I brought my knees up to my chest and rubbed at my stomach. I needed this pain to go away. I knew what I needed to do to feel better but I had to get my mind around it first. I had to get out of bed before anything though. I'd already showered so I put on a clean pair of boxers and a big beige sweater Ainsley had let me borrow. It was so long it covered most of the boxers.
When I came out of the bedroom Ainsley was still organizing bottles of blood in the fridge. "Who did you pick up today?"
He looked stunned, for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "Vallen told you about the blood bar." He picked up a bottle, looked at the label, and then turned back to me. "This one plays rugby."
I looked to Vallen's closed bedroom door. "Is he a pretty heavy sleeper or should we try to be quiet?"
Ainsley shrugged and put the empty boxes to the side. "He normally sleeps through me being here, unless I'm here late and he would probably be getting up anyway, but since I'm going hunting later I wanted to get work done early."
I had gone to the couch, and was going to watch some TV or maybe a movie or something, but at his mention of hunting I was back to paying attention to him. "You're going hunting?"
"Yeah. You think I wear this for fun?" He pulled on the mesh shirt, and made a face at it. "I'm trying to go for the sixteen to eighteen club boy look kind of thing. I've got some temporary hair color in my bag too. I was going to go for streaks of blonde that'll come out in my next shower."
I frowned as I thought about what he was saying. "You're hunting teenagers."
"Not at all. We're not allowed to drink from anyone under eighteen, pregnant, or anyone who can't consent like if they're drunk or passed out or something. When I go hunting I go for the kind of people who would normally prey on human teenagers. That's why I look the part. I want a guy to think that I'm just another helpless little boy out there, an easy victim. Then I get him somewhere quiet where he thinks he's going to get what he wants and I end up making sure he never wants to hurt another teenager ever again. It's a not so gentle reminder that humans aren't prey, no matter who the hunter is."
Smiling, I realized quickly that I admired him. Humans were weaker than us, and they did make easy targets. Everyone knew that. Whether it was picking a fight with them or stealing their wallets, I had grown up knowing that humans were easy pickings. I was never allowed to act on that information though since I was never allowed out with the other boys. But I knew about it all the same.
But here Ainsley was, a vampire who should have, by all accounts, been a monster from how I was raised to think about them, and yet he was here fighting back on his nights off.
Ainsley stopped by the couch on his way into the office. "Here, this is for you." He dropped a folder in front of me on the couch. "It's all of your account information, a new debit card, the new sim card for your phone now that you're on Vallen's plan, and contact information for Vallen, myself, and members of the vampire council, along with the number for the ride service as well. Of course."
I stared at the folder containing so much of my new life, and then at him. He'd really put it all together for me. So had Vallen. "Thank you for getting all of this. Was it a pain?"
"Not really. Besides, Vallen pays me well, and I don't like the idea of what your dad was doing to you at the pack either. Maybe you getting out will help others realize the pack isn't everything."
He went to the office door, and put his hand on it. I thought that would be the end of our conversation, but then he turned back to me as if he wasn't nearly done yet. "Now, I gotta work, but if you need anything just come to the door. There's some cash in there too. It's not part of the money Vallen put aside for you, so don't worry about that. It's more like money so that you don't have to starve yourself. He also had me print off a list of healthy foods for when you're pregnant. This, you having a baby with him, is a huge deal for him. I hope you realize that. He really, seriously, wants a child. So if he gets a little overwhelming about what to eat and how much to sleep each night, it's because he wants that kid healthy. But if he gets to the point where you're ready to smack him, feel free to tell him to back off and sit down. I've had to do that a few times. When I first started hunting he used to follow me around and people would think he was my dad and they wouldn't take me with them after they saw him. Now I just have to check in with him a few times in the night so that he knows no one has tried to stake me or something."
I laughed a little loudly, but then I clamped my hands over my mouth. I didn't want to wake Vallen up. He deserved to sleep just as much as I did, and he hadn't made a lot of noise during the night at all.
Ainsley gave me a wink and then he went into the office and I was left to look through the folder containing my new life. Ainsley had done a great job packaging it all up for me. I knew where everything was, since he'd given me a map of the most central part of the vampire shops, along with their phone numbers. With Ainsley's help I could have managed to work my way through the heart of the vampire world, at least at the street level. If I had ever really wanted to anyway.
I put on a black and white movie, something my father would have approved of, as I also began to glance through the list of good foods for me once I became pregnant. It was a lot of fruits and vegetables. I scowled down at the list and wished there was ice cream or something on there. Maybe a gallon of peanut butter daily, just as a suggestion, but no. It was lots of peppers and sweet potatoes. I sighed and turned my attention back to the movie.
But it was a movie I would have watched with the pack. I didn't miss being there. I was very glad to be out actually. And I wanted to start opening up my life to more experiences that didn't involved the pack and what I'd been allowed to do, or not to do, while I'd lived there. I flipped through the channels until I found something with a lot of warnings about violence and nudity and I kept the channel there. I didn't care what it was, just that I hadn't been allowed to watch it when I'd been with the pack.
