by T. S. Joyce
“Nothing!” God, that was loud. Clearing her throat, she smiled shakily. “Nothing. I’m good.”
Creed snuck a look to his crew who were gathering near a bricked-in fire pit in the middle of the park. No one was watching them. They’re attention was on a man limping toward them from the tree line.
Leaning forward, Creed gripped her waist and pulled her to him. “You look fucking hot in them holey jeans, woman.”
Gia laughed and looked down at the only remaining pair of pants that fit her burgeoning belly. She’d bought them as lounge-around-the-house jeans, but apparently Creed was into the tattered look. “You want to see something kind of embarrassing?”
Creed eased back against his truck and lifted his chin. “Show me.”
She snuck a glance to the guys who were now talking low to the man from the woods, then she lifted the hem of her sweater and squeaked out an embarrassed sound. She’d never shared this part of her pregnancy with anyone.
“Is that a rubber band?”
Gia pushed her pelvis forward so he could see it better. “I can’t button my pants anymore so this is all I can do if I don’t want to walk around with them completely undone.”
Creed brushed his finger across the loop of her hair band that connected her button to the button hole, then across the thin strip of skin she’d exposed by lifting her shirt. “I have a weird request.”
“What is it?”
“You can say no.”
“Creed, tell me!”
He rubbed his hand over his hair. Was he blushing? “Can I see your stomach?”
“You’ve seen it before.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t have my kid in it then. I haven’t been around a pregnant woman.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
She inhaled deeply as another wave of nerves made her skin tingle. “I’m a little self-conscious about that part.”
“Why?”
Gia shrugged a shoulder up miserably. “I’m losing my figure. I keep gaining all this weight because I’m so hungry, and I didn’t get morning sickness like other women so I’ve just been eating everything in sight. I’ve gained twenty pounds already, and I’m only halfway through this pregnancy. Even my doctor told me I need to lay off the snacks.”
“Wait, your doctor said that?”
“Yeah. He said I’ll never get my figure back if I keep going like this.”
“Your doctor is an asshole, and that can’t be true. And besides, I think you look way better now than you did. I mean, shit. I thought you were hot before, but now you look…healthy.” He screwed his face up.
“Healthy?” She was trying not to smile, but good lordy that was a strange compliment.
“Sorry, I’m not awesome with words. I mean, when you were walking out here in your little skintight sweater and those holey jeans, I thought, ‘Damn, I had that,’ and I felt lucky because a girl who looks like you wouldn’t usually pay a lick of attention to a good ol’ boy like me. And there you were, walking my way with your eyes on my body.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it against the hard roll of his erection, then released her. “Yeah, healthy.”
Warmth flooded into her as she let her hand drop to her side. The butterflies went to flapping so hard, she couldn’t breathe, and now she couldn’t keep the smile from her face if she tried. “Be nice,” she whispered, then lifted her shirt over the swell of her belly.
Creed grinned and pulled her behind his truck, shielding her from the others. A look of awe took his face as he rubbed his hands over her smooth skin. “Have you felt him move yet?”
“Yes, mostly at night or after I drink orange juice. And why did you call it a him? Are you hoping for a boy?”
“No.” Creed frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. It just didn’t feel right calling him ‘it.’”
“But yesterday, you called him a ‘thing.’”
Creed stroked her belly with his thumbs, then pulled her shirt back down and smoothed it into place. Easing her against him and resting his chin on top of her head, he murmured, “Gia, I fucked up so bad yesterday. I freaked out. I’m so sorry.”
Tears stung her eyes again. Dang, these hormones were wrecking her emotions. “Why did you say you can’t have a baby? Because I took, like, ten pregnancy tests that say you definitely can.”
“It wasn’t that I can’t have them. It was that I shouldn’t. I’m not exactly equipped for this.”
“I’m not either, Creed. I mean, look at me. I’m living in my friend’s trailer with no plan for the future.”
“But, you’re keeping the baby, right?” A tinge of worry tainted his words.
