by Quinn Loftis
Today was supposed to be a happy day. Today, she’d confirmed what she’d suspected over the past couple of weeks: she was pregnant with Dillon’s child. Lilly had no idea how he would react to the news, but she wanted to think he would have been excited. He’d told her how rare Canis lupus children were. And here she was, growing a half-Canis lupus baby inside of her. Maybe the implications of that should scare her, but her fear paled in comparison to her rage. Instead, she screamed, “Can your new mate do that? Can she?” Lilly huffed and puffed as she continued to talk to her empty apartment. “Will she love you like I did? Will she run her fingers through your hair for hours just to hear your contented sigh?” Lilly roared as she stumbled. The memories of them together slammed into her, nearly knocking her off her feet. Who knew that mere memories would have the ability to make a person lose control of their physical faculties?
One day, if he hadn’t already, he would take his mate to bed and hold her as he’d once held Lilly. He would bite her, as he did Lilly, only it wouldn’t be playful. It would be a bite that would mark her as his forever. That thought pushed her over the edge. She ran for the nearest bathroom, hitting the floor in front of the toilet just as the vomit reached her throat and exploded from her body.
The images of Dillon and his faceless new mate assaulted her mind. The more they came, the more she hurled. She wanted to stop thinking about it, but the idea of Dillon with someone else was like a train wreck complete with dismembered body parts littering the ground. She couldn’t look away. Lilly just kept seeing him, staring into the eyes of a stranger as he made love to her. Apparently, Lilly was a masochist because she sat there on the floor watching the soul-ripping images in her head like a bad, unending soap opera. She continued to vomit until her stomach was empty, then she dry heaved until her throat was raw.
“STOP!” Lilly roared into the small space, the sound reverberating off the walls. She couldn’t handle it. She needed her mind to stop playing the movie in her head. Lilly had to pull it together and quickly. She was no longer only responsible for herself. She had a child to take care of. Lilly had eight more months ahead of her filled with doing everything she could to make sure her baby was as healthy as possible. She also had eight months of praying that nothing weird was going to show up in her lab work or on ultrasounds.
“Oh, God, what if the baby has fur? Or a tail? Of all the men in the world, I had to go and fall in love with a mother-effing werewolf.” She was going to have to stop cursing, too. Even though it would be hilarious to teach her child to say, “bastard daddy,” it wouldn’t be proper.
She flushed the toilet and pulled herself to her feet. When Lilly got a look at herself in the mirror, it only pissed her off all over again. This mess of a woman, smeared mascara, hair lank, pieces of vomit on her shirt… This was what she’d been reduced to because of her own choice to love a man she knew she’d never be able to keep. “Lesson. Learned,” she whispered at the woman in the mirror.
Lilly stripped out of her clothes and climbed into the shower. The water cascaded over her body, and she pictured it rinsing off every touch Dillon had ever placed on her. She imagined the soap scrubbing his scent and fingerprints away. She wanted nothing from him, other than the precious life that fate, or God, or maybe even Dillon’s goddess had given her. If the child had been given to them, then Dillon would have been there to receive the news, but he wasn’t. She’d been to the doctor alone. She’d come home alone to an empty house. Lilly took that as a sign that this child was for her and her alone.
Soon, she was clean and dry, and she set herself to the task of tidying up the mess she’d created. As she cleaned, she made the decision to move from her apartment as soon as possible. There was no way she could stay here. There were too many memories. She needed a new start and a bigger place. A highchair, stroller, crib, and baby swing would take up a lot of space.
Luckily, Lilly had some money saved. Maybe she could get them a small house. She’d figure it out, somehow. She’d taken care of herself before Dillon Jacobs had come along, and she’d take care of herself now that he was gone.
