Wolf's Mate Mpreg Romance Box Set

by Kiki Burrelli

  "You're my mate."

  "And how much did that matter before?"

  Pippen stood, preemptively slipping out of Conner's grasp as he reached for him.

  He was losing him. Conner's wolf demanded that he capture Pippen. Restrain him if need be. Doing that to Pippen would just make him hate Conner even more. But, he couldn't let him leave that room.

  "Stop," he ordered, his voice low.

  Pippen froze in the doorway.

  Conner spoke clearly and carefully. He needed to get back to Adam but not before dealing with his mate. "You are not moving out, Pippen. My pregnant mate will stay in my room, in my bed."

  Pippen opened his mouth, most likely to argue.

  "I will stay at Howling tonight with Adam and Bettina. You will stay in this room." Conner left then, shutting his bedroom door behind him before Pippen could argue any more.

  He pushed past through the happy shifter crowd at Howling, accepting a few pats on the back and more than one handshake. Pushing through the kitchen door, he found Adam and Bettina sitting at the same stainless-steel prep table in the kitchen, both with a huge milkshake in front of them. Sorell sat with them, the twins in the double stroller awake and looking around.

  "Thank you, Sorell," Conner said. Adam spun around in the chair, his look of worry replaced by a wide smile. Conner felt like shit; leaving had worried him. All of a sudden, he felt a wave of anger. What had Andrea done with his son? How could she have let him go through all that he had to get to him? He needed to call her once Adam went to sleep.

  "Felix just left to get some clean bedding. We didn't know where you were planning on sleeping tonight—"

  "Here, in the safe room."

  "Great," he said, brightly, too brightly. "Felix did a quick exam, said that other than being a little dehydrated, bruised, and slightly malnourished, that they both seemed in perfect health. He wanted to take them to the free clinic to be sure, but I told him to wait."

  "I'm sorry, Sorell. I'm messing up his big night."

  "Don't worry about it. He doesn't do well with the partying, which is just about what this night has been reduced to." On cue, there was a large roar of cheers from the bar area before the sounds of many people singing off-key wafted back to them. "He prefers being helpful and productive."

  "He'll make an awesome leader."

  "Especially with you by his side," Sorell said, picking up Kofi as the baby began fussing.

  "You're the pack master here?" Bettina asked with a whole lot of betrayal.

  "That's why you left?" Adam asked looking at him with the roundest, brightest brown eyes in the world.

  "No, Adam that is not why I left." He wasn't sure how much he could explain. How much would Adam be able to understand and how much should a four-year-old hear? "What happened? Where are your mothers?"

  Bettina looked angrier, but Adam's face was downcast, like he was too guilty to meet Conner's eye.

  "They don't know we left," Bettina said.

  "Great. So, two pissed-off mother shifters are about to bust through that door?" Conner asked as Felix came back in, his arms full of blankets.

  "I doubt it," Bettina said with angry sarcasm.

  "Mommy sleeps a lot," Adam said, almost defensively.

  Bettina rolled her eyes at him but the gesture was so sibling-like that it had no real anger behind it.

  "What do you mean, she sleeps a lot?" Conner asked carefully.

  "They both do," Bettina said, a wisdom to her that was way beyond her years. She stood and walked away from Adam. Motioning for Conner to follow she waited until Adam was out of earshot before continuing. "They're either staying up for days, or sleeping for days. Our new pack master, he's the same. They all are. The other kids have all left, it was just Adam and me because we didn't have anywhere to go. I can take care of Adam, if you don't want to," she said defensively. "But it was getting too hard to keep the others away back at home. It was getting dangerous. I can fight, but I can't fight a lot at one time yet. I heard a rumor from some guy visiting the pack that he met you and that he knew you were here." She wiped a spot of milkshake from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. "Look, it was nice of you to feed us, but you left once and gave up on being Adam's daddy. If you don't want to be his daddy again, we'll go now so you don't have to leave later."

  Ouch. From the mouths of babes.