“Of course. I gave up my relationship with my parents so I could. Even if you weren’t being nice, and even if you wanted nothing to do with me or the baby, I’d find a way to take care of us.” She eased out of his embrace and dug in her pocket. “I have something for you.”
She handed him a tiny ultrasound picture. “I asked for an extra copy for you when I had it done. You can have this one. I have the same one, too.”
Creed stared at it, turned it this way and that. “It’s the baby?”
“Here, let me show you. See that black space? That’s the sack he’s living in. And that,” she said, pointing to the light gray center, “that’s our baby. He’s the size of a banana now, but when I had the ultrasound, he was only this big.” She put her finger and thumb an inch apart. “The size of a grape.”
Creed looked up at her with shock in his eyes, then back at the picture. “Is that his face?”
Gia laughed thickly and nodded, then pointed to the little paddles on his torso. “Those are his hands.”
“Oh my God,” he whispered, shaking his head. “That’s a baby.”
Gia nodded, unable to take her eyes off the wonder in Creed’s face.
“That’s going to be a little person.”
She nodded again and said, “I hope he looks like you.” She hadn’t meant to say her secret wish out loud, but it was out there now, hanging in the air between them. She hoped he was a brawny little baby, strong and able to handle the little bear that was inside of him. She wanted him to be dark-headed like Creed, because deep down, that night with him had changed her from the inside out. She’d slept with him to escape the shit-storm that was going on at home, but because of her shifter obsession and because of her stupid plan with the bombshells to sleep with a shifter after graduation, she’d lost a little piece of her heart to a stranger. To Creed.
“We goin’ or what?” Matt called from where the crew was gathered.
“Yeah, in a minute,” Creed answered as he tucked the ultrasound image carefully into his pocket. “Come on, you should meet the crew.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward them, his gait smooth and confident, the muscles in his back and shoulders flexing through the thin material of his dark sweater as he moved.
She’d already met some of the Gray Backs when she’d been in Saratoga the first time, but the one from the tree line she didn’t recognize at all.
“Bombshell!” Jason called, his dark eyes dancing as he held up a sack lunch.
She still hated that name. “Hey, Jason.”
“And you probably remember Clinton,” Creed said, gesturing to the blond man with an entire breakfast sandwich hanging out of his mouth as he pulled a canvas backpack over his shoulders. “Gooseyougin,” he slurred around the food.
She talked food-speak though, so she grinned and said, “Good to see you, too.”
“Matt is Matt, and this here is Easton.” Creed turned her shoulders toward the tall man with chestnut-colored hair and striking green eyes. Eyes so inhuman looking, it was hard to hold his gaze. He didn’t say anything, but dragged his unsettling gaze down her torso to her stomach. The corners of his eyes tightened, and a soft, feral rumble rattled from his chest.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Easton looked at Creed, accusation and fury in his glare.
“Easton,” Creed warned, a
ngling his head. “This ain’t a bad thing.”
Creed pulled Gia behind him, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to see Easton over his broad shoulder.
Easton’s dark eyebrows winged up. “Not a bad thing? You fucking killed her.”
Something electric was in the air now, just above her senses, jolting all the fine hairs on her body.
“Come on, man,” Clinton murmured to Easton, squeezing his shoulder. “This isn’t like with you. Gia’s going to be okay.”
“She’s human,” Easton growled. “She’s fragile, and you got her with a baby, anyway.”
“Shit,” Creed ground out just as Easton hunched into himself.
In the next second, an enormous silver grizzly exploded from Easton’s skin.
Gia screamed in terror as Creed shoved her backward. She stumbled, but caught herself just as a monstrous black grizzly ripped through Creed’s skin. He slammed down on all fours, shaking the ground beneath her feet.
Easton charged. Too close! She was too close, and they were going to barrel right into her.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jason muttered from right beside her. Where had he come from? He was just over there. “Come on, Bombshell, before they kill you trying to protect you.”
“Kill me?” she gasped out as he pulled her backward.