With explosions going off and people screaming, I changed out the sim card on my phone and started deleting my contacts from the pack. All the high ranking men went first. Then came a bunch of the women I'd grown up with. I hadn't been close to them. I'd been forced to always be around them and doing things with them, but more than that I didn't know or care.
I hesitated at my dad's number though. For all his faults, he was still my dad. But he was also the one person in the pack that I had wanted to get away from most. The one person in the pack who had treated me as Caroline no matter what I did or however many times I corrected him. So I deleted his number too.
In their places I put in Vallen's number as my first on the speed dial list. Then Ainsley went second. After that I spent the next hour putting every vampire phone number that Ainsley had given me into my phone. I could order from the Bottle Bar. I could call up Patrick and see how my clothes were coming. I could text the council and I could order a car. I took the folder and put it in my room, then I put the two hundred that had been in it into my wallet.
I had my own money for the first time. Not the pack's money. Not my dad's money that he'd let me borrow so that I could buy something pretty that would make him happy. My own money. But now that I had it I had no idea what I would be spending it on. Maybe not buying anything at the moment was a better idea.
I did need to eat though. I ordered Thai, and a couple things I'd never heard of but now I could order whatever food I wanted from my phone and I could pay for them with my own money. I didn't have any little kids running around trying to steal my sandwich or telling me to make them one.
When my food came it was just me, styrofoam containers, and the movie. Then it was the next movie and I was still eating and glad that the food tasted just as good cold as it had when it was hot. The food, the movie, my independence... they were all good distractions, but even something as delish as spicy, peanuty, crunchy Pad Thai wasn't enough to keep me from feeling the pain pummeling against my stomach. I rolled over and held my stomach again. It did nothing to
ease my pain, but I couldn't just sit there and ignore it either. And I couldn't keep shifting all the time.
I got up and started to walk around, but pacing didn't help. I thought a hot shower would, but that only left me with dirty clothes, a wet towel, and no idea where the washing machine was. Up until the age of my maturity I'd never understood why so many people in the pack would want to get pregnant so quickly. To me it had been like they'd just wanted sex with strangers and hadn't cared at all and now here they were with these babies and these huge bellies that they complained about all the time. Only to have those babies and lose their bellies and then to start it all over again with a different member of the pack during the next claiming.
I'd been so naive. I'd never once considered that the worst pain I'd ever endured would have me wanting to have sex with my own stranger just to make it stop. But there I was, standing outside of Vallen's bedroom door, and with Ainsley just a few feet away as well so we'd have no privacy at all. I'd known him for less than forty-eight hours and it seemed insane to even think about wanting to have sex with him.
And the reality was that I didn't want to have sex with him. Not really anyway. Maybe someday I would. He wasn't repulsive or anything and I didn't know what the future would hold for us. But having sex with him would get the pain to stop and if he got me pregnant then the pain would stop for a whole five months. It wasn't that I wanted Vallen. It was that I wanted to not have this pain constantly driving me mad.
I knocked on his door, and when he didn't answer it after a few moments, I opened it and snuck inside. I was back to wearing another pair of boxers and a fresh tank top and I hoped that he'd find me attractive enough to do what had to be done. He'd said he was interested the night before so maybe that would still be the case. I hoped that it was. I needed it to be. I didn't have time for a get to know you stage. I didn't have time to fall in love with him. Not if I wanted to get through the pain.
"Vallen?" I whispered. Then, I realized, that I'd need to speak up just a bit if I had any hope of him actually waking up and being able to talk to me. I cleared my throat and came closer to his bed. "Um. Vallen?"
He rolled over toward me and wiped his hand over his face. "What time is it?"
Crap. I hadn't even looked. "Uh. Not yet sunset."
He didn't look happy about that at all. "Did Ainsley need something?"
I shook my head.
"Do you?"
I took a deep breath and came close enough to stand beside the bed. "The pain's back. I thought..." I thought I was being stupid about this. He'd said that he didn't have sex with people he didn't care about and I didn't know him well enough to care about him so he probably didn't care about me either. Not enough to have sex with me anyway. "Can we have sex?" I mumbled. I could barely hear myself. There was no reason that he'd be able to hear me.
Vallen groaned and sat up. The blanket fell around his hips and I sat on his bed near his knees. I just wanted the pain to be over, but I didn't want anything else.
"Are you horny or something?" He sounded tired, and annoyed.
I snorted. "Not really. I'm just in pain and getting pregnant will stop it long term. But having sex will give me some relief." He didn't reach for me. Or take off his blanket the rest of the way. He didn't do anything. And after a moment I looked over at him and wondered if he'd fallen back to sleep or something. But he was just looking at me as if he was waiting for me to do something. The problem was, I didn't have any idea of how to do any of this. The others I'd talked to all said that they didn't have to do anything. They were women in the pack and the men that they were with just got on top of them and they did all the work and then the pain was gone and now I was realizing how stupid that actually was.
"I'm sorry. I'll go now and let you sleep."
"And you'll be in pain until I actually decide to have sex with you, right?"
