by Noelle Marie
I snorted.
Somehow, despite everything, the innocence that had practically radiated from her the moment I’d found her half-drowned in the river was still there.
“She does realize that the chickens can’t talk back, right?”
I stiffened at the question, delivered to me from the man lounging against a tree five feet to my left.
Abram.
I’d been so focused on Wisp that I had almost forgotten that he was there, too – keeping watch with me. He’d volunteered when Wisp had convinced me to let her tag along to the cabin.
I shrugged. “She likes the demented things for some reason.”
Abram nodded, unsurprised. “They like her,” he pointed out.
A hint of annoyance – justified or not – sparked at the observation. “Yeah, everyone seems to have that reaction,” I muttered.
Even I wasn’t sure what I meant by it, but the accusatory note was there, regardless.
After all, I would have had to have been blind not to notice the way that Abram’s eyes were constantly glued to her, and while I trusted the man with Wisp’s physical well-being, that was about the extent of it.
Maybe it was just the overwhelming sense of protectiveness I felt over her, but I had detected a strange sort of tension between the two of them. That, combined with the intensity of his stare – it was the sort of single-minded focus that hadn’t been present in his gaze for decades – made it impossible for me not to wonder exactly what it was he was thinking about as his eyes trailed after her. (And if I needed to rip them out of their fucking sockets to get the thoughts to stop.)
For Christ’s sake, the man had the nerve to do it – to fucking watch her the way he did – right in front of me.
He was doing it right now.
“Do you have to stare at her like that?” I snapped, unable – unwilling – to hold the words back.
Abram raised his eyebrows, unimpressed with the question. But he looked away from her, at least – which was the whole fucking point – to focus on me. “Like what?” he demanded.
The problem was I didn’t know.
He didn’t look at her like he wanted her – if I seriously thought for even a second that he did, I would have torn him apart by now – but there was a certain fondness present in his eyes when he stared that had me on edge. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I don’t fucking like it.”
Abram snorted. “Well, rest assured, it’s not for the same reason you stare. Jesus, half the time I think you’re seconds away from locking her away in some closet in a misguided attempt to protect her from the world, and the other half of the time I’m convinced you’re going to tie her down to the bed right in front of me and-”
The mention of Wisp locked or tied down anywhere after the way I’d found her shackled to the wall in that fucking basement had my ears ringing.
“Shut up!” I snapped, an angry flush burning up my neck. “I can stare at Wisp however much I want, whatever way I want. She’s mine,” I growled.
Not yours, I wanted to add.
Abram wasn’t intimidated by my snarling and merely pushed himself off the tree he was leaning against and crossed his arms. “Really? Because just a few weeks ago, I could have sworn you said that she wasn’t.”
I stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She’s not my mate,” he mocked. “Sound familiar?”
I grit my teeth at Abram’s nerve – to throw those words in my face when he’d known, even when I’d first uttered them, that they weren’t true, that I’d been in denial. Not only that, but the inherit threat he was making by repeating the statement – the implication that if she wasn’t mine, she could be his… it was enough to put me (and the bear) into a frenzy.
I pounced, ramming him back against the tree and digging my elbow into his throat. “I knew you wanted her, you dirty fucking snake,” I snarled. “I ought to-”
“What’s going on?”
Wisp’s voice, sharp with concern, rang out from where she still stood thirty yards away in the chicken coop, and the threat froze on my tongue at the sound of it.
Abram took advantage of my reaction by shoving me away from him. He shot me a glare before turning towards her. “Nothing for you to worry about, little Wisp,” he assured before his eyes trailed back to me. “Derek and I were just chatting, weren’t we, Derek?”
I wanted to fucking throttle him.
“Derek?” Wisp asked.
I swallowed hard before forcing myself to take another step away from the man. “Everything’s fine, honey,” I managed to bite out, turning to face her.
My sincerity must have been lacking judging by the disbelieving frown painted on her face, but in the end, Wisp just sighed. “If you’re sure…” she mumbled before going back to feeding the chickens.
“Jesus Christ,” Abram muttered as soon as her attention was focused elsewhere. “I already told you that I don’t want her. For fuck’s sake, I’m forty-nine years old. That is not why I stare.”
Their age difference may have made a decent argument if it wasn’t for the fact that I was thirty-two and had no business sniffing around an eighteen-year-old myself.
Except that wasn’t how feelings fucking worked, and we both knew it.
“Then why do you stare?” I demanded, turning back to him. “Hell, the only reason you talked to me for the first time in decades is because of her.” I didn’t bother attempting to disguise the bitterness in my voice.
Abram shook his head, his gaze heading her way – again. “You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered.
“Understand what?” I hissed, careful this time to keep my voice down. “That you’re some sort of sick pervert who gets his kicks out of-”
“She reminds me of her!” the man snapped, stopping my tirade in its tracks, before it really even had the chance to get going.
I frowned. “Of who?” I pressed.
“Of Fiona,” he barked, “my wife!” Then his jaw snapped shut with a click.
For a moment, tension-filled silence hung between us.
