His dad might have been handsome once. Now? Now, he was the epitome of Para strength, from his shaggy, dark hair barely peppered with grey, to his amber shifter’s eyes and a jagged scar that tore right through both of his lips. Even when he was trying to put his opponent at ease, it always seemed like Terrence was scowling.
Then again, when it came to dealing with his firstborn son, Terrence usually was.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
“Not here as your father, Maddox. I’m here as your Alpha.”
He could tell. As a born alpha himself, he could pick up on the power level of other shifters as easily as breathing. Normally, his wolf outranked most other predatory shifters; in his thirty years, he’d never come up against another beast in their territory who was stronger than he was—except for Terrence Wolfe.
His Alpha.
Growing up, his father reined in his dominance until he had a reason to use it against his boys. Even after Maddox and Colt got older and they each took their respective place in the pack, Terrence knew when to be their father and when to be their Alpha.
Maddox had been expecting this visit. His father wasn’t pulling any punches, either. One quick glimpse at the man’s ominous golden gaze warned Mad that his father’s beast was simmering right below the surface. One snap was all it would take. One snap and he’d be at the mercy of the grizzled wolf’s fangs.
No one told the Alpha no and got away with it.
Because Maddox was—or used to be—next in line to succeed as Alpha, Terrence was holding onto his wolf by the thinnest of threads. Of course, an essential part of being the pack’s leader was learning control. It was one of the reasons why Colt could never be more than a pack beta. Maddox’s younger brother didn’t know the meaning of the word when it came to a fight.
Maddox, though? He lowered his eyes, looking at the snowy ground instead of meeting the challenge in his father’s glare.
If he accepted it, there would be no going back.
Terrence snorted. “Don’t look away from me, boy. You didn’t think I’d let you get away with turning your back on us so easily.”
“Evangeline is my priority,” Maddox snapped back. But he didn’t look up. Not yet. When he recognized that the intruders were his parents, he had retracted his claws. Now, they burst out from the end of his fingers, slicing into the meat of his palm as he clenched his fists. He forced them in again before the scent of his blood carried on the wind over to this father. Still, he didn’t look up. “My mate means more to me than anything else—even your plans for me.”
“Evangeline is family,” his father agreed. “And that makes her Pack.”
Maddox jerked his head. A nod. He knew that. From the second his wolf caught her rich vanilla scent on the air and recognized that the brunette beauty with the forest green eyes was its mate, she’d been his responsibility. With their bonding, that extended to the rest of the pack.
“I know.”
“The boy I raised to take my place would know that a strong pack is a far better protection than one lone wolf.”
“I’m not a lone wolf,” Maddox snarled, bristling at his father’s calculated insult. Old man knew exactly what he was doing, he’d give him that. “I told you to find someone else to groom as the next Alpha, Dad. Never said I was leaving the pack.”
“Anyone else tries to take over the pack, they’ll run you and your mate right out. You can’t expect another Alpha to lead when he knows that no one’s stronger than you, Mad. You’d always be a threat—and, just like your brother and his witch, anyone could use your mate against you.”
Maddox tried not to let his surprise show. It shouldn’t be such a shock that Terrence knew what was going on with Colt and Shea. Nothing got past him, not when they were kids, and certainly not now.
And he wasn’t wrong. His father was only telling Maddox the same things he already knew. He might not want to be a lone wolf, with his human mate as the only other member of a pack of two, but that was a very real possibility if he chose to turn the pack over to someone else.
He dared a peek up at his Alpha. “You know why I tried to give up my position, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Mating dance and the final claiming makes all of us a bit stupid, though. I don’t blame you for it. Your mate’s gonna be the most important part of your life for the rest of it. But I’m not lyin’, boy. With the power of the whole pack behind you, nothing will threaten your Evangeline. You want to hide her away in the cabin? Do that. But do it because you’re the Alpha and your word is law. You understand me?”
Maddox… did.