As she lay in bed that night, she gave herself the chance to say goodbye. She remembered the happy times. Lilly even thought of what could have been. How he might have reacted to her when she’d told him she was going to have their child. She thought about how they would have speculated whether their child would have his auburn hair or her dark locks. Lilly gave herself over to a future she desperately wanted but that had slipped away in the blink of an eye. She laid on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach, and closed her eyes as tears rolled down her cheeks, wetting the pillow beneath her head. What could-have-been would be all she’d have, and tonight would be the only night she’d allow herself to have a pity party. She could have walked away from Dillon a year ago. But she made the choice to stay. She couldn’t really be mad at him, not that it would necessarily stop the emotion from creeping up on her. But right now, she wasn’t angry. She was unbelievably sad. Not only for herself, but for her child.
Lilly had no idea what the future held for the life growing inside her. Dillon never mentioned children that were only half-Canis lupus. She didn’t know if something strange was going to happen. Those would have to be worries for tomorrow. Tonight, she’d had enough. Her body demanded sleep.
She rolled over and pressed her face to the pillow. Apparently, when he said he’d removed everything, he hadn’t included changing the sheets. The coward’s smell was all over them. Lilly was too tired to get up and change them, and if she was going to be honest, his scent was comforting to her. “Just for tonight,” she mumbled as she let sleep steal her away from her pain.
Chapter 7
“It’s easy to look back at a mistake and say, ‘That ended up working out for the best.’ But maybe the mistake you made wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe the mistake was actually the right choice all along, and the precious thing that comes as a result of your decision is the universe confirming you made the right choice.” ~Dillon Jacobs
Present Day
“I’ll let you know if I hear from her, Jacque. You know I wouldn’t keep that from you,” Dillon said into his cell phone. It was the fifth time his daughter had called. He loved that she was reaching out to him but wished it was under different circumstances.
“Okay, thanks, um, dad.”
The line was dead before he could say anything else, like ask if he could come see his grandson. Dillon tried hard not to ask much of anything from Jacque. He didn’t feel he had the right. First, because he hadn’t been around for the first seventeen years of her life, and second, because of the way he’d handled things when he’d showed up in Coldspring when he’d found out about her. Not to mention what one of his own wolves had pulled while they were in Coldspring: kidnapping Jacque and torturing her.
“That’s not your fault,” Tanya, his mate, said from the doorway of his office. He’d felt her coming to him. She was his rock, his best friend, and more than he ever deserved.
“I should have known something was wrong,” Dillon said. It was the same thing he always said when they had this conversation. “He was my second.”
“You may be an alpha, Dillon, but you are not all knowing. That gift belongs to the Great Luna alone.”
Dillon turned to look at her. She was as beautiful as the first day he saw her. She had long, blonde hair, which she said was dirty blonde, not true blonde, as if it was some sort of failing. She gazed at him with large brown eyes set above a cute nose and high cheekbones. She was petite, which he liked because he wasn’t as large as most wolves. Standing at five eleven nine inches, Dillon wasn’t tall, though he could hold his own against the larger wolves just fine.
“It’s okay to be worried about her,” Tanya said as she walked toward him.
“Jacque’s going to be fine, and she’s got Fane. He’s—”
“She isn’t who I was talking about, and you know it.”
Dillon immediately felt shame. It was a co
nflicting emotion for him and had been since the day he’d met the eyes of his true mate over twenty years ago, at a gas station of all places. The connection had been instant. He’d heard her thoughts in his mind, and when the wind had blown her scent in his direction, he’d been done for.
Dillon had never been so crushed, or elated, in all his long life, at least not until he’d found out he’d had a child. Then he’d been crushed and elated all over again, and the guilt and shame flooded him on an entirely different level.
“How many times will we go through this?” Tanya pressed her hand to his cheek, pulling his head down so he had to look at her. “I’ve never held it against you, and that’s not going to change.”
“Why not?” Dillon asked, his voice rough with his wolf, who was just as conflicted as the man.