  "You did the right thing," Conner told her, his head spinning at this new information regarding the fate of his pack after he left it. What did that mean about his mother? His brothers? And who would have had any idea where Conner had ended up after being exiled? Those questions could wait. Right now, he needed to make sure Adam and Bettina were both safe and secure. "You don't need to run anymore."

  ***

  Objectively, Pippen knew he was acting like an asshole; subjectively, he was probably pregnant with a child that they had never discussed, mated to an alpha who had left his last mate and child in his old pack.

  Conner had said that he didn't understand what mating meant until he'd met him, that what he had with Andrea wasn't a true mating, but that Conner couldn't have had any way of knowing that until he found his true mate.

  That sounded like a load of BS told to placate him.

  Then why are you laying in his bed right now?

  Pippen growled to himself and rolled onto his side. He'd obstinately lain down in the middle of the bed that night, after spending most of the evening avoiding all the other pack members. Before he'd gotten serious with Conner, Pippen had been able to go days without anyone talking to him; Frannie was really the only one who did, outside of Sorell.

  Not anymore. They'd knocked, asked questions through the door. Luke had taken to standing in front of his door, talking loudly to the rest of the house. Most likely, they knew something was wrong. If they'd spoken to Conner, they would have known exactly what.

  From the sounds outside his door, it finally sounded like the rest of the pack was either asleep or in their rooms.

  He sat up quietly, his hand on his stomach. It occurred to him that although Conner and he had had a moment of realization—a moment that seemed to have happened years ago by this point—he had yet to actually take a pregnancy test. Maybe they were both just crazy with mating hormones and he wasn't actually with child.

  Why did that thought leave him feeling empty and sad?

  Pippen slipped out of bed, his feet bare so he could be quieter. He opened the door just wide enough for him to slide through.

  Checking both ways down the hallway, he sprinted from his room to the bathroom like a ninja. He trusted that the bathroom would have pregnancy tests, either left over from Finn's pregnancy or Sorell's—both Luke and Felix had been a little crazy about checking that their mates had gotten pregnant. Pippen felt a pang of jealousy. Where was his mate for this historic occasion? Oh yeah, catching up with his estranged son.

  Pippen, you are being a dick. He knew it, but that didn't mean he could stop feeling that way. He would have never told anyone, but Pippen had always been a little jealous of the relationships shown between the mated couples in his life. They seemed so solid. It figured that the one time he got something that was looked at as a shifter's gift that his would be defective.

  Did you think you deserved anything more? No. He was getting what he deserved.

  Pippen locked the bathroom door. He got on his knees and looked under the sink and smiled. There was a stack of ten pregnancy tests still sealed in the box. Bless all the over-attentive mates.

  Pippen snagged a box and pulled it open. He took the plastic stick out of its packaging and set it on the counter. His hands shook and he knew why. If he took this test and it was positive, then he was looking at months of worry, at being permanently bound to a man whom he no longer trusted. If it was negative, well, then that meant a different list of problems.

  Pippen followed the instructions and then set the stick back on the counter, watching the stick like a boiling pot of water. He sat down on the side
of the bathtub and then stood back up. He couldn't seem to stand still, not that he'd ever been that great at it. Turning to the door, he and paced the short length of the bathroom.

  He'd gotten good at standing still, with Conner's help. Was it only that morning that he'd woken up calm and happy, assured that he was loved and would be that way forever?

  Why hadn't Conner told him the entire truth? How could he have left his son behind? Conner wasn't his father and Pippen wasn't Adam, but Pippen couldn't help but to draw comparisons. Had Conner doomed Adam to the same horrible childhood that Pippen had experienced by leaving him, despite the threats? How did you forgive something like that?

  Pippen went back to the counter and grabbed the pregnancy test, he shoved it in the box it came in without looking at it, and went to the back porch. The cement was freezing cold against the bottom of his feet but he ignored the discomfort. He took the lid off the BBQ grill and shoved the box containing the pregnancy test down to the bottom. He flipped the knob that turned on the propane gas flow and then used a lighter to start the flame. The box went up immediately, the plastic inside took a little longer, sizzling as it slowly melted, the sizzling, white mass clumped on the bottom burner. He would scrape off the grill tomorrow or he would just buy a new grill.

