Mourning over took the lodge and the Guardians, and during the funeral when Dani balanced just right on the edge of her bed rails, she could climb high enough to see the rites of death carried out.
The Guardians had been devastated...sort of. Mason really was an asshole and she’d witnessed enough to know they were at a point where they didn’t know if they could control the male much longer, and what they’d do if they couldn’t. But he was one of them. Maybe at one time he was a decent shifter, and his death reminded them all of their own mortality.
During her interrogation, she’d told them about some of the things Mason said to her that night. Now she hoped they were investigating the former Guardian, not just her.
Today, Kaitlyn brought Dani lunch as she often did. And Dani was grateful. Living as a human most all of her life, unaware of her four-legged half, Kaitlyn ate like a human: carbs, fruit, and veggies. Not just meat and more meat with a chaser of protein and a side of greasy fat like the others. Therefore, when it was her turn to cook, she fed the other Guardians more well-rounded meals than they'd seen in centuries. While the big males might grumble and complain about "shit like quinoa," Dani ate like she'd been starved whether there was "fucking granola" fare like homemade hummus with whole wheat pita chips, or rare beef roast.
After sliding the tray through the bottom slot in the door, Kaitlyn folded herself gracefully on the floor facing Dani through the bars in the door, her chin on her hands, her elbows propped on her crossed legs.
Dani sat with her eats - chicken nachos with extra sour cream. She could hear the man-bitching now. Chicken was almost a swear word at the lodge, but the shifters were coming around. They'd never admit it now, but their human taste buds were waking up to flavors other than charred beef and pork.
Trying not to shovel in chip after loaded chip, she chewed a mouthful and raised an eyebrow at the beautiful redhead across from her.
"He's still not back," Kaitlyn announced abruptly.
Dani nodded thoughtfully, expecting as much.
The beautiful redhead narrowed her eyes slightly on Dani before saying, "Bennett's been down to Pale Moonlight looking for him."
Dani quit chewing, murderous rage roared up from her belly, pounding in her ears.
"And?" she bit out around her mouthful, glaring at the female. She heard books sliding off her nightstand and hitting the floor. One even flew across the room and hit the wall.
"There's been no sign of him," Kaitlyn smirked. Bitch.
The rage receded leaving vast relief to fill its void.
"Damn, girl. You've got it bad for the big brute."
Rage crept back in. The book on the floor could be heard sliding toward the wall, trying to catch air and take off to hit the door.
Kaitlyn looked past Dani, watching the books with amusement. "Sensitive much? You know I don't mean it as an insult."
The books went still.
"I know," Dani sighed. "I just get so defensive about him. And the baby's even worse."
"That little nugget packs a punch." Kaitlyn pointed to Dani's still flat belly. "You seriously never had mojo before being prego?"
"Nope. But I could think of a few times it would've been handy."
They went silent and Dani cleaned her plate. She never got snacks and her stomach would be rumbling something fierce before dinner. Her portions were big enough, but growing a shifter baby required a lot of fuel. Especially since there was almost nothing to do but read, so Dani made sure to keep as fit as she could in her little prison doing floor exercises, yoga, and in-place cardio. She was forever in debt to her Health and Wellness 101 course in college where they had to attend group fitness classes the entire semester.
"So..." Dani began. "Why are you nice to me?"
"Have the others been mean?" Kaitlyn asked sharply.
"No, no." Dani said quickly. "Not friendly, but I get it. I deserve it. You've been downright considerate and now you're letting me know about Mercury when the others growl back when I ask."
"It's obvious you care about him and he cares about you. He'll come around. He might be a shifter but he's still a dude. I'm sure finding out about you when he thought he was figuring you out was like a double whammy to him. Those primitive emotions will work themselves out and he'll come back for you."
Dani had already come to the same conclusion, minus the coming back for her part. As the days ticked by, she feared that once he was back in the wild, in his comfort zone even after all this time, he was there to stay.
"But what about my history with Sigma, don't you hate me for that?"
"Did you kill anyone that didn't need killing?"
"No."
"Did you hurt anyone that didn't need hurting?"
"No." Dani could answer confidently. There had been plenty of opportunities, but with great fortune she was placed with Agent X and Agent E to train with and carry out her vendetta. They weren't into senseless violence and preferred to stay under the radar, concentrating only on the prey they were assigned to.
The first time, after her first kill when they were hunting the remaining two ferals, they came upon a shifter clan in the mountains that Sigma Agents had visited. It was revolting, the things she saw. It was like a scene from any movie that portrayed the mass murder of a tiny village by raiders. Bodies littered the land between huts – males, females, and children. Some still in shifter form, no chance against today's weaponry. Dani didn't care what the species, children were not evil and were off limits. Many of the adults, the way they died protecting their loved ones, didn't strike Dani as feral creatures out to play with and kill any prey that crossed their paths.
But she kept plugging away, hunting her targets. Then they crossed another village. There was no hiding from the awful truth that Dani had made a terrible mistake. She judged the whole species based on less than five minutes with the worst example of living flesh. As the years went by, and gossip flowed, Dani felt the vice-like grip of Sigma's chains around her. Not just Sigma either. She'd sworn herself to Madame G like all the other stupid recruits, and like all the others who woke up and smelled the spilled innocent blood, she knew she was good and completely fucked. No one had found a way out of the blood oath other than death, and that wasn't always a certainty.