The two titan bears clashed. Roaring and snarling, they clawed and bit with such furious violence, she locked her legs in awe. “They’re going to kill each other.”
“Willa!” Matt called out as he pulled her shirt off.
Was everyone going to Change? She’d done her research, and nothing in all the hours she’d spent reading about bear shifter crews had prepared her for this. Changing was supposed to happen every once in a while, not over something silly—like Easton’s apparent hatred of pregnancy.
The battle raged closer, and she wasn’t retreating fast enough.
“Move your legs, Bombshell,” Jason yelled. His voice had lost its laid-back humor now.
Jason pulled off his sweater and stripped out of his jeans, then Changed into a brown bear almost as big as Easton. Matt Changed and now his scarred-up red bear was in the fight. Crimson was staining the white gravel road under the battle.
Jason was backing up beside her, nudging her away from the fight. Gia couldn’t take her eyes off the raw violence before her. A moment ago everything was fine, and now the Gray Backs looked like they were trying to rip each other’s throats out.
A blond bear was in it now, too, and this was just fantastic. Even Clinton had Changed. One little angry remark, and the entirety of the Gray Back Crew was at war, bleeding each other. Wait. Gia refused to be herded by Jason another step and looked around his hind end. Another bear was charging the battle. This one was smaller than the others, but it was breathtakingly fast. Its honey-colored fur waved in the wind with every powerful step it bolted forward. There was another Gray Back.
Chills rippled across Gia’s skin as the new bear blasted into Easton’s side, bowling him over completely. The others backed off, shaking their heads, clawing the dirt, just on the outer edge of the new battle between the silver bear and the smaller one. The new bear was important.
Easton hit the ground hard and stayed there, fighting with less and less ferocity as the smaller brawler slashed at him with its six-inch black-as-pitch claws. He bit her leg and got a few swipes in, but the fire was dying from his eyes by the second.
Creed shrank back into his human skin and, naked and bleeding, he barked out, “Easton, Change back. Now!”
The smaller bear pushed off Easton’s exposed chest and shrank back into a very familiar form.
“What the hell?” Gia huffed on a baffled breath. “Willa?”
Willa held her bleeding arm and stomped her foot. “Son of a mother-fluffer, you pickle-dick weasel-chode! Fuck, Beaston. You broke my arm!”
Easton was human again and scrabbling up from the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it,” he rushed out.
The scarred-up red bear was pacing a protective tight circle around Willa.
Willa shoved him back with her good arm. “Matt, if you aren’t going to Change back, someone has to set the bone.” She arched her glare to Easton. “You owe me another knife!”
Easton felt her arm gently, then said, “Don’t look. It hurts less if you don’t look.”
“No, asshole, it hurts less if you boys would stop fighting about every damned—ooow!” she screamed as Easton pulled down and jammed her arm back up.
Gia stumbled forward as Jason Changed back beside her. Willa was a bear. Willa was a badass, brawling, get-in-the-middle-of-them-boys-and-wreck-shop grizzly bear. “That’s why you don’t wear your glasses anymore?” Gia asked in a higher octave than she’d meant to. “Because you’re a bear shifter?”
Creed’s chest heaved with every breath, and he looked fit to kill someone, but he jerked his head to Willa. “Gia, meet the last member of the Gray Backs. You know her as Willamena Madden, but we all know her as Willa the Second.”
“Second. Like, second to the alpha in the crew?” Gia pursed her lips as her world turned upside down. Again. Tiny, sarcastic, nerdy Willa was second in a crew of renegade monster bears. She gripped her hair like it would keep her mind from exploding.
“That baby will kill you,” Easton said in an emotionless voice. “I don’t want it to kill you. You seem nice.”
“What do you mean?” Gia asked, panic flaring in her chest. She didn’t want to die.
“Beaston, you’re scaring her for no reason,” Jason griped. “People have babies every day.”
“Don’t call me that,” Easton growled out. “And don’t call her Bombshell. She doesn’t like it.”
“How do you know what she does and doesn’t like?” Creed asked.
