by Zoe Chant
Then she’d found herself in the somewhat-controlled chaos that was dinner, bathtime, and bedtime for a five-year-old and a one-year-old. She’d tried to keep herself out of the way, but it was basically impossible.
“Now, we’ll give you Sophia’s room, of course,” Lila told her as Elizabeth tried valiantly to eat something and have it stay eaten.
“It’s my room,” Sophia told her, looking a little sullen. “You can have it tonight. But it’s my room.”
Obviously this had been a long discussion already. But—Elizabeth couldn’t put a little girl out of her own bed.
“No, no,” she said. “Please let me just take the couch. I don’t want to mess up your routine.”
“But I want you to have a comfortable bed,” Lila said, insistent.
“It’s my bed!” Sophia said, more insistent.
Elizabeth had pulled herself together, put on her best courtroom assurance, and said with absolute confidence, “I’ll take the couch.”
And that had been that.
During all of this, Flynn had been hanging around in the background with the baby. He’d been perfectly polite and welcoming, but Elizabeth couldn’t help but be kind of uneasy, sleeping in the same house as a strange shifter man. A big, powerful shifter, at that.
She told herself she was being silly. Lila’s mate couldn’t be anything but a good man. It was dumb to be uncomfortable. She was just...thinking too much about Nevin, that was all.
Lila had to lend her something to sleep in, and fortunately they’d had an extra toothbrush. It was all very ad hoc, but Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to care much, because she was completely exhausted by the kids’ bedtimes. She’d been completely unable to stay up past 8:30 for the last several weeks—pregnancy was hell on the energy levels.
So she curled up on the made-up couch, in her borrowed clothes, and had just enough time to think This is not a long-term solution before she fell hard asleep.
***
The next thing she knew, there was a baby crying. She sat bolt upright, wondering wildly how the baby could be here already. She hadn’t—she wasn’t done, right? It was still in her belly?
It took her several long minutes to realize that it was Lila’s son Grant who was crying, not Elizabeth’s own still-a-fetus.
By then, her whole body was a screaming mass of adrenaline. And she had to pee.
She checked the time when she got up. 2:45 AM. Okay. She really hoped she could get back to sleep.
And she...almost did. Sort of. She drifted a little, but by 5:30, Sophia was up and moving around upstairs, and Elizabeth could hear Lila trying to shush her.
She sighed and sat up. Okay. This really wasn’t a long-term solution. Even leaving aside whether she’d be able to sleep well—which was not what pregnancy was known for, after all—she couldn’t take up these nice people’s couch forever.
Maybe there was a place she could rent in town? She had some savings, although law school student loans had been eating up most of her extra salary. But enough to get a small place in a rural town like this, surely. For a little while.
God, she was going to have to break her lease back home. Great.
She dragged herself up from the couch—and realized only just in time that she needed to run to the bathroom.
As she was throwing up in a strange bathroom, wearing borrowed clothes, looking forward to a long string of unknowns, she thought desperately, God, I wish—
But the thought stopped there. Even once she was done, once she’d rinsed out her mouth and brushed her teeth and started putting herself slowly together in yesterday’s suit, she realized she didn’t know the end of it.
She knew that this wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want to be helpless, aimless, futureless. Jobless. Homeless.
But what did she wish for?
For a long time, it had been to put Victor away. But now that was done. What did she want, going forward? When she tried to picture it, she drew a complete blank.
Maybe it was just her exhausted brain. There had to be something she wanted. Something that wasn’t defined by not.
She just didn’t know what it was.
***
After breakfast, which Elizabeth had to refuse in favor of slow, careful sips of water, they had a visitor.
Lila frowned at the knock on the door. “We aren’t expecting anyone.”
“Stay here,” Flynn said immediately, pacing forward with a leonine stride that Elizabeth had seen on fighting men in her own pack.