"Well, you've been vetted by my bestie and I'm bored." Kaitlyn brought her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, looking like she wasn't going anywhere soon.
Thank God. Bored was an understatement. Dani desperately wanted the company.
"You mean when Cassie came by, got in my head, and made me ugly cry?" The tenacious woman's questions just went on and on. Much like today, Dani was bored and wanted the company. Until she found herself sobbing, spilling her guts on everything she ever felt and thought about life. But the devious woman didn't once raise an alarm within Dani or her little bun-in-the-oven; no books went flying, no objects hit the wall, nothing.
"She's good, right?" Kaitlyn grinned. “She was good at reading people before she hooked up with Jace. But now she can get really dive into your brain.”
They chatted for hours, just superficial chitchat about when they were both young and naive human girls with the only goal of dick-teasing boys and scoring fashion deals at the mall.
When Kaitlyn rose to go, Dani figured she'd better ask what had been on her mind for the last couple of days.
"I'm going to need to start OB appointments soon."
"Is something wrong?"
"Besides emotional outbursts that make objects go flying? No. Just from all the reading I've done with books we downloaded, it seems like regular doctor visits start in the first trimester and I'm almost two months along. And with a half-species, so I thought we should start figuring out how this is going to go."
"Hmmm," Kaitlyn mused. "You're totes right. What the hell are the boys going to want to do? I'll mention it." With a wink, Kaitlyn left.
Fatigue washed over Dani with the female's departure. She had done her workout already this morning, and re
ad before lunch arrived, so nappy time it was.
When Dani woke up, she could tell it was much later in the day. Being summer, the sun was still out, but early evening had passed. And shit. Her food was cold. The tray had been slid in, surprisingly quiet not to wake her, even though it was obvious one of the males was on delivery duty tonight based on the meatloaf and bacon combo. And milk. They loved their milk: plain, chocolate, strawberry (gross!), it didn't matter.
Whaddaya know? Cold bacon and meatloaf hit the spot.
Now what?
Dani sat on her bed facing the wall, pondering her day. Maybe with the females at the lodge slowly accepting her, thanks to Cassie's subtle but thorough psychoanalysis, the males would come around. She would love to prep for her baby and wait for baby daddy's return in the cabin. She missed it terribly. She missed the male who used to sleep on the porch even more.
Daylight started to fade. This was the time Dani would turn in, needing more sleep than she used to, which was to be expected. Like the sore boobs and emotional roller coaster, tiredness came with the first trimester territory.
Flutters went through her belly. Dani shifted, letting her mind drift again in the fading daylight. Flutters, like butterflies, but she had nothing to be nervous about. What the hell?
An awareness settled into her, warming her insides, the heat spreading through her, arousing her.
Dani stood. She began to pace. What. The. Hell?
Shadows grew in her room, the sun being her only source of light was setting. She kept eyeballing the door.
Her normally tender breasts became increasingly sensitive. If her arousal wasn't evident with her nipples poking through her top, it was definitely made known in the friction created between her legs as she was pacing. If this kept up, tonight would be the night she lost her mind. There was no way she was getting herself off in this cell where they could rewind and watch her at any time on the surveillance tapes.
The heat grew and so did her awareness. The door.
Dani walked right up to it.
"Open."
The bolt thunked from within, and without a creak it swung open.
Cautiously, Dani walked out. There would be no creeping, she had nothing to hide. Shoulders squared she strode down the hallway, navigating her way through the lodge, commanding any locked doors to simply "open" and they did. When she reached the side exit, she hesitated.
Letting her mind relax, Dani used borrowed senses from her little bundle of joy to determine if any shifters were nearby or along the path in the woods where she was determined to go.
Receiving the all clear, she walked out the door.
His beard was scratchy. It's been over a hundred years since Mercury had one and he didn't miss hair on his face. At least it was finally drying after his pseudo-shower in the little spring-fed waterfall a mile or so away from his cabin. He intended to go back, and like every time before in the last twenty-plus days, he didn't. He got closer tonight than ever, used the excuse he needed to bathe first, and then sat by the water but moving no further.
There was no need to.
She was coming to him. As soon as her scent drifted on the breeze to him, he hardened, his shaft coming to attention for all to see as he wore nothing, being naked when he ran off.
The first several days, he just ran. His feelings a jumbled mess that he couldn't make out until he began to sort through and analyze them like Irina taught him.
In between hunting and gathering – and evading his Guardian brothers – he realized it didn't matter what Dani had done with Sigma, it only mattered now that she wanted to leave them. He heard enough the night he left, and he knew without her having to tell him, that she wasn't a mindless brute out to kill his kind because she could. He suspected that without the baby-making event, eventually she would have found a way to get away from Madame G and out of Sigma, or die trying. While he couldn't blame her for not telling him the complete truth, it burned that she didn't. Not just at the beginning, but as they were growing closer bit by bit.
