means they can get pregnant at other times of the month- something I knew, but failed to consider when I hooked up with Margot Kinney in a moment of weakness.
“She got pregnant,” Juliet murmurs in conclusion, and I nod in response. She frowns, pausing for a beat before pressing further. “So what happened?”
“There was a fire.” I mean to go on, but the words get caught somewhere in my throat, tangling with one another and forming a lump. I swallow past it, pushing down the emotions that always threaten to rise when I think about what happened to Margot.
I barely knew the girl, but when she came to me and told me she was pregnant, I knew I had to do the right thing. Iwantedto do the right thing, because even though it was a big fucking accident, part of me was excited. Even if it meant breaking our most fundamental rule and bringing a human into the fold; even if it meant my progeny would be a half-breed, potentially unable to shift when he came of age.
It was a boy. A son.My son.
I told Sam, told my advisors, and after much deliberation, they agreed with my plan of action. So I brought Margot to the compound and invited her to move in. Said I’d take care of her and our child, and they’d want for nothing. Then I told her what I am.
She… didnottake it well.
People tend to fear what they don’t understand, so I expected her to have that reaction. I get why she was freaked out. Still, I wasn’t about to take no for an answer, so when she asked for time to process everything, I agreed to grant her that, knowing she’d eventually come around.
A few weeks later, I received a call that the Sparrowhead apartment complex was burning.
“I couldn’t keep her safe,” I grumble, shaking my head. Because that’s the crux of my regret; that I let someone get close, then failed to protect them when it mattered. It’s why I still believe I’m better off alone. “I tried looking for someone else to blame, but I got the police report and the fire department concluded that there was no foul play. It was an electrical fire, of all things. The building was old, so it went up like kindling. Burned so hot that there wasn’t anything left…”