She tensed. Was it Nevin? Or someone else from the pack? What if it was a whole crowd of them—what if they threatened the children—dragged her out of here and forced her back home—
“Hayley, what are you doing here?” Flynn asked.
Lila looked up, a smile on her face. “Hayley! Come in, ignore Flynn’s manners. Want some breakfast?”
Elizabeth blinked as a teenaged girl came in. She was tall and athletic-looking, with black curly hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.
“Hayley!” Sophia rocketed out of her seat at the table and attached herself to Hayley’s leg. “Hi!”
“Hey, Sophia, what’s going on?” Hayley lifted the little girl up and gave her a hug, then set her back down.
“Are you here to babysit?” Sophia looked back at her parents. “Is Hayley babysitting today?”
“No, kiddo, I wanted to talk to your mom and Elizabeth,” Hayley said apologetically.
Sophia pouted. “That’s boring. I have cool toys, come see!” She bolted off to the living room, her brother toddling after her.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, had started at the sound of her name. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”
Hayley suddenly looked a bit shy. “Um, hi.” She came forward, holding out her hand in that slightly awkward way that teenagers had before they really shook hands very often. “I’m Hayley Cohen, I’m the sheriff’s daughter.”
Oh. That—still didn’t actually make sense. Elizabeth would have expected the sheriff to come check up on what she was doing here, but why would he send his teenaged daughter?
Still, she shook Hayley’s hand. “Very nice to meet you. You wanted to speak to me?”
“Well, I—uh—I just wanted to—”
Stumbling to a halt, Hayley sent a desperate look at Lila.
“See if she was settling in okay?” Lila offered gently.
“Yes!” Hayley said immediately. “That.”
“Mommy,” Sophia interrupted them, running in from the living room, “Grant is eating my Play-Doh, make him stop!”
“Oh—I’m sorry, I have to—”
“Go ahead,” Elizabeth told Lila, resigned.
Lila hurried out of the kitchen, and a second later she called, “Flynn, would you mind—”
Flynn followed her, silent and graceful. Elizabeth watched them. Taking care of these kids was clearly a full-time job for two people, although she knew Lila had managed it on her own, somehow, for a full year before she and Flynn met.
Elizabeth would manage it too. Somehow.
For now, she turned her attention back to this teenager who inexplicably wanted to talk to her. “So, you—wanted to see how I was settling in?”
Hayley was blushing, now, heavy on her pale cheeks. She hesitated, and then sat down across from Elizabeth at the table. “Sorry. This was stupid. I shouldn’t have barged in like this. I just wanted to meet you.”
This was baffling. “Why?”
Hayley bit her lip. “Well, you—everyone says you brought all this evidence against Victor Leone, right? Like, you basically saved our town by putting him in jail. I mean, my dad and Lila and the rest of them all helped, too. But you did it from the inside.”
The way she said it made Elizabeth’s last nightmare three months sound like an exciting spy movie. If only.
“I’m not as dramatic as all that, I promise,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, I just handed some papers over to the district attorney.” Papers full of evidence that she’d spent l
ong, hard, anxious months compiling, but this wide-eyed teenager probably didn’t need to hear about all of that.
“And then you had to run away?” Hayley asked, not deterred.
“Well—yes. Yes, I did. But it wasn’t—” exciting, except she supposed that it had been. Not in a good way, that was all. “It was frightening,” she said finally. “Not fun at all.”
Hayley sobered immediately, her face falling. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I—wasn’t thinking about that. Um.”
Elizabeth supposed she could see how, from a teenager’s perspective, this all might have sounded like a cool story. Daring lioness puts evil pack leader behind bars! Film at eleven!
Maybe she should’ve tried to sugar-coat it for Hayley, but she was too tired, too wrung out. “I had to do a lot of hard things,” she said. “Betray some people who thought I was their friend. Leave my home and all of my stuff. Now I don’t know where I’m going to go.”
To her shock, she found herself having to blink back tears. She never cried.