  Pippen didn't need a pregnancy test to tell him he was pregnant. At least, that was the reason he told himself for why he'd set it aflame. Really though, he couldn't bear checking the results, whatever they had been, alone. He'd spent his whole life alone, a loner even in a crowded room. He wouldn't let his unborn child start that way.

  Pippen patted his flat belly, absurdly wishing it was already swollen. He could do it alone if he needed to. Pippen sat down on the cold lawn chair, his limbs feeling heavier by the second even as his feet were quickly going numb with cold. As the last of the test melted and sizzled, he dropped his head into his hands and let the tears he'd been holding back for hours fall.

  ***

  The next day, Pippen woke up and called Felix to make an appointment.

  "I can meet you at the clinic this morning, Pippen, I'll already be there."

  "Sure, sounds great."

  "How many tests have you taken?"

  Pippen paused. After that disgusting display of weakness last night he'd gone straight to bed. But he would bet his knife collection that Felix was going to tell Conner everything he'd said. A familiar urge to hurt overcame him.

  "Oh, you know how it is, I took tons. All positive."

  Felix chuckled like he was in on the joke. "Believe me, I know how it is. See you later this morning."

  He went out to the kitchen where Luke was sitting, finishing a coffee and what looked like steak and eggs.

  "Good morning, Pippen. Where is Conner?"

  "He stayed at Howling last night, it was Felix's induction ceremony."

  "I know it was, I also know Conner is going to be an advisor, co-alpha of sorts for Felix, some people do tell me things."

  "Of course. You might as well know, I'm pregnant."

  "What? Congrats, man—" Luke stood to either hug or shake his hand, but he took one look at Pippen and froze. "Are you not happy about it?"

  Pippen grabbed a piece of bread and ripped a huge bite off it. "It is what it is," he said nonchalantly.

  "It is...what...does Conner know?"

  "Yep. Can you do me a favor and not tell everyone?" Pippen asked though what he really meant was don't tell Frannie. She'd be able to see through this bullshit wall of I-don't-give-a-fuck he was constructing and didn't want to be confronted by her until that wall was entirely built.

  "Sure." Luke went back to his breakfast looking much more confused than how he'd left it. "Pippen, we're here for you. All of us. If things...aren't working out, we're here."

  "Got it. See you later." Pippen took his bread to go.

  He took a long route to the free clinic. By the time he got to the back entrance that Felix had them use when they went to the clinic during closed hours it was well into the morning. The door swung open and Conner bounded out.

  "Why didn't you call me? Did you walk? Pippen, you need to be careful."

  "I don't really need to be berated this early in the morning," Pippen replied, stepping around him.

  Conner grabbed his arm. "You are acting like a spoiled child."

  Pippen pulled but Conner only tightened his grip. "Let go of me."

  "Where did you sleep last night?"

  To admit the truth felt too much like defeat.

  "Let go of me."

  Conner pulled him closer. Pippen hated that his body still responded to him so quickly.

  "Where did you sleep last night, mate?"

  Pippen slipped his free hand in his back pocket. He grabbed the familiar, worn handle and smoothly pulled the knife out, pressing the tip of it forward and against Conner's jugular. "Let. Go. Of. Me."

  Desire flared in Conner's eyes. He shifted, lining their bodies up more intimately.

  "Am I interrupting something?" Felix asked from just inside the clinic door, slightly alarmed.

  "Nope, just saying hello," Conner said easily.

  How had he never noticed how good Conner was at lying?

  "I'm all done with Adam, and Bettina was asking about you," Felix said to Conner.

  "You left your son again?" Pippen hissed.

  "Careful, mate."

  "Don't call me that."

  "Whether I call you my mate or not won't change anything. You carry my child, you should know after all those tests you took last night, on your own."

