The Protector's Heart (Wilde Creek Three)

by R. E. Butler

  “Don’t like my couch?” Acksel asked.

  “It’s not that, I just want to sleep in my own bed. Mal?”

  “I think its fine. Do you want me to run you home?”

  “Nah, Adam said he’d drop me off on his way.”

  Acksel watched Mia and the omegas clear the table and then he turned to Malachi and said, “What do you want to do about the full moon? I know I don’t have to tell you that my home is open for Nila and Jack that night. Brynn and Eveny would enjoy the company.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that. I’d like to claim her and Jack.”

  “I’ll have my dad and the elders make the arrangements, and you can do it before we go hunt.”

  A weight lifted off his shoulders and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks for everything, Acksel, I mean it. You’re a good alpha and a good friend. You went above and beyond tonight; I’m indebted to you.”

  “I’m a great alpha,” he amended.

  Malachi said goodnight to Mia in the kitchen and made Adam promise to get her home safely, and then he strode silently back to the guest bedroom. He really wished he’d been able to take Nila home tonight, but he’d needed to hear what had happened while he was gone. He was surprised that Ren had taken the fall for Nila, but in a way he also wasn’t surprised. Although Ren could be a tough son of a bitch, he was a good guy at heart. Someday Malachi would be able to repay the favor.

  Jack and Nila were still asleep, and he stood at the bottom of the bed and watched them, Jack in the play pen, his favorite stuffed wolf tucked up under his chin, and Nila just as he’d left her, on her side with her hand under her cheek. Jack’s lips were parted and Malachi could see that his teeth had returned to normal and the claws were gone from his fingertips, too. Whatever stress had brought on the partial shifting, it didn’t linger. He knew Nila would be happy about that. Stripping, he stepped into the bathroom and took a quick shower to wash off the dried blood and sweat from the fight. He put on clean shorts from the duffel and slid under the covers, pulling Nila close. He inhaled her sweet scent and closed his eyes, thankful she and Jack were safe now.

  Chapter 16

  Monday morning, Nila and Malachi dropped Jack off at the house of a widowed she-wolf named Olive. She lived next door to Doc, and was happy to take care of Jack while Nila worked. The daycare had contacted her on Sunday night and told her that Jack was no longer welcome due to his dangerous associations with wolves. She hadn’t been surprised. After dropping Jack off, Malachi took her to Doc’s and she accepted his job offer.

  Malachi hung up her coat in the breakroom of the clinic. “I won’t need you to drive me to work every day once I start working for Doc. He lives close to your house.”

  “I like doing it.”

  “It makes Brynn late.”

  “Acksel makes her late.”

  She giggled. “I like driving with you, Mal, but it’s important to me to do some things on my own.”

  “At least let me drive you through the winter. I don’t like your car.”

  “Don’t bad mouth the car.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m going to get you a nicer car, by the way.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to his chest. “Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning and find a new car in the driveway with your name on it.”

  “Hmm, how will I ever repay you?”

  “I’ll think of a few hundred ways.”

  “I’ll bet,” she laughed. He kissed her and gave her a gentle push toward the door and the conversation she wasn’t looking forward to having with Doctor Kimmi.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled at his thumbs-up. She straightened her shoulders and walked down the hall to Doctor Kimmi’s office. Rapping on the doorjamb, she said, “Do you have a minute? We need to talk.”

  “Uh-oh,” Doctor Kimmi said, looking up from her paperwork. “I never like conversations that start that way. Have a seat.”

  Nila sat down and pressed her hands together, willing the nerves away. She had truly enjoyed working at the clinic, especially Doctor Kimmi’s kindness and her willingness to overlook all of her infractions when a lesser person would have fired her after a week.

  “I’ve accepted a job with the wolf doctor. I’ll have less hours and more freedom to be with Jack. It’s not as demanding, since he doesn’t have a ton of patients, but I can learn about holistic healing from him and also learn more about wolves, which will help Jack when he gets older.”