This time, when he met his father’s stare, he didn’t blink. He didn’t steal a glance or look away suddenly so that Terrence’s wolf didn’t recognize it as a challenge. Because it was.
A challenge.
He shrugged. A nervous lump lodged in his throat. He swallowed roughly as, inside his chest, his wolf started to pace anxiously, ready to burst out of his skin and into its fur.
“I’m not the Alpha,” Maddox said. His fangs lengthened. His claws sliced out again in a snick-ing sound that echoed throughout the yard. He leaned forward, his body primed for the shift.
Terrence mirrored the stance, an anticipatory smile quirking his scarred lip upward. “No. I am.”
“For now.”
“You ready, boy?”
Maddox tugged off his shirt. The cold was an afterthought against his overheated skin as he threw his shirt to the snowy ground. “Whenever you are.”
When his father widened his grin, the older man made sure to show off his canines. “Then let’s go.”
* * *
As soon Sarah guided Evangeline inside of the cabin, she thought that her mother-in-law would let her go.
She was, uh, kind of wrong about that.
Sarah Wolfe was more than a head shorter than the six-foot-tall Evangeline. With dark blonde hair, a pale complexion, and a gorgeous face that belonged on a woman more than half her age, Maddox’s mother was petite, she was sweet, and she wasn’t just the Alpha’s mate—she was also a wolf shifter, so she was super freakin’ strong.
It didn’t matter that, like Terrence, Evangeline towered over her. Sarah rose up on her tippy-toes, her arm a steel band around Evangeline’s waist as she led her all the way through the cabin, into the room furthest away from the back exit.
Evangeline wondered if that choice was on purpose when her mother-in-law finally let go and, to her surprise, moved so that she was standing directly in front of her.
Sarah’s golden shifter’s eyes seemed to shimmer in delight as she locked her gaze on Evangeline’s middle.
“Congratulations, dear.”
“Congratulations?” echoed Evangeline. “For what?”
“For your pup. And I know, I know… it isn’t proper etiquette for me to say anything before you and Maddox make an announcement, but I can’t help myself. This is wonderful! I—”
Sarah might have kept on talking forever if Evangeline didn’t squeak out one word that cut her mother-in-law off mid-sentence:
“Pup?!”
“Oh, yes.” Sarah gestured at Evangeline’s belly. “Pup. Baby. Whatever you want to call it, you’re having one. And I’m gonna finally get to be a grandma, so I guess I’ll congratulate me, too. What an absolutely wonderful Christmas present!”
“What are you— are you kidding me? I’m… I’m not pregnant.”
“Sure, you are.” As her wide smile drooped, Sarah cocked her head slightly, her dark blonde bob falling almost to her shoulder with the motion. Her eyes flashed. “You knew that already, though, didn’t you?”
Um, no. Evangeline didn’t.
She must have given it away because her mother-in-law let out a soft chuckle as she straightened. “Well, now you do, I suppose. It’s fairly recent, I’d say, since I didn’t notice at Thanksgiving, but you’re definitely plus one for Christmas, sweetie.”
Evangeline blinked. Not at how Sarah put it—Maddox’s mother had al
ways had such a colorful way of putting things—but at just what she was saying.
That, after the last few months of trying, Evangeline was—
She bit down on her bottom lip, wanting it too badly to believe it so readily. “I don’t know. Maybe I should get a pregnancy test or something.”
“Oh, goodness. You don’t need to do that. This,” Sarah said, tapping the side of her nose with a manicured finger, “is the best test around. Trust me on this one. Maddox knocked you up and good.”
Really?
Finally?
He had warned her from the first time he came inside of her without a condom that pups were a huge possibility. It had everything to do with the make-up of a shifter. Mating was an instinct specific to paranormal, most notably shifters. A biological urge to continue the species.