What he was afraid of was that he would be endangering his pack because he couldn't give up his female. And he wouldn't give up his child. Then he realized his pack would have to deal and so would he.
Once all that was sorted out, he knew he needed to go home. And here he sat, a hundred and fiftyish year-old pussy sitting in the grass with an erection. What if she turned him away? What if she didn't? He should go back and tell her he wanted her and ask if she wanted him too. He wasn't usually indecisive about what to say, just spewed words he was thinking.
Her scent got stronger and his hard-on got harder. In the twilight, she was coming straight to him, learning to use her own newly-enhanced senses.
He stood once he saw her striding out of the trees and into the little clearing. Her dark, straight hair hanging loose down her back, her lithe, athletic body maneuvering over the terrain with little problem. She strode right up to him, paying no mind to his nakedness or erection.
When she stopped right in front of him, he breathed in deep and drank her in with his eyes.
Her mouth set in a firm line, her dark eyes hard, she slapped him hard across the face.
Taken totally by surprise, barely feeling the sting from something like a human slap, he couldn't stop his head from flinging sideways. He would've done it anyway, just to give her some satisfaction. He deserved it.
Without a word, she flung her arms around his neck, raised up on her tippy-toes and mashed her lips against his with the same urgency he felt.
Lifting her to him, his erection pressed between them while they frantically explored each other’s mouths. Twining tongues, licking at each other amidst little bites, Mercury couldn't get her close enough.
Kneeling down, he broke off the kiss to take off her shoes and pants while she wrestled her shirt off. There was no slow and gentle. There was no stopping to lave over body parts. He needed her here and he needed her now. And from her reaction to him, she felt the same.
Once she was as bare as he was, she again wrapped her arms around him and dragged him down to lay flat on top of her, twining her long, lean legs around his waist.
She was wet and ready for him. Ignoring his need to drive into her and feel for the first time not only what a woman wrapped around him would be like, but even better, his mate, he forced himself to stall at her entrance.
Dani rocked her hips up to him, encouraging his entrance. He moved forward just a little, his tip entering, barely fitting into her tight channel.
She moaned and tried to roll herself onto him more, but he kept himself steady. He would not ruin this by making his body's invasion uncomfortable, or even worse, painful.
He rested up on his forearms and locked eyes with his mate, wanting to watch this significant moment in their relationship play out in her expressions, not wanting to miss a thing.
Her chest heaved, her breasts arching toward him.
"Please," she gasped, "I need you inside me."
Mercury clenched his jaw and slowly slid farther in, fascinated at the slick velvet that held onto him so tightly, trying to draw him in all the way. He was big and wide, but it was like her body was made for him, he slid fully into her until he was encased in her wet heat up to the hilt.
"Daniella," he sighed, dropping his head into the crook of her neck. He wanted to pound away at her, take all the pleasure she could give and demand more. This was ecstasy. There was no pleasure before he was with her, only a tickle that was barely abated, and heaven within her. Absolute heaven.
When he moved back only to thrust forward, they groaned in unison. She grabbed his butt and at her urging, he let her set the pace through the pleasure-filled haze in his mind.
The pace quickened, he thrust in and out, couldn't get enough. Her pants and moans joined with his as they reveled in the feel of the other’s body. Ecstasy. No wonder males went feral without a mate. Her presence soothed him, her body an outlet for his feelings and emotions. Their joining, a necessity for his v
ery being. It wasn’t just the difference between having real sex versus being on the receiving end of oral. It was her. There could never be another female for him, only Daniella.
“Mercury,” Dani keened, her nails raking down his back as she arched hers.
Mercury marveled at the feel of her walls quaking around him as her orgasm hit. He could feel each ripple, each tremor. He didn’t have much longer and wanted to make sure his mate was well satisfied.
Dani grabbed his shoulders, riding out her peak, her heels digging into his butt. The sight of her crying out his name with her release, her head thrown back against the ground, her hair a soft dark halo against the grass, her breasts crushed beneath him, carried him to his finish.
His whole body tensed as his seed rose to release within her. He dug his fingers into the ground around her as he roared into her neck, body jerking and shaking, hot spurts jetting into her waiting heat. Her body massaged every last drop out of him, greedy for his essence, though life from him had already formed within.
“My God, Mercury,” Dani panted in his ear, her arms cradling his head, her legs still twined lazily around his calves. “I had no idea it could be like that. Amazing.”
Completely spent, Mercury could only nod his agreement where his head was resting in her comfort. Amazing.
Chapter Ten
They lay together, entwined in each other's arms dozing off and on between lovemaking sessions. The night was warm and any chills were staved off with shared body heat. Dawn had come and gone, the soft morning's light showcasing the beauty of their temporary love nest with its deep greens surrounding the light blues of the miniature waterfall.
Mercury bet it was beautiful here in the winter, but doubted he'd be able to bring Dani then. He propped himself on an elbow next to her, twirling his fingers across her belly. While flat now, it would soon swell with his child. Refusing to think of the role Sigma was playing in the growth and birth of their child, he instead focused on the lovely woman next to him.
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