  “Aw, I’m so sorry to see you go. I really want to ask you if there’s anything I can do to get you to stay, but I don’t want to take you away from Jack and what sounds like a perfect job for you. How long can you give me?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “All right. Damn, I was hoping to get you to work here for about thirty years.”

  She chuckled in surprise. “I’ve enjoyed working here, Kimmi. I hope you know that I care about you and Frank a great deal, and I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t the best thing for me and my family. You’ve been so good to me. I can never repay you for all that you’ve done.”

  “You can give me a hug,” she said, smiling sadly.

  “Sounds good to me,” Nila said as she stood and moved around the desk, hugging Kimmi as she stood.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” Doctor Kimmi said.

  “I won’t.”

  Nila left the office and went into the employee bathroom, giving herself a few moments to collect her thoughts. She didn’t think she’d be so sad to be moving on, but she was. A little bit, anyway. Kimmi and her husband had been really wonderful to her.

  A knock at the door made her twist the handle to unlock it. Malachi stood in the doorway. “You okay, sweetheart?”

  “I’m great.” She stepped out of the bathroom and into his arms. He always seemed ready to give her a hug, to offer emotional and physical support whenever she needed it. She peered up at him. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  * * * * *

  The full moon was the day after Christmas. Malachi’s family had descended on his and Nila’s home at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, his parents’ car filled with so many gifts that he was surprised his father didn’t get pulled over for not being able to see out the back window. Jack had taken to his parents immediately, but they’d also brought plenty of toys for him as bribes. They’d loved Nila, too, not that he was surprised. She was amazing. The day had passed quickly in a flurry of torn paper, ribbons, and bows, and when his parents and Mia left after dinner, they made him promise to bring Nila and Jack to visit, wanting to reinstate their weekly Sunday dinners, which had fallen by the wayside when Malachi moved back to Wilde Creek. He was happy to share the weekly dinners with Nila and Jack. Some of his favorite memories growing up revolved around those dinners, when he got to stay in the dining room and listen to the adults in his family talk about hunting and the pack. He wanted that for Jack, too.

  Malachi spent the afternoon of the full moon waffling between staying home and going to Acksel’s house. The pack would gather behind his home before the hunt, but because it was so cold out, there wouldn’t be the usual pre-hunt get-together. Those wouldn’t pick up again until spring. For now, only those that Acksel personally invited would be at the house before the pack gathered, among them his father, the elders of the pack, his sister Eveny and her human mate Luke, and Mia, because she and Brynn were best friends. Malachi, Nila, and Jack were invited, but the more he thought about it, the less he wanted Nila to experience anything even remotely close to what she’d been through before with her ex’s pack.

  Something soft hit his shoulder and he looked down to see one of Jack’s stuffed animals at his feet.

  “Did you throw this at me?” he asked, bending down and picking it up.

  “I’ve been saying your name for two minutes, where are you?” Nila asked from where she sat next to Jack on the family room floor.

  “So
rry, sweetheart, I’m just thinking.” He sat down across from her with Jack between them and put the toy in the pile of animals he was stacking. When the pile was five animals high, Jack shoved it over and laughed loudly. Then he began the process all over again.

  “What are you thinking about so seriously?”

  “About staying home.”

  He looked at her and she smiled knowingly. “You’re not him, and you never will be. I trust you. I know you won’t cheat on me. If you want to stay here, do it because it’s something you want to do, not because you think I’m going to have a meltdown when you go off into the woods.”

  Her gaze was steady, and there wasn’t a hint of her trying to pretend that she was anything but honest in that moment. He loved that she trusted him, even when her history told her wolf males were dishonest to the core. Besides, if he didn’t bring her to the pack tonight, he wouldn’t be able to claim her and Jack, and that was something he wanted to do badly.

  He glanced at the marks on her neck and his wolf made a humming noise that seemed to sound a lot like a purr when it rumbled from his chest.

  Jack’s head shot up from where he’d been studiously watching the stuffed animals, and he lumbered to his feet. Malachi went down to one knee and Jack pressed his palm to Malachi’s heart. “Carrot?”