“Sometimes the light catches her hair just right and…” he trailed off, swallowing hard. “Never mind,” he muttered before abruptly turning tail, heading back in the direction of the woods. “Like I said,” he called over his shoulder, disappearing into the trees, “you wouldn’t understand.”
I watched him walk away before refocusing my gaze back on Wisp, quietly watching her finish feeding the hens and refusing to acknowledge the heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach as guilt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Awareness tickled the back of my mind, and I was half-conscious of a warm body wrapped around mine. Derek’s large, muscular frame dwarfed my much smaller one, the heat radiating off his chest practically searing the skin of my back through the thin fabric of my night shirt. The familiar lub-dub of his heart rocked against my spine, serving as a soothing melody.
I didn’t ever want to move.
I was content to let the Sandman pull me back under his spell when the familiar feel of Derek’s stubble brushed against the back of my neck, and he pressed a kiss to that sensitive bit of skin behind my ear. It sent a shiver tingling down my spine.
“Derek?” I murmured, voice still thick with sleep, instinctively reaching behind me.
The heavy arm thrown over my middle tightened, making such blind grasping impossible. “Who else would it be?” he mumbled against my skin.
Felix’s face flashed through my mind, the memory of him lying behind me on that dingy mattress causing my stomach to clench, but I quickly shook the feeling off, not about to ruin the moment with such awful thoughts.
“No one,” I muttered, “it’s just…”
My breath hitched when sharp teeth scraped my ear lobe.
It’s just that this was the first time that Derek had been physically affectionate with me since that kiss we had shared in the motel room. Sure, we slept on the same bed every evening – Abram had offered us
the one in his bedroom, seeing as it was the only one in the house and he preferred to spend most nights prowling the woods – but Derek always kept a respectable amount of space between us, and I got the feeling the arrangement was more for my safety than the sake of intimacy.
I knew there was probably a good reason Derek was holding himself back. After all, despite Abram’s long jaunts in the forest, we were still in another man’s house – in another man’s bed. Maybe he was even too nervous to initiate anything after our three-week separation. (As difficult as it was to imagine big, strong Derek as nervous.)
But that didn’t mean the distinct lack of intimacy between us didn’t cause insecurity to well in my chest. I couldn’t help but think that maybe he had somehow found out about all the vile things Felix had made me do, and he didn’t… maybe he didn’t…
“It’s just what?” Derek asked, pulling down the neckline of my shirt and pressing kisses there, too.
I swallowed. “It’s just… I wasn’t sure you wanted me anymore,” I admitted quietly.
The arm around me stiffened. “Of course I want you,” he said. “I always want you. It’s a constant need throbbing beneath my skin. It’s just… I didn’t want to scare you. After everything you’ve been through…” he trailed off. “But I can see now that I never should have kept it from you. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll never hide anything from you ever again.”
The words were meant to be reassuring, but they had the opposite effect, and guilt slammed into my chest.
Because I was keeping something from him – something monumental. I thought of the little life growing in my belly, and I knew it was just my imagination, but I could have sworn I felt something wriggle beneath where Derek’s hand, calloused and warm, palmed my stomach.
A hand that was slowly drifting lower, fingers dipping into the waistband of my shorts…
My stomach twisted. “Derek, wait!” I cried, catching the hand with my own and clutching at it.
The hand immediately ceased its trajectory, and Derek nuzzled his nose into the back of my neck. “What is it, honey?” he murmured.
It was now or never.
I knew I could never be intimate with him with this secret looming between us. My conscience wouldn’t allow it. “I… I’ve got something to tell you,” I admitted hesitantly.
He buried his nose into my hair. “You can tell me anything,” he assured softly.
I took a deep breath.
Do it quickly, I told myself. Like ripping off a band-aid.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words spilled out of my mouth so fast, and Derek was so eerily quiet after the confession, that, for a second, I was afraid the words hadn’t been comprehensible and I’d have to say it again.
But then…
“I know,” Derek admitted, the words a warm puff of air against my shoulder.
I froze. “You… do?”
“Of course.”
I waited for the weight to be lifted off my chest at the revelation, for that freeing feeling that came along with unburdening one’s conscience to hit me. But all I felt was confused.
“But how…?” I muttered, attempting to turn to face him.
Once again, his arm tightened around me – almost too tight, constricting my lungs and making it hard to breathe.
“How could I not have taken the opportunity to fill your belly with babies and make you mine forever?”
But it didn’t make any sense.
Derek hadn’t known I was a bearer when we’d had sex, and he certainly hadn’t been acting like he knew I was pregnant the past week.
I managed to jerk out of his grasp enough to twist my head around and face him. “What-?” I demanded.
But the question dissipated on my tongue. My entire body froze.
Because while it was Derek’s body curled around mine, and his face mere inches from my own, the eyes that were peering out at me weren’t bright green, but an eerie, piercing yellow. Not-Derek grinned, showing off a mouth full of sharp, white teeth.
“You didn’t think I’d really let you go, did you?” he asked.
And then the face was morphing. Unshaven stubble transformed into a neat goatee, and brown hair grew into a yellow mane.
Just as suddenly, I was no longer in Abram’s dusty bedroom, but lying on that grimy mattress in the corner of the basement. My hands were tied behind my back, metal cuffs digging into my skin. My belly wasn’t flat, but huge and bulbous, straining against my shirt.