I nodded. That was pretty much it. He lifted the blanket for me and, with every muscle in my body cramping with how slow I was going, I slid in beside him. He laid down behind me and I froze. I was a virgin but I wasn't supposed to be this naive. I didn't want to be scared and I didn't want to worry about whether or not he would like me or if he really wanted me but there I was and I couldn't help the stupid thoughts that kept zooming through my brain. They were just there and I was stuck thinking that at least he wasn't just pushing into me or something rough like that as he laid his hand over my hip.
I just wanted to get this over with. I reached down and pushed my boxers off. Then, the instant they were gone, I wanted them back on. I wasn't ready to be naked with a man I didn't know. And I wasn't ready to have sex with him either. But this pain was making me unable to think clearly. It was clearly something screwed up in the werewolf world that made getting pregnant quickly the most important thing in life when it came to those of us werewolves who had the great misfortune of being born with uteruses.
Vallen moved in behind me and I felt him there, firm and warm against my cheeks. "You sleep naked," I mumbled.
"I sleep alone, so why shouldn't I be comfortable?"
He put his hand on my hip and then under my thigh, pushing my leg up. "Do you want the pain gone or do you actually want to have sex with me?"
I felt shallow and heartless, but he had to have the truth from me. "I just want the pain to go away. I'm not saying I don't want to, someday, but that's not why I'm here right now."
"At least you're giving me honesty."
He brought his hand between my legs, rubbing me as he'd done before and I lay there against him, feeling his warmth through my back and wishing that I could give him more. I wanted to be able to give him as much as he'd given me, but I couldn't. Not yet at least.
I came with a force that stung my eyes and left me trembling in his arms. And then he was there, his blunt point pushing against me. I had time to say no. I easily could have. But not wanting to be in pain easily outweighed anything else for me right then. I didn't say anything as he entered me. I just lay there, trying not to make a sound, and hoping Ainsley didn't know what we'd done.
There was no pain, no sudden tearing like I'd heard about. There was only Vallen's hand on my hip, holding me in place, and his warm breath against my shoulder.
And then he was done and there was nothing as he pulled away from me. He sat up but I didn't see him since I was facing the door. "Are you okay?"
The pain was gone, but now I felt like crap for all new reasons. "I'm not in pain anymore."
"Good." He got up and I kept staring at the door. When he went into his bathroom I should have left. It would have been better. But I just lay there looking out at the water as he turned on the shower.
I was back in my room by the time he got out. I laid down on my bed and hoped that had been enough to get me pregnant, but also I hoped that Vallen would forgive me for what I'd done, and what I'd made him do.
Chapter Nine
Vallen
It made me a coward, but I waited until I heard Tad go back to his room before I came out of the shower. I was barely in the mood to put on clothes, let alone to see Ainsley there on my couch drinking my blood as he watched some afternoon talk show.
"What time is it?" I grumbled.
"Not even four. Why are you up?"
I glared at him. We'd been quiet, but I was sure he'd still been able to figure out what we'd done all on his own and we didn't need to discuss it. "Are you going hunting tonight?"
"I am. Want me to bring you back someone?"
I considered it. Heavily. But in the end I thought about Tad living here with me now and I didn't want to bring a human back here to kill with him here. It wasn't that I didn't want him to see me like that. But rather, it was that I didn't want to expose him to having to watch someone die in front of him, even if the people Ainsley chose were always those who society would be better off. "No, but feel free to still leave them in the woods like always." It had been our dumping ground for over a decade and the woods were thick enough, and private enough,
that we'd likely be using them for another decade as wel. After that I would probably have to buy a boat to be able to dump the bodies in the middle of the cove with cement blocks all mafia style.
Ainsley put a couple of files on the dining room table for me. "You have two meetings tonight, and Novak is making trouble. He's insisting that you've kidnapped his daughter. He plans to seek retribution from the council tomorrow morning."
That settled it then. I hadn't planned to take Tad to the council until next week but if Novak was getting ready to make his move in the morning then we needed to head there tonight. "Can you push my meetings back to tomorrow? Tad and I will be at the council tonight. Could you get us a meeting there tonight?"
Ainsley made a face, and I knew why. I'd promised him the night off and yet, once again, I needed him to work for me.
"I can make the calls," I said.
He rolled his eyes. "I'm your assistant. I'll make the calls. Relax. You've got a fiance to take care of."
If only it was that easy. I went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle. I was too tired to even care about the label at this moment. "Thanks." I sat down at the dining room table and flipped open the folders he'd given me. Yawning, I kept trying to read the files but the words blurred in front of me. "I need some more sleep. I'll set my alarm for eight. If you can make the appointment with the council around midnight I'd really appreciate it."
Ainsley waved me away, and I finished my bottle of blood. It was enough to sate my appetite, for the moment, but it was hardly enough to wake me up and get me ready for the night. I got up and started heading back toward my bedroom, but I stopped at the door to Tad's instead. I wanted to see him again, if only to make sure that he was okay.
I knocked, and moments later Tad opened the door for me. "Hi."
Defying His Fate Page 6