  He growled again, louder this time, and Jack grinned. “Woof.”

  Malachi’s wolf huffed in indignation. His growl sounded nothing like a dog. Nila chuckled and said, “No, kiddo, woollfff,” she sounded the word out slowly.

  Jack looked at his hand and then at Malachi and said, “Woof.”

  Malachi grabbed Jack, hoisting him into the air and he squealed in delight.

  “One of these days he’ll get it right,” Nila said.

  He set Jack on the floor and said, “I want to go tonight, and I want you and Jack there to watch me shift, and I want you to be waiting for me to come back from the hunt so I can bring you home and we can…you know.”

  “Go to sleep?” she asked with what he supposed she believed was an innocent look.

  “Eventually,” he said, grinning.

  * * * * *

  Nila wasn’t honestly worried about Malachi. He had too much character to cheat on her. When they walked into Acksel’s home, he left her with Brynn, Mia, and Eveny, and went to speak to Acksel and the other wolves inside the house. Eveny, who she hadn’t met officially, gave her a hug and said, “Welcome to the pack, Nila. I’m so glad that Malachi has finally found someone willing to put up with him.”

  “He’s not so bad,” she promised.

  Jack reached for Eveny, and Nila let him go. “Wow, what a cutie pie. No wonder you want him here all the time,” Eveny said to Brynn.

  “Besides being a fun kid, it’s neat to watch Acksel with him. I hope we have a boy.”

  Mia shrugged. “Girls are easier.”

  “Says the girl who painted her bedroom walls solid black during her junior year of high school and her ‘goth phase,’” Brynn said.

  “I’ll never live that down,” Mia complained.

  “I don’t care what we have as long as he or she is healthy and happy. Acksel said there’s only a 50/50 chance that our children will shift, depending on whether they take more after me or him.”

  “I think it would be easier if our kids could shift, but if they can’t then at least they’re growing up in a pack that accepts them, unlike others that are strictly full-wolves only,” Eveny said. She walked away with Jack to a handsome blond male, and Brynn said that he was Luke, her human mate.

  “Malachi told me about the changes to pack law. It was because of her, and you, that things are they way they are now, right?” Nila asked Brynn.

  “Yes. If Acksel and I weren’t mates, then he wouldn’t have made all the changes that he did, but because he wants our pack to be inclusive and not exclusive, he changed all the laws pertaining to mates and children. One of our children may one day lead the pack.”

  Because Brynn was human, Acksel wouldn’t have been allowed to take her as his mate without being banished. Since he was alpha, instead of taking the banishment, he chose to change the laws that dictated that action. Some pack members left because they didn’t like those changes and wanted the pack to remain wolf-only. She was glad that he’d changed the laws, because she benefited from it as Malachi’s mate. She wasn’t considered a complete outsider. Although she’d never be part of pack meetings or have authority in any way, she was welcome at the gatherings and had the protection of the pack members, and so did Jack.

  “I can’t imagine Jack ever shifting into a full wolf, but Doc said that it’s most likely going to happen, since he partially shifted already.” She was envious in a way, of the freedom and the power that came with being a shifter, and she was glad her son could enjoy it. It would be better to be a half wolf who could shift than one who couldn’t. “Thanks for letting me and Jack hang out here tonight.”

  “You two are welcome anytime. Now that you’re leaving the clinic, I’ll miss our chats.”

  “Are you going to keep working through the pregnancy?”

  “Acksel wants me to quit now, but I told him I wanted to work a little longer. I like getting out of the house and being around people. With you going to work for Doc, you’ll be there when I deliver the baby, right?”

  “I suppose, I mean if you’d like me to be.”

  “Hell yes!” She lowered her voice. “I’m scared as crap. I mean, how am I supposed to get a baby out of there? Did you know that she-wolves can shift after they have a baby and then when they shift back to their human form, they’re all healed? How unfair is that?”

  Nila remembered Jack’s birth vividly, mostly because she’d been all alone in the hospital room. Even though the nurses had been friendly, it wasn’t the same as having someone she knew and cared about there with her. She’d wished that Diane had been able to be there with her, but she’d been out of town on vacation and had come to see her as soon as she got home.