Felix loomed over me, running his fingers over the grotesque bump. “That’s my girl.”
There were hands everywhere, holding me down – restraining me. Fingers dug into my skin, pressing me into the mattress. I clawed indiscriminately at them, desperate to get them off of me.
I was vaguely aware of screaming. Someone was wailing – the sound a long and tortured keen.
My throat hurt, and I realized it was me.
There were other noises, too. Another voice – masculine, but sharp with worry – whispering urgently in my ear. “Wisp, honey, please. You have to calm down.”
But I couldn’t.
There were so many hands on me. “L-let go!” I choked, digging my fingernails into the fleshy manacles wrapped around my arms, my legs, my stomach.
My brain was a scrambled mess.
The dream, my memories, and reality had all collided, merging together to create a disjointed sense of actuality where I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
“Wisp! Stop it!”
The voice sounded a lot like Derek. But then again, so had he: not-Derek. Felix.
“Wisp, please!” Hands grasped at the sides of my face. “Look at me!”
It wasn’t until he’d said it that I even realized my eyes were screwed tightly shut. But I didn’t dare open them. I couldn’t. The very thought of seeing yellow eyes gleaming back at me caused panic to well in my chest.
“Wisp, please,” the voice begged. “Just open your eyes and look.”
The hands on my face were persuasive – calloused thumbs incredibly gentle as they rubbed soothing circles into the tender skin beneath my eyes. “Please, honey, it’s me. It’s just me.”
The voice was convincing – speaking to me in a soft tone that I was almost certain Felix wasn’t capable of imitating. So I did it – I obeyed and hesitantly peeled open my eyelids.
I was back in Abram’s bedroom, and it was Derek leaning over me, his green eyes alight with worry.
He was straddling me, knees on either side of my waist. His hands were on my face, and they were shaking – or maybe I was shaking, I didn’t know.
But there were no hands anywhere else. Well, none besides my own, which were clutching desperately at my biceps. I realized I was scraping my fingernails into my own skin like a crazy person and immediately released them.
Pinned under Derek’s overwhelming gaze, I was about to be sick.
I pushed shakily against his chest. “Let me up,” I muttered.
Derek frowned. “Wisp-” he protested.
“N-now!” I half-stuttered, half-shrieked at him, and he hurriedly obeyed, sitting up and swinging his leg over my waist so that I was free.
Wasting no time, I flung myself off the bed, dashing to the bathroom down the hallway. I had just enough sense left in my head to lock the door behind me – not that the tiny dead-bolt would stop Derek from following in after me unless he let it – before promptly leaning over the toilet bowl and heaving.
I gagged on the taste of vomit and tears.
I didn’t realize until then that I’d been crying.
When I was finished, I rested my forehead against the toilet seat, the white porcelain wonderfully cold against my sweaty forehead. I ignored the itchy tear tracks on my cheeks and the hair plastered to the back of my neck.
Felix’s face flashed through my mind, followed by the image of my belly swollen with his cubs.
It was only a nightmare, I told myself firmly.
And I knew th
at; I did.
For all that Felix had done to me in that basement, he hadn’t raped me – had hardly even touched me under my clothes. The baby growing in my stomach could be no one’s but Derek’s.
But the dream had seemed so real, and no amount of logic could banish the sickly terror sticking stubbornly to my insides.
My belly clenched when my ears registered the urgent jiggling of the bathroom’s door knob. It was followed by loud pounding on the door. “Wisp!” Derek hollered through the surprisingly sturdy slab of wood. “What’s going on? Let me in!”
I winced at the worry laced in his voice, unbelievably grateful that he’d respected the silent appeal I’d made for privacy by locking the door.
Mostly because the idea of facing him after that dream – after my reaction to the dream – made me want to be sick all over again. I lifted my head from the toilet, wiping at my cheeks and glancing down at the red scratches I’d inflicted on my own arms.
I didn’t know what I could possibly say to explain away my behavior. At least not without everything I’d been keeping secret – Felix’s touches, the pregnancy – coming to light.
“Wisp!” Derek barked through the door, thumping a fist against the wood. “Answer me right now, or so help me God, I’ll break down the fucking door.”
I knew he meant it, and the threat was enough to finally get my brain – or my mouth, at least – working. “No!” I squeaked, forcing myself to stand on wobbly legs. I took a deep breath before continuing more calmly. “No, Derek, don’t do that. Please. I… I-I’m okay. Really.”
It probably would have been more believable if I could have quelled the nervous trembling in my voice.
I waited with bated breath for Derek’s reaction to the asinine assertion, expecting a tirade typical of the man. “What about waking me up by screaming like a banshee and tearing at your own skin is ‘okay’? I would have to have a brain more defective than your own to believe that line of bullshit.”
But, of course, Derek didn’t say any of that.
In fact, for a long minute, he didn’t say anything at all. Then I heard a quiet clink, which I was almost certain was Derek resting his forehead against the door. “Wisp,” he murmured, voice pleading, “please, honey, I want to believe you, but I need to see with my own eyes that you’re okay. Can you just open the door?”
