by T. S. Ryder
“Hush now, don’t cry dear,” Jeremy hummed, his eyes flickering over her form with a hungry look in his eyes. “You know I didn’t have a problem with you until you started sticking your nose where it didn’t belong,” he spat, his eyes flashing murderously. “Nathaniel, he’s a fantastic alpha, but he can’t keep his damn head out of the clouds! If he had just listened to me and dropped you when I told him to, we wouldn’t be in this mess!” he explained, earning a confused and mortified look from the woman.
Straining against the handcuffs attaching her to the sturdy wood of the chair frame, she let out a squeak when Jeremy slapped her across the face, her breath hitching in her throat as a muffled sob fell from her lips.
“You see, Clara, he’s not just risking his own reputation by dating a pretty little upstart like yourself, he’s risking the security of the pack!” Jeremy pointed out, his eyes changing from pale blue into something dangerous, the irises a poisonous yellow. “I have been his second in command for years, and I will not let you ruin this pack! I will not let that parasite inside of you risk everything that our people have worked for in this god forsaken company!” he snarled, grabbing her jaw and forcing her to look up at him,
“You understand that this isn’t personal, of course?” he hummed, his nails digging into her chin painfully as she let out a weak noise of protest. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you for weeks, and I was hoping you would wise up and leave the bastard, but when I realized that you were pregnant? Oh, sweetheart, you didn’t leave me much of a choice!” He laughed, lightly patting her cheek before moving over to the counter and lifting up a nasty looking blade.
Letting out a strangled noise, Clara shook her head and attempted to get her leg free, trembling as he twirled the blade in his hand nonchalantly. This man was going to kill her. He was going to kill her and her unborn child and Nate was never going to know.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it painless. No reason to make you suffer for my dear Nathaniel’s mistakes, hmm?” He chuckled, moving closer and trailing the blade over her shoulder slowly, slicing through the silky fabric of her robe easily to reveal the bloodless skin beneath. “It’ll be quick! Just like ripping off a band-“ He cut off with a roar of pain when her foot broke free from the binding, slamming into his groin and sending her falling backward with a cry.
Gasping as she writhed on the floor, she desperately fought to break free. The chair arm had snapped off from the back when she landed, and with her free hand, she tore desperately at the straps on her other wrist. Looking up as Jeremy lurched forward, she gasped, slapping his hand away from her and kicking upwards with a muffled shriek.
“You bitch!” he roared, attempting to get ahold of her as she writhed and thrashed away from him. She was not going down without a fight.
Gasping when he grabbed onto her hair, she yelped and felt her head lurch back. Kicking out with a cry, she managed to kick the blade away, grimacing when the blade cut into the pad of her foot in the process.
Panting and livid, Jeremy let out a snarl as he grabbed onto her throat. Lifting her up, he slammed her and what was remaining of the chair against the wall.
“Fine. I’ll do this the hard way then,” he snarled, his nails digging into her throat as she gagged and thrashed in his hold. Her vision swimming, Clara desperately clawed at his hand, her body going numb as she started losing consciousness.
Air rushed into her lungs a moment later. Landing on the ground with a painful thud, she looked up blearily as Jeremy went flying backward, her breath rasping and weak as she clutched at her throat. Coughing, she rolled over onto her side with a moan and felt hope swell in her chest as she saw Nate looming over a startled-looking Jeremy.
“How dare you touch her? She is my mate, you backstabbing whelp!” Nate roared as he threw Jeremy into the table, his eyes flashing as he shifted into his wolf form with a shudder. Dominant and stunning, his massive form loomed over Jeremy with a snarl that sent shudders down Clara’s spine.
“She was going to destroy you! Destroy us! What we’ve built for our pack!” Jeremy stuttered, stumbling away from the wolf as the man moved forward murderously. “I was trying to help you!” he cried, shifting into a wolf himself and yelping as Nathaniel leaped at him with a hiss of challenge.