“How can I?” She blew out a breath and then dropped her hand. “Dillon, we have true mates, but we also have free will. There is nothing in any of the writings about our kind that say we can’t love someone else. In fact, our existence is a bit cruel because we can love, but that love won’t ever compare to the love we will have with our true mate. But our ability to love others is also a blessing. What if our true mate dies before we ever meet them? We would be left to a life of loneliness. At least if you fall in love with someone, you get the gift of a healthy relationship. And, if you fall in love with another Canis lupus, at least the darkness will be slowed to some extent, though not as much as by your true mate. I wouldn’t want you denied that if I had never come along.”
“I wouldn’t have felt the same,” he growled.
She laughed. “That’s because you’re a male Canis lupus and a dominant to boot.”
“If you’d been with another male before me, I probably would have killed him,” Dillon told her. It wasn’t a lie. Regardless of the fact that he knew it was a double standard, and a very crappy one at that, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else touching his mate. And yet…
“Don’t,” Tanya said firmly. “Male and female. We were made different in many ways. One of them just happens to be, not always but a great deal of the time, the ability for a female to give grace that a male Canis lupus cannot.
“Lilly gave you love when you were alone. You’d gone rogue from your pack. You were lost. Rogue wolves don’t often make it on their own for long, Dillon. They’re either killed by another pack or go feral. Lilly kept that from happening to you. In a strange way, I am thankful to her. She also gave you something I can never give you.”
Dillon dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her torso, pressing his face against her stomach and kissing her there. Tanya had told him almost immediately that she was barren. She would never have children. She’d known Dillon had been with a human previously as she’d seen it in his mind when they bonded, and she’d even given him the option to stay with the human at the chance of having pups. With Lilly, there had been the possibility. With Tanya, there wasn’t. Of course, he’d refused. Having pups was the last thing on his mind at that point. He’d just found his true mate. The darkness would now be kept at bay. In a very real sense, he’d been given a new lease on life.
He kissed her stomach again. “I love you, every part of you, just as you are. If I could, I would move heaven and earth to give you a child.”
She wrapped her hands around his head and held him to her. Her nails ran up and down the flesh of his neck. “I know you would. But for whatever reason, this is the Great Luna’s plan, and I trust her.”
Dillon soaked up the scent of his mate as he wrestled with his demons. He was worried about Lilly, but only as a friend and as the woman who was the mother of his daughter. He no longer felt the love for her he once had, for which he was grateful. It was bad enough that he had the memories, locked down tight in a vault he never opened, because it was a reminder that he hadn’t saved himself for his true mate. But the one thing he wasn’t ashamed of was Jacquelyn. She was the result of the choices he’d made, and he agreed with Tanya that no child was ever a mistake or something to be ashamed of, no matter how they came into the world. He loved Jacque. She was his. And she would forever tie him to Lilly. Praise the Great Luna, she’d seen fit to give him an amazing mate like Tanya who was confident enough to not feel threatened and had even been happy for him when he’d found out about Jacque. Her exact words were, “I always wondered what it would be like to have a daughter,” as if it hadn’t dawned on her to be jealous.
“What are you?” he whispered against her. “No person has the ability to forgive someone the way you do and even feel joy for their mistakes.” He didn’t mean Jacque, and she knew it, but he liked that she took it as an opportunity to scold him. Dillon felt like he deserved some sort of wrath from her, even if it was the wrong kind.
Tanya smacked him on the back of the head. “A child is never a mistake, Dillon Jacobs, and saying so will only get you smacked harder.”
He smiled, but he didn’t let her see it. His little mate was fierce. She was protective of Jacque even though she never said as much. He always felt her worry for his daughter, and now for Slate as well. And he wasn’t shocked that he’d felt pain and grief through their bond when she’d found out Cypher, Lilly’s mate, had died.
Tanya had wanted to immediately go check on Lilly, but Dillon had felt that wouldn’t have been wise. They’d seen her at the Blood Moon ceremony, and she’d stood with her shoulders back, head held high, looking like the queen she’d become. But Dillon hadn’t missed the incredible anguish that filled her eyes. Eyes that had once been whiskey gold were now the color of her dead mate’s: the bright yellow of the warlock race.