  She squeezed Brynn’s shoulder. “We’re made for it, you know. Even if you’re scared, your body will still know what to do. I remember what having Jack was like, but the pain and stuff is fuzzy in my memory. The thing I remember the most is that when they took him away after he was first born and did all the testing and cleaned him up, he was squalling like he was being tortured. Then they brought him back in to me and the minute they laid him on my chest, he quieted, as if he knew he was with someone who loved him and would take care of him. That right there is what makes the pain worth it.”

  Brynn sniffled and rubbed away a tear. “That’s so sweet.”

  Acksel and Malachi were suddenly between her and Brynn, and Nila looked up at Malachi in confusion.

  “Are you okay?” Acksel asked Brynn.

  “I’m fine, geez. Overreact much?”

  Then Nila realized that Malachi was putting himself between her and Acksel, because Acksel was obviously the sort of guy who didn’t like his mate being upset. She wrapped her arms around Malachi’s waist and hugged him. “You’re awesome.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah?”

  “You put yourself between me and your leader. That’s pretty amazing in my book.”

  “For the record, I would never hit a woman,” Acksel said with a huff.

  “I disagree with that statement,” Eveny said from where she and her mate stood while Jack played on the floor with some toys at their feet. “In fact, I have photographic proof that you’ve hit me on many, many occasions.”

  Acksel made a face. “Not since we were little, Ev, don’t make me out to be an ogre.”

  Mia snorted and choked on her drink, spilling some of the dark soda onto the floor. Acksel snarled and Mia groaned. “Great. I’m the one who pisses him off and no one is here to protect me.”

  Malachi said, “I’d get over there. Eventually.”

  She made a face at him and everyone dissolved into laughter. Nila rested her cheek on Malachi’s chest and listened to his heart as
he, Acksel, Brynn, and Mia teased each other. She really loved the camaraderie of the pack. Jack would get to grow up in this. Nila’d had friends when she was in school, but they hadn’t been the lifelong sort like Mia and Brynn or Acksel and Malachi. Being part of the pack, even only as a mate, meant that Nila was part of something bigger than her own small family, and Jack was too.

  Acksel clapped his hands together and everyone fell silent. “The pack is gathering outside now. It’s cold as hell, so let’s get this show on the road. Ready, Malachi?”

  “Yeah, we’ll be right out.”

  Acksel and Brynn walked out onto the back deck after she bundled up, and Mia, Dade, and the elders followed. Eveny brought Jack to her and then she and Luke left as well, until it was just the three of them.

  “After I’ve claimed you and Jack in front of the pack, we’re going hunting. I always hunt with Acksel and Dade and usually Sam or Ren. There isn’t anything other than hunting going on.”

  “You’re not going to bring back any dead things, are you?” She made a face.

  Laughing, he kissed her forehead. “Nah. We’ll be gone a few hours and then when I get back, I’m taking you and Jack home and, once he’s tucked in his crib, you and I are going to celebrate our mating night.”

  A shiver raced down her spine. “Oh?”

  He practically purred as he kissed her, and then he tousled Jack’s hair. “Let’s get you two ready.”

  Malachi wrestled a very wiggly Jack into his snowsuit while Nila tugged on boots and a coat. They stepped out onto the deck and found an elder named Hollis standing between Acksel and Brynn. Hollis held a thick book in his hands. Torches were flickering on the deck, and the pack was gathered in the yard. Mia, Eveny, and Luke were in front of the group.

  Nila, Jack, and Malachi stood in front of the trio. Malachi held Jack with one arm and gripped Nila’s hand, linking their fingers.

  Hollis spoke in a loud, clear voice. “On this night, Malachi Slattery brings Nila Caruthers and her son, Jack Caruthers, before the alphas, the elders, and the pack, to declare them his mate and his son. The laws of our people are clear: a wolf may claim any person as his or her mate and that person is welcome into the pack. If there are any among us who would disagree, speak now or remain silent forever.”