  Just as Pippen had intended, there was sadness and hurt in Conner's tone. He thought he'd missed out on this super-wonderful night of peeing on sticks.

  And Pippen was just malicious enough to find a little bit of joy in that.

  Chapter Twelve

  Conner followed Pippen inside. Adam saw him coming and took off running toward him, leaping into his arms when he was close enough. Adam was pretty agile for a kid. Ever since Conner had come back to Howling he'd been stuck like glue to Conner's side and Conner had loved every second.

  It baffled him how forgiving children were. Adam had been so young when he'd left, but shifter children bond strongly with scents. Most likely, Adam remembered the smell of Conner more than anything about him as a person. Conner pledged to make up for his mistake every day. Adam would get to know his father.

  His fathers. Because Pippen, Bettina and Adam were going to be his family, if it killed him. Looking at the way Pippen kept shooting daggers at him, he thought it might.

  Felix led them all into an examination room.

  "Pippen, if you want to sit right here," Felix motioned toward the bed.

  "I'll stand."

  "For God's sake, Pippen, just sit down," Conner said exasperated.

  "You're going to have to lay down anyway," Felix said, looking somewhat amused by the struggle going on between Conner and Pippen.

  "Fine."

  Conner looked back and saw Bettina peeking in from the hallway. "Come on in," he urged her, indicating for her to sit in the chair. Adam climbed on her lap like it was something he'd done a million times. He probably had.

  From what Conner could parse from Bettina and his own knowledge of where the pack was heading, Andrea and the rest of the pack had gotten into selling drugs. He assumed they weren't selling much of the soft stuff, either. Not from what Bettina had said of her own mother, a person the child seemed to not really worry about at all. Bettina was old enough to see her mother making choices repeatedly that had not put her first. If she didn't want anything to do with her mother, Conner sure as hell wasn't going to force her.

  Try as he did though, Conner could not come up with a single reason why Andrea would have started doing drugs to begin with. She may have loved the power of being an alpha's wife, but she had been a ferocious mother. Conner never would have left Adam if she hadn't been, that had been his one comfort over the years.

  Turns out, while he was comforting himself
, his son was being neglected or cared for by a ten-year-old with a neglectful mother of her own. Conner needed to get to the bottom of it. His calls the night before had all been useless. Every number he had was disconnected.

  Pippen leaned back as Felix prepared the ultrasound machine.

  "What's that do?" Adam asked with childlike wonder.

  "This is an ultrasound machine, it sends sound waves into Pippen's body and those waves bounce off of what is inside him. That creates a picture on this screen here that allows me to see just what is going on inside Pippen's body. That way I can check on his baby or babies."

  "You have babies in there?" Adam asked.

  "Yep," Conner replied proudly.

  "Who put them there?" Bettina asked.

  Felix cleared his throat and Pippen blushed, suddenly very interested in the ultrasound machine. Conner supposed that left him, he was proud to say it, though.

  "Me, Bettina, I did. Pippen is my mate."

  Bettina's face screwed up in confusion. "But, your mate is Andrea, I remember the party."

  Conner didn't miss the way Pippen tightened his jaw.

  "It is unusual, but Andrea was not my true mate. Pippen is."

  "Oh, okay." Bettina shrugged her shoulders. She looked around, grabbing a magazine from the table next to her.

  Conner looked at the cover, noticed the scantily clad model on the front and the type of articles within and took it. He grabbed another chair and two Highlights magazines from the lobby.

  "I'm not a baby!" she protested while Adam grabbed his.

  "I believe you," Conner said. "Prove it by spotting the differences between those two pictures."

  Bettina huffed but could not resist the call of a challenge.

  "All right, if you want to just lie back and lift up your shirt," Felix said, bringing Conner's attention back to Pippen.

  It killed him that Pippen had spent the night confirming his pregnancy alone. Damn it, Conner wanted to be there for that and every other part. He stood beside the bed but made no motion to try and touch Pippen. Had Pippen not expected him to be at the clinic that day as well? Was he going to try and deprive Conner of this moment, too?