Pregnancy hormones, probably. She forced them away and finished, “So it’s not really much of a story, I’m sorry.”
Hayley bit her lip. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what it was like. Do you—” She looked around. “Are you going to stay here with Flynn and Lila for a while, then?”
Elizabeth sighed. “I suppose so. They don’t really have the room. I should start looking for a bed and breakfast or something. Is there something like that around here?” But how long could she afford that, really?
She was going to need to get another job.
But who would hire a pregnant woman? Someone who would have to take leave in just a few months? And how would she juggle a job and a newborn?
“Um,” Hayley said.
Elizabeth shoved all those worries aside. She could freak out about all of that later, when she was alone.
If she ever got to be alone in a house with four other people and no room of her own.
“Listen,” Hayley said, “maybe this is weird, but—my dad and I have plenty of space. There’s just the two of us and our house is pretty big. We have a guest room. Maybe you could come stay with us?”
Elizabeth blinked. “I couldn’t put you out like that—”
“You wouldn’t be putting anyone out! And my dad’s the sheriff, you know, so he could protect you if any of Victor’s people come looking for revenge.”
This kid watched too many movies. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t out of the question that some of the pack might actually come looking for revenge.
“I’m sure your dad wouldn’t want you inviting strangers to stay at your house without asking him first,” Elizabeth pointed out.
And she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay with the sheriff of Oak Ridge. By all accounts, he was a terrifyingly intimidating man. He’d sent Victor off with his tail between his legs—more than once.
All of a sudden, there was a sound outside. Like a giant bird was flying over the house—big, heavy wingbeats.
No, Elizabeth realized, not a bird. A dragon.
Hayley looked up, a smile appearing on her face. “That’s gotta be him now. We can ask him!”
Before Elizabeth could protest, Hayley had hopped up and gone to the front door. The wingbeats ended with a thump—of a dragon landing on the front lawn?—and a second later, there were footsteps on the porch.
Hayley opened the door with a flourish, revealing a man on the other side.
He was tall and broad, easily filling the doorway. Dark hair with a hint of silver at the temples. Strong features, weathered and stern. Elizabeth could easily imagine him as the defender of Oak Ridge, ready and willing to beat some sense into anyone who wished it harm.
Or anyone who defied him? Victor had painted Malachi Cohen as a tin-plated dictator of an insular and violent kingdom. But Victor had been describing himself more than anyone else with those words.
The problem, Elizabeth thought, was that Oak Ridge—as described by Lila, at least—was too good to be true. A small town full of kind people, shifters who lived in peace together and didn’t believe in fighting except to defend their town? Sure.
So if that was too good to be true, then this man had to be, as well.
This man, whom Hayley was telling she’d invited Elizabeth to stay.
Whoa, okay. Time to nip that in the bud. Because either Sheriff Cohen was a potential danger, or he was the nicest man in the world who had responsibility for the nicest town in the world, but either way, Elizabeth was not shoving herself into his spare room.
She stood up as he came forward, holding out her hand to shake and saying firmly, “Hayley misrepresented the situation a little. I’m sorry. Of course I’m not imposing on you like that.”
There. That was appropriate. Polite, but final.
The problem was, she’d forgotten what tended to happen these days when she stood up too fast.
She found herself clutching at his hand a little too hard as her vision darkened, spots appearing before her eyes. Her ears rang. Under her fingers, his palm was warm and calloused and strong, a solid thing to hold on to as the world grew wavery and gray.
When it steadied, she realized that she was supported by more than just his hand.
Sheriff Cohen had caught her around the waist and was holding her up. He was firm as a rock, and he smelled woody and masculine. She could feel his body heat all around her, the movement of his breath, and she felt hot and breathless and still a little dizzy.
When she looked up, she saw that his eyes were a dark, dark brown, and somehow soft. Kind.
“Hayley,” he said, without looking away from Elizabeth’s face, “you remember where we keep the spare sheets for the guest bed, don’t you?”