It was also a biological quirk. Because a shifter couldn’t reproduce with anyone but their mate, the body didn’t respond until they found their mate. The males didn’t get hard until then, and they were shooting blanks until they claimed their mate. Female shifters didn’t ovulate or release eggs until they started to bond with theirs.
Evangeline was human. Maddox, though? A full-blooded alpha wolf shifter, he was surprised the first time he caught Evangeline’s scent and absolutely shocked the first time his cock came to life.
And, okay, it had taken them some time before the two virgins were ready to mate. They were careful, though. Due to her insistence that they marry before he fully claimed her, Maddox always wore a condom to keep him from giving in to his instincts to bite her and breed her and bond her.
Last summer, after her memories started to come back from the awful witch who stole them, Evangeline realized they were married. They were mated. They’d been bonded, too, even if Cilla’s spell did its best to sever the tie between them.
And finally, after she slipped into his room one night and seduced him, they claimed each other. Maddox, by giving her his bite the same time he gave her his seed. And Evangeline, who offered her heart and her body and joyously took everything he offered her.
He had warned her that first night that while mating and claiming cemented the bond, his seed was just that: something he planted deep inside of her every time he came, with the hope that a new life would start.
It hadn’t.
Well, until now.
Evangeline felt a bubble of hope rise up within her. She’d never admit to anyone—especially not her mate—but she’d been worrying about that. Over the last few months, she kept waiting for the inevitable, growing more and more frustrated when it became clear that she hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. She understood that it wasn’t automatic, and that it wasn’t always easy, but she thought… well, Maddox was a shifter. She was his mate.
Wasn’t creating pups together the whole point?
She didn’t want to let herself believe it. And when she skipped her period last month, she had just about convinced herself it had everything to do with the stress surrounding the Nightwalker attacks and how Cilla was still out there somewhere. Because she couldn’t be pregnant at last—
Could she?
She really, really hoped so.
“I guess I could make an appointment with my doctor just to make sure, but he’s humans only.” As if she just realized what she said, Evangeline cringed. “Sorry, he’s my mom’s recommendation.”
“It’s fine. I sent my boys to a vet the first couple of years of their life because there weren’t so many doctors who specialize in Paras outside of our community. And after the way my T lost his ever-loving mind every time I was with a pup, none of them wanted to square off against the Alpha to tend to his mate.”
Oh, jeez. Evangeline didn’t even think of that. If Maddox was so single-mindedly focused on doing whatever he had to to keep her safe now, how far would he go when he found out that she was pregnant?
Would he be happy? Or, with as distant and secretive as he’d been lately, would he take it poorly?
Evangeline gulped.
Her mother-in-law caught it. Pursing her lips, reading something in Evangeline’s expression that she couldn’t quite hide, Sarah asked softly, “You didn’t know. Does Maddox?”
“What? No. I… I had no clue until you sensed it and told me. I just thought it was the holiday blues or something, plus one too many Christmas cookies. But I’m… I’m…” Evangeline couldn’t even say the word. She just lifted her hands, nestling around the small curve at the bottom of her flat belly.
Huh. So it wasn’t the cookies after all.
“So he’s not sure. But… a male wolf usually senses these things. So he doesn’t know, but, then again, maybe he does. It would certainly explain some things.”
That didn’t make a lick of sense to Evangeline. “What do you mean? Explain what?”
Sarah leaned in, then lowered her voice. “Since I know your secret now, I’ll share one of mine.”
“No.” Evangeline’s stomach flip-flopped. Secrets… just the word made her feel queasy. “Please. No more secrets.”
“Trust me, neither one of these will be a secret for long. Once my boy gets his head out of his ass and uses his nose for once, he’ll figure out what’s different about you. What’s making him even more overprotective than usual. And then, after my mate finishes up with him, he’ll stop all this nonsense about leaving his position in the pack.”
“Wait—what?”