Clara looked away with a shudder when Jeremy shrieked, her free hand pulling the gag free from her mouth before shakily breaking off the remaining chair on her arm and untying her legs. Moving to her feet with a grunt, she limped into the kitchen and picked up the bag that Jeremy had discarded. Finding the handcuff keys with ease, she shakily undid the cuffs and threw them aside with a shudder.
Across the room, she could hear the two wolves snarling and yipping as they bit and clawed at each other. Flinching at the sound of teeth sinking into flesh, she sank down behind the counter with a shudder, snagging onto a dish towel to bind the wound on her foot. Nate would be fine. There was no way he would lose.
The fight continued for just a few minutes longer, and with a final shriek and a horrible crunch the world went silent.
Trembling, Clara felt her breath hitch and she grabbed Jeremy’s discarded knife as a form moved around the counter. Brandishing it at her potential attacker, she let out a relieved noise when Nate held up his hands.
“Woah! Hey, it’s ok! It’s me,” Nate panted, wiping the blood on his face away and waiting until she let the knife clatter to the ground before pulling her into his arms. “Are you ok?” he rasped, pressing his face to her shoulder and allowing her to crumble into his arms.
“He was going to kill me!” she croaked, shock rolling through her body while his powerful form cradled her to his chest gently. Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, Nate nodded, scooping her up into his arms with a shudder.
“I know he was. I’m so sorry, Clara,” he whimpered, carrying her into the bedroom and quickly swaddling her in a blanket. “I’m taking you to the hospital. I’ll call someone to take care of that bastard.” He closed his eyes, a shudder rolling through his form. “I thought he was my best friend, and then I saw him standing over you like that. I never thought he would do something like that to anybody,” he croaked, as he held her shaking form to his chest.
“You saved me,” she whispered against his chest, tears staining his shirt as his grip tightened around her shaking form.
“Course I did, you’re my everything,” he whispered against her shoulder, trotting down the stairs towards his car. Melting against his chest, Clara allowed herself to be enveloped in his comforting embrace. She didn’t think she could ever be more in love with a person than she was in that moment.
Chapter Seven
Recovering for the next few weeks left Clara with a lot to think about. Mostly, her relationship with Nathaniel, and the growing love she had for the life growing inside of her. The attack had left their lives in a sort of chaotic jumble. Their business life was put on hold in favor of pacifying the police, the media and their coworkers with an explanation of what had happened and how Jeremy had wound up dead on the floor of Nathaniel’s apartment.
Fortunately, the majority of the scandal had wound up pushed under the rug in favor of an investigation into Jeremy’s motives. The police settled on some sort of crime of passion and determined that Jeremy was simply jealous of the relationship that Clara and Nate had. Clara honestly didn’t care what they thought. She just wanted things to go back to normal.
By the time that the investigation was over and done with, Clara had just reached her nine-month mark. Just before their child entered the world, Clara decided to resign from her position within the company.
Of course, she didn’t have any intention of stopping her career forever. She had every intention of returning back to the hustle of corporate life but decided she would rather spend the first year or two of their child’s life at home. Nate had been reluctant to let her leave the business for so long but agreed that if he couldn’t be at home with the baby, at least she could be.
“Riley, do
n’t put that in your mouth, hun,” Clara scolded, scooping her daughter off the ground with a frown when the baby snagged onto a stick she found on the grass of their back yard. At only six months old, the child was already completely mobile. Her father’s genes allowed her to progress far more quickly than an average child.
This, of course, left Clara needing to give the child far more attention than the average baby required. She didn’t mind, of course. The little growls and squeaks that the child let out were endearing, and she couldn’t think of a single day that she didn’t wake up happy to hold her little girl in her arms.
“How are my girls this morning?” Nate grinned, wrapping his arms around his lover’s waist and kissing their daughter’s face with a chuckle while she squealed and hid against her mother’s shoulder.