“Will you go to her now?” Tanya asked, a bit of frustration filling her voice. “Jacque has called multiple times. She is worried sick. If for no other reason, check on Lilly for your daughter’s sake.”
Dillon stood and took her hands. “How could you possibly be okay with me going to check on my ex-lover?” He purposely chose the word lover because it was a term that would have enraged him. Not to his surprise, Tanya didn’t even blink.
“Because your daughter, the person with half your DNA, is terrified for her mother’s safety. She needs to know her mother is going to be okay. You, as her father, have the right to see if the mother of his child is all right. It won’t be political or seen as a power move the way it would be if Fane stepped in. And because it's the damn right thing to do.” She punctuated the last four words with pokes to his chest. She was small, but she was strong.
Dillon stared into her eyes for a long time and even looked into her mind, which she left wide open for him to snoop. There was no deception in her words. She truly felt it was his duty to check on Lilly.
“Dammit!” He growled and turned from her. He lifted his arm and wrapped his hand around the back of his neck as he took several deep breaths. When Dillon finally felt like he had his frustrated wolf under control, he turned back to his mate. She stood with her arms folded in front of her, an eyebrow raised at him as if to say “Why are you still here?”
“How the hell am I supposed to get there?”
“Don’t curse at me, Dillon Jacobs.” She pointed a finger at him, then she held up her cell phone. “I just happen to have a contact who said I’d no doubt be needing her services and to call when you realized it.”
Dillon muttered multiple curse words under his breath. “I swear that damn fairy can’t keep her nose out of anyone’s business.”
“That damn fairy has ears,” Peri said coolly from behind him. “And I’ve already checked on Lilly, but maybe you can get her to talk to Jacque, parent to parent. Not to mention, she could use a friend. If you were nothing else to her, Dillon, you were once a very good friend.”
Dillon met his mate's victorious eyes. “Fine, but my mate goes with me. No argument, Tanya.”
Tanya glanced over at Peri, seeming to wait for something. Finally, the female alpha nodded.
Dillon turned to look at the high fae. “Did you have to give permission?”
“Women know other women,” Peri informed him as if he was a moron, which when it came to women, he clearly was. “She wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be doing more harm than good by coming with you. Some women would not want to see the female she lost her male to, especially after losing their current male.”
“And what makes you think Lilly will be okay with Tanya’s presence?”
“I think you should both go and find out for yourselves,” Peri said. “I would not put your mate in danger.”
Dillon snorted. “Forgive me if I look at your track record at putting people in danger and call BS.”
Peri shrugged. “I do not put them in danger. Danger seems to follow whoever is near me. It is the burden I bear from being a badass.”
Tanya coughed down a laugh, which caused Dillon to shoot a glare at her. This was her fault. His little mate just smiled at him. Troublemaker.
“Fine,” Dillon snarled and grabbed Tanya’s hand. He walked over to Peri and placed his hand on her arm. “This better not backfire in my face.”
“Dealing with women always backfires, wolf. At your age, that’s something you should have learned a long time ago.”
Lilly stared at the cell phone in her hand. Two days had passed since the dinner with the other warlock clans, and she’d finally found it and had been staring at it for the better part of an hour. She needed to call Jacque and let her daughter know she was okay, but that would be a huge ass lie.
Lilly wasn’t okay. In fact, she was pretty sure she was having a break from reality, a well-and-truly psychotic episode. Unfortunately, the vision she’d had of Cypher wasn’t her last. He continued to visit her. And while she took comfort in the sight of him, she knew what was happening couldn’t be good for her mental health. To make matters worse, she’d had visions of other people as well. She’d had arguments with Dillon. And she’d even pleaded with Tanya, Dillon’s mate whom she’d never even said a full sentence to, for forgiveness for being with Dillon first. That had come after having a nightmare that Cypher was now in the afterlife, no longer burdened with the worries of this life, and had probably found some other beautiful afterlife warlock … and they’d been sipping pixie wine on a golden beach. Hell, it was probably some past lover that died in battle that he’d never told her about.