4
Sarah nodded.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Didn’t he tell you? It’s why my T and I took the run out here. Mad told my mate that he’s planning on stepping aside, giving up his shot at being the next Alpha, so that he won’t have to leave you by yourself for too long. If his wolf can sense you’re carrying a pup, it would explain Mad’s turnabout.”
Evangeline felt her mouth drop open in surprise. For as long as she knew him, Maddox had always known that he wanted three things: a loving mate, a big family, and the control of the pack he’d been born to rule. When he thought Evangeline was dead, Maddox sacrificed his position in the pack while he was in the Cage, but as soon as they were bonded mates, she accepted that he’d be Alpha one day.
Why the hell would he give that up again? And, most importantly, why hadn’t he told her?
Another secret?
She was so freaking over all of the stupid secrets.
Evangeline closed her mouth, clicking her teeth together with the force of his motion. After shaking it off, she said, “I would never want him to do that.”
“I didn’t say that you did.” Sarah cocked her head again in that decidedly canine motion. Evangeline wasn’t sure if her mother-in-law even realized that she was doing it. “Especially now, the two of you will need Pack more than ever.”
“I just… that doesn’t make any sense to me. Maddox doesn’t even seem to want to be around me. No matter what I do, it’s like he always finds an excuse to get away. I don’t even know if he’s gonna be happy about this news, and now you’re telling me he’s trying to give up his alpha status?”
“For you.”
“For me? I’m sorry, and I know you’re his mom, but… he…” Evangeline huffed, the words spilling free without her really meaning for them to. “He doesn’t even seem to want me anymore.”
“Oh, sweetie. I don’t mean anything by it, but you’re such a human. If my boy is acting a little less… amorous than he usually does, it’s because his instincts are pulling him in different directions. The urge to mate quiets a little when you’ve got a bun in the oven, Evangeline, dear. It’s all about protecting his mate, making a safe home, marking his territory. He might not even know he’s doing it, but it’s what a good alpha wolf is supposed to do.”
Sarah wasn’t wrong. Evangeline was human. She thought like a human, experienced life like a human. She’d learned a lot about Paras in the time since she discovered she was fated to be a shifter’s mate, but this… this was something new.
“Are you… are you sure?”
“I’m posi
tive, Evangeline. I had two pups, remember? I know what it’s like and, between us girls, I was never more in the mood to get frisky with my mate than when he’d already knocked me up. If Maddox is too busy following his other instincts to notice that you’ve got an itch that needs to be scratched, it’s up to you to let my boy know just what you need.”
Evangeline’s eyes widened. Did Maddox’s mother just—
A loud smashing sound, followed by a throaty howl that split through the air had Evangeline freezing in place. It didn’t matter how many times she heard Maddox’s wolf cry. She was still a human and her tiny human-sized brain shrieked: monster, big monster, freeze and don’t breathe and maybe he won’t find you.
He was the predator, she was the prey, and it always took her a split second to remember that if her mate was chasing her, she had way more fun when he inevitably ran her down.
That wasn’t his playful howl, though.
Was there a threat out there?
Cilla?
“What was that?” asked Evangeline.
“I think that’s our cue.”
“What?”
Sarah gestured for Evangeline to follow behind her. “Come along, dear. You won’t want to miss this and, besides, they’ll need witnesses.”
“What?!”
* * *
Evangeline chased after Maddox’s mother. For such a petite, gentle-looking woman, Sarah Wolfe could move when she wanted to. Good thing for Evangeline’s long legs because she just managed to catch up to Sarah as the blonde tornado burst out into the backyard.
She followed after her mother-in-law, coming to a dead stop when she caught sight of the scene in front of her: two wolves snarling at each other, their fangs bared, and their hinds raised as if ready to attack.
What the—
Evangeline turned to Sarah, worry written all over her face. “What’s going on?”
Sarah lifted her hand, patting each strand of dark blonde hair back into place. Unlike Evangeline, she didn’t seem the least bit surprised—or concerned with—what they discovered out back.
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