“Just fine. We need to get her something a little sturdier than the baby teething rings, though. She keeps destroying them.” Clara chuckled as Riley chewed on her own fist with little razor-like teeth. “She takes more after you, I think.” Nate laughed at this, shaking his head.
“Wait until she starts randomly changing shape,” he grinned, winking at his flustered wife with a laugh. “Nonsense, she’s got your eyes, your hair. She is very much your little girl,” he insisted, kissing Clara’s cheek and scooping his daughter into his arms. “How bout we start lunch, huh?” he asked Riley, who let out a babble of excitement and clung onto her father’s fingers.
Smiling, Clara watched as her lover moved inside, her heart fluttering softly in her chest. She had never thought she’d be so happy living a life like this. She had insisted that she would never get married, let alone have kids, and yet there she was, watching her husband and daughter dance in the kitchen with a warm feeling in her chest.
Of course, her life was still far from traditional, she mused, laughing as her husband let out a squeak of pain when the child sank her newly grown teeth into his finger. Shaking her head, she moved inside. It looked like her husband needed her to rescue him, and she was more than happy to do so.
On her arm, she could feel the mark that combined her and her mate start to flood with warmth, her eyes sparkling as she moved up to her mate and scooped her child into her arms. Her world was a bit strange, but to her, it was perfect.
*****
THE END
The Shifter's Secret Baby Boy
Description
A curvy gal escaping her suffocating family PLUS a hot beast trying to save his pack PLUS a baby that must be kept a secret…
Charity is a free woman. But her family’s suffocating rules and derogatory comments are keeping her prisoner. Surfing is her one outlet. When she’s riding the waves, she’s all focus.
Except when that annoyingly hot lifeguard is there. The guy looks like he walked right out of Baywatch and distracts her with his rippling muscles.
Devin likes to spend time near the ocean. But it’s not to soak up the sun. He’s a huge tiger shark shifter who works hard for his pack. Which means that he has no time for women.
Until he meets a curvy surf gal…
But love between humans and shifters is impossible. Anti-shifter sentiments are growing stronger and stronger.
So when Charity finds out she’s pregnant, she knows she must disappear and keep it a secret... even from Devin.
But you know what beasts are like. They stop at nothing to find their mates.
Will Devin succeed in getting her back?
Can love survive in the face of unrelenting hate?
Or will their love doom them both?
Chapter One – Charity
Charity Gatiss finished zipping up her wetsuit over her tasteful one-piece swimsuit and grabbed the surfboard from where it was strapped to the top of her little car. The sun shone hot from behind a thin cloud cover. Not so bright as to be blinding, but still plenty hot. She was already sweating in the wetsuit. She couldn’t wait to dive into the perfect blue-green water and surround herself with the cool waves of the ocean.
Maybe that would cool the steam coming out of her ears. She shook her blonde hair over her shoulder, grumbling under her breath as she remembered the topic of conversation that had dominated the breakfast table that morning. She should have known that it was going to end up in politics. Even though she had told her parents and younger sister before coming to visit that she didn’t want any political talk.
Charity walked through the hot sand, trying to put it from her mind. Of course, the first morning in years that she had come home, they had to start complaining about the local shifter pack’s ‘lazy’ habits while at the same time bemoaning that they were taking jobs from the humans in town. As if the shifters didn’t build their settlement on the island before any humans came over from the mainland to exploit its resources.
Of course, when she had argued that point and tried to tell them that their view of shifters being lazy was in direct contrast to them ‘taking’ jobs (because they didn’t deserve to work, apparently), she was the one accused of starting a fight. Her younger sister, Honor, had been especially nasty. Charity had never met a more judgmental little wench. She was the worst parts of her parents wrapped up in a bow of self-righteousness. There was no reasoning with her family, so Charity had left.