“Because I saw her face when Jason called her that!” Easton spat red and spun for the woods. He stopped and muttered over his shoulder at Willa, “I’m sorry.” With another glare for Creed, he made his way to the tree line and disappeared into the woods.
“Am I going to die?” Gia asked. “Is it impossible for humans to have shifter babies? I thought it was okay. Cora Wright’s Web site said it was possible.”
Creed grabbed her shoulders and leveled her a look. “You aren’t going to die. Easton had a bad experience, but he’s wrong. My biological mother was human, and she was fine.”
Gia sighed and gripped his wrists to keep his hands on her. Losing his touch seemed scary right now. Looking around, she muttered, “You realize you’re all naked, right?” Naked and bleeding.
“Hey, Willa said, rubbing her injured arm. “Remember that time I told you no one bleeds more than a Gray Back? Now do you believe me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were Turned?”
Willa rolled her shoulder, apparently at ease with nudity in front of her crew. “Because my dad doesn’t know yet, and I didn’t want you telling him until Matt and I had a chance to tell him ourselves.”
“Willa, I don’t have your dad on speed dial. When was I going to gossip to him?”
“Well, I didn’t know how long you were sticking around for, and you ran into my dad in the grocery store, remember? I was trying to keep my bear shit on the down low.”
“Willa,” Creed said low as the other men drifted off to pick up the scattered remnants of clothing that decorated the stained gravel. “Easton is going to be trouble until someone explains to him about Gia. He isn’t going to listen to me or the boys on this one.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Willa muttered, stomping off toward a pile of discarded clothes by her truck.
Creed ran his hands down his face and kept them covering his mouth as he looked down at her with tired eyes. “And that’s the Gray Backs,” he said, finishing what had to be the bloodiest and most terrifying introduction in history.
Chapter Six
“I can tell by the look on your face that you’re considering leaving,” Creed said quietly from his seat behind the wheel. “An
d if you are, I understand, but I’m begging you to reconsider.”
Gia sat huddled in on herself, staring out the window as the forest blurred by. “Yesterday you wanted me to leave.”
“Well, things are different now. I’m different.” Creed inhaled a shaky breath and glanced over at her. His eyes were still the color of mercury. “I want you to stay.”
“What if Easton kills me?”
“He won’t. He wasn’t mad at you. He was mad at me. It has nothing to do with you, and it’s not your fault. Easton’s attack stemmed from his own problems. Not ours. I won’t let anything happen to you, Gia.”
He said the last part with such honesty, she couldn’t help but waver in her resolve to leave this place tonight and never come back.
“Why are your bears broken?” she whispered. “Matt with his scars and Easton with his anger, and you—”
“I’m not broken.” Creed gripped the wheel until it creaked. “Just different.”
“Did you choose these bears?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t ever have a family, Gia.” The words came out angry, and he muttered a curse. “I didn’t have anyone to show me how to be this, this, thing I am. And those bears might not look like much to you, but they’re the family I’ve built, and I’m not giving up on them. I didn’t mind taking the problem bears. Matt and I decided early on we could take the bears that didn’t fit anywhere and try to make a life for them here. I know it doesn’t make any sense. Hell, half the time I come home from work and want to murder all of them. But then we’ll have these moments where we’re not fighting and everyone is getting along, and I get that nostalgic feeling like this is what it would’ve been like if I’d grown up differently. If they would’ve joined other crews, their alphas would’ve probably put them down by now. That’s the way it is with shifters. The ones who are dangerous, who are out of control of their animals, who threaten to expose our violent natures to the humans and put our kind in danger, are put down when their bears become unmanageable. But my crew hasn’t stopped fighting to live. Not one of them has given up and said, ‘This is as good as I get. Take it or leave it.’ To you, we probably look like a bunch of maniacs who don’t belong together, but to me, I see what they can be. Is it hard? Yeah. Does it hurt to keep trying? Fuck yeah, I bleed all the time breaking up their fights. But is it still worth it to me?” He dragged his eyes away from the road to her. “Yeah.”
