“You found out who he was?”
“Nope.”
Ulric grimaced. “If only I hadn’t accidentally killed him. We’d have answers.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t mean he would have talked.”
“He would have talked,” Ulric claimed ominously.
“In better news, we should be safe out here. Dorian’s covered our tracks thoroughly.”
If only Ulric could believe it.
20
Despite the oddity of the situation, and her rapidly expanding waistline, Honey had spent the last few weeks in almost heaven. She geeked out in the daytime, deep diving into Lycanthropy, the official term for those who turned into wolves.
Only men bitten by a Lycan could shift. Not all bites caused the change. Some people weren’t affected at all. And a rarer few died.
To trigger the shift took a full moon unless you were what they classed an alpha. Alpha types could switch at will.
Given the danger caused by pregnancy, and before vasectomies became a thing, various things were done to prevent pregnancy from men taking concoctions to kill their sperm to their mates given potions for contraceptive, and if the worse happened? The women were forcibly aborted.
As science progressed, the rules adapted and insisted those bitten be sterilized either before the change or just after. Which explained Ulric’s vasectomy. It was based on a rule enacted centuries ago by something called the Cabal, a shadowy group that oversaw the Packs around the world. Anonymous, chosen through unknown means, they were the ones who usually handled situations that might reveal the Lycan existence. The ones who gave permission for her to attempt to have this baby.
It chilled her to realize how close she might have come to losing the fetus, or even her life, via their machinations.
Because she knew their secret.
What the books and internet had to offer about werewolves differed in many respects from the observations noted by Erryn—Dr. Silver’s first name—as they’d quickly progressed from doctor and patient to friends. A friendship that could get testy given their relative confinement and with her hormones going crazy. Why just yesterday Honey had burst into tears because Quinn returned from a supply run to town without her favorite donuts from Timmies.
Today? She itched in her own skin and wanted nothing to do with the daily poking, prodding, and measuring. For some reason, Erryn insisted on doing it every single day, which led to Honey asking, “Wouldn’t it be more efficient to go weekly? There can’t be much change in twenty-four hours.”
“In a normal human pregnancy, no. But as you’ve observed, your pregnancy is far from normal. And need I remind you wolf gestation ranges from sixty days and up, and you’re already at least 5 weeks, maybe a touch more. That puts you more than halfway.”
Honey put a hand to her noticeable swell. The rest of her remained toned, even gaunt. The baby ate faster than she could. “I really hate it when you compare the baby to a puppy.”
“Not my fault it’s growing like one,” Dr. Silver retorted.
A fact she tried to reconcile. In less than a month, she’d be a mom. If the baby lived.
If the fetus didn’t kill her.
So many unknowns. She should have been terrified, only in her heart she knew she was doing the right thing. It helped that, thus far, other than the abnormal growth, everything else appeared fine. Her bloodwork came back a little low on some vitamins as the pregnancy took what it needed, but they were supplementing and monitoring to ensure nothing dropped precipitously.
She was eating all the time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Snack before lunch. Two in the afternoon. The evening she hugged a big bowl of popcorn and had growled when Ulric tried to grab a handful.
That man did his best to take care of her. And he did a great job. He also got the brunt of her severe hormonal mood swings.
“Don’t breathe so loud.” A common complaint when she awoke in the middle of the night, and he dared to inhale air. “You don’t want that potato, do you?” And then once she’d eaten it, sobbing, “You want me to get fat.”
Through it all, he remained patient. Loving. The sex was epic, and she wanted it almost as much as food.
They did it most often in bed, but a few times they’d gone out into the woods. On a blanket that kept off the chill from the coming fall, they made love and would lie intertwined, staring up at the sky as they talked.
She knew everything about him. His favorite color—lime green—his hockey team—the Toronto Maple Leafs—even the fact he’d always wanted a big family but it was just him and his older parents. Dead a long time now.
Honey was his opposite in many ways. She loved blue, couldn’t stand hockey, and had a loving set of parents who doted on their only child.
It hurt when she called her mother and lied, but she couldn’t tell them the truth of why she hadn’t come for a visit in a while. She did the occasional video call but stuck mostly to texts because she hated not telling her mom everything.
The one good thing she did was layer in the idea her pregnancy was further along than expected. It meant rewinding her relationship to Ulric to an earlier time so that her mother wouldn’t question how Ulric could be the father if the baby arrived too soon.
Which seemed likely.
An almost ten-month pregnancy usually squished down into possibly less than three. No wonder she craved a second breakfast. Why wasn’t second breakfast a thing in the real world? The hobbits in The Lord of Rings got one.
So unfair.
“Are you hungry again?” Erryn asked, snapping Honey out of her mood.
“Is it that noticeable?” She wrinkled her nose even as her stomach gurgled, which led to the baby pushing at her abdomen and squirming. She’d started feeling it a week ago.
A baby with no name yet since they couldn’t see it anymore. The sac surrounding it had turned into something the ultrasound couldn’t penetrate. A stethoscope could still hear the baby’s heartbeat, but there was no way of knowing what lurked inside.
She tried not to think of the fact that maybe she did carry a puppy.
With claws.
No. She couldn’t think like that. She’d chosen to do this. She couldn’t chicken out now. Couldn’t kill the life inside her.
But she did have to be careful. “Pretty sure I can feel the full moon coming,” she remarked. Early on, they’d discovered that while she felt uncomfortable in its partial rays, she didn’t suffer any cramping. Thus far at least. But it was only days away now, and she tingled.
“You sure you still want to do the moon test this close to a full?” asked Erryn, slipping the measuring tape around her middle to compare her circumference to the previous day.
Another centimeter wider. Damn. Ulric had been rubbing lotion on her taut skin, but she saw the faint red and purple lines popping here and there.
“We need to know, the same way you keep measuring. I figure just a quick dip out the kitchen door. If I feel anything, I’ll dive back inside and head for the basement.” Which had been outfitted much more luxuriously in the last month, as Ulric worked on making it a more palatable space that included a real bed, as well as a sink and toilet, run off of the existing pipes. She wondered how they’d explain it to the rental agency, a dumb thing to worry about given her other issues.