Now she turned over in her mind everything that she had wished she had said. If it had been anybody else, she wouldn’t have backed down. Unfortunately, they were family. The crippling self-doubt that had dominated her childhood at home had a habit of returning when her father gave her that superior look and her mother did her patented eye-roll.
“Stupid bigots,” she mumbled under her breath. “Why can’t we all just walk a mile in each other’s shoes?”
Charity blew out a deep breath as she got closer to the beach. It was all white sand, covered now with tourists lying out on blankets or splashing in the water. A few people were already in the surf. She picked up her pace. If there was one thing that would calm her mind, it would be getting out there among the waves. On her surfboard with the ocean roaring in her ears, there wasn’t much room to think about anything else.
She stuck the surfboard in the sand and began to stretch. As she did so, the lifeguard, sitting in his tower, caught her eye. Charity’s heart nearly stopped. She had never watched Baywatch, but he looked like he had walked out of it. He wore a pair of stretchy swim shorts, but the rest of his body was bare. Rippling muscles gleamed in the sunlight. Charity’s mouth watered as her gaze ran down his six pack, visible even when he sat. He even had that V-thing going on.
Charity tore her eyes from the handsome man and grabbed her board. She waded out into the water, letting her muscles relax as she tasted the spray of the salt. Oh, yes. This was exactly what she needed today.
One of the men on the beach suddenly jumped up and jogged into the water with her. He was tall, with that beach-blond hair and sun-kissed skin that was so popular in shows set in Hawaii. A tourist, judging by the swaggering way he approached her. The island was small enough that the locals knew all about each other, and she had never seen him before.
“Hey there. Going surfing?”
Charity nodded. “Weather’s just right.”
“Yeah, I like surfing, too. If you really bend with the waves, then—”
A woman called from the beach. “Dave, what are you doing?”
“Your girlfriend is calling.” Charity put the surfboard down on the water and pushed off as she jumped on it.
The momentum carried her quickly away from the beach and Dave. Her arms dug into the water deeply. As much as she tried to push them aside, her family kept breaking into her thoughts. If he was a local, Dave never would have glanced at her. Not with her family’s reputation. She and her sisters had been raised in a very isolated way. It was difficult, even now, to speak up with her opinions. As a child and teen, it was like she wasn’t allowed to speak at all. She’d managed to escape, though, and that was what was important.
She passed a couple other surfers as they were coming in and sa
t up on her board. “How’s the surf?”
The other surfers shrugged. “Not great. I’m only a novice at it, but it’s really rough.”
Charity glanced at the rolling waves. They didn’t look too bad from where she was.
The first surfer’s companion nodded. “It’s rougher than it looks. I wouldn’t go out there without a partner if I were you.”
“Damn,” Charity muttered under her breath. She nodded in thanks to the other surfers, who continued to paddle in.
When she took her surfing lessons, it was always emphasized never to go out alone. Doing that could prove to be fatal in the wrong circumstances. But if she went back, what was she going to do but stew in her thoughts? Like how when her mother greeted her the previous day, she’d pulled her aside and told her to lay off the weightlifting
“No man wants a woman with a man’s body. You need to be softer. You look like one of those bodybuilders.”
Charity’s nostrils flared. Yes, she had muscle mass but it wasn’t overly visible, except when she wore clothes that showed off her body. Which she didn’t wear very often. She glanced down at her large breasts and snorted.
Man’s body my ass.
She kicked her feet in the water, her mind turning to all the comments she had received about her body growing up. Her mother had put her on diets starting when she was thirteen. Her father had told her that she couldn’t fit into wetsuits to go surfing when she first started showing interest.
In the end, it was her learning how to surf and loving it that had let her lose all the weight that she had accumulated in her teenage years. Her parents had said so much about her being fat that during those times she was too embarrassed to go out into public to exercise. Once she had accepted the body she was in and started loving it, then she was confident enough to go to the gym or beach. Now she had a body that she was proud of. It had taken a lot of work to get to this point.