Chapter 4: Malachi
Malachi was aware, as everyone talked and moved and made things happen, that this wasn't like him.
He wasn't a spontaneous man. He preferred to take a little while to think things over, rather than making split-second decisions. One of the reasons he liked being a small-town sheriff, rather than a big-city police officer, was that most of the problems around here could be solved if everyone took a step back, took a deep breath, and put some time into figuring out what was best for everyone.
That seemed to have gone out the window today, though.
When Elizabeth had swayed, her hand clutching at his for support, her face going bone-white, he'd caught her without thinking. That had made sense—God knew he didn't want a pregnant woman to fall and hurt herself.
But somehow, he hadn't been able to stop himself from—continuing to catch her. It was like he could see her falling, still. Falling out of Victor's protection, out of her pack and her home and her friends, into some kind of free-fall, a limbo where she was staying on Flynn and Lila's couch, and who knew when she might hit the ground, and what would happen to her when she did.
He wasn't going to let her hit the ground. He just...wasn’t.
So he eased her back into her chair and got Hayley to go talk to Flynn and Lila about the new plan. Then he said, “Do you have a bag? Things that I could pack for you?”
Of course, she might not want a strange man going through her things. But he didn't want her up and around right now, not when her face was still frighteningly pale.
She swallowed. “Um, no things. Just my purse, and it's—it's right there. Lila lent me a toothbrush, I suppose, and that's in the bathroom.”
He went and got her toothbrush. Found a plastic bag for it in the kitchen, put the toothbrush in it, and tucked it into her purse, which was sitting by the couch in the front room.
Which was all she had, apparently.
“No bag?” he asked her quietly, when he came back to the kitchen.
She shook her head faintly. “Had to leave without going back home. N—someone might have been waiting for me there. I didn't want to give anyone the chance to—do anything.”
Malachi had to restrain himself from taking her hand again. He wanted to to
uch her wrist, see if her pulse was healthy. Her breathing was quick and shallow.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her, instead of anything more invasive.
“Fine,” she said quickly. “Sorry about before. I just got a little dizzy. I'm fine now.”
She was lying through her teeth, it was obvious. Did she need a doctor? He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to Reid, the town physician. He could hear Hayley upstairs, talking, and Flynn and Lila sounding relieved. “Oh, good,” Lila was saying. “I was feeling so bad for her, having to deal with the kids running around and all. And she wouldn't take Sophia's room, insisted on staying on the couch. Don't let her pull the same thing on you.”
He wanted to hustle her home right now, get her tucked into bed and resting.
This wasn't like him at all.
Not that he didn't like to protect people. He'd dedicated his life to keeping this whole town safe, peaceful, healthy, and happy. But he didn't react like this to strangers—law enforcement did that to you, made you suspicious of people until you knew for sure that they weren't dangerous. And as much as he'd like to think that he'd always be willing to protect a woman in danger, he'd never wanted to tuck one into bed before.
He must be getting soft in his old age.
Hayley came thumping down the stairs, followed by Lila and Flynn.
“Thank you for offering, Malachi,” Lila said gratefully. “Elizabeth, I hope this is better for you? You're always welcome here, of course, but I bet you'll sleep better if Sophia isn't running downstairs to jump on your head at five-thirty in the morning.”
“I didn't jump on her head!” Sophia shouted indignantly from the stairs. A pause. “Yet.”
Elizabeth mustered up a smile. It looked like an effort. “I'm really grateful to you, Lila. You didn't have to do this.”
“Our pleasure,” Lila said firmly.
“Can you stand up?” Malachi asked Elizabeth, offering her his hand.
“I'm fine,” Elizabeth insisted, standing up without taking it. She wavered just for a moment, and Malachi had to fight the urge to just sweep her up in his arms and carry her.
Sounds like a good idea, his dragon hissed inside his chest.
