Page 19 of The Billionaire Alpha's Surprise Baby

While I was torturing myself over what I should or shouldn’t have done these last four months, she was busy loving someone else. Someone not me.

“How far along are you?” I croak, because I don’t know what the fuck else to say.

“About twenty-one weeks.”

I’m still so shocked that it takes me a minute to do the math in my head. Twenty-one weeks is a little over five months, which would mean . . .

Ava’s throat bobs, and I can tell she’s waiting for my reaction. Her eyes go wide when the realization hits me. But it can’t be. Can it?

“It’s not . . .” I clear my throat, but it’s gone so dry I can barely speak.

Tears well up in Ava’s eyes as she nods, and my wolf whines at seeing her so emotional. I have the sudden urge to leap across the counter and pull her into my arms, but there’s another part of me that’s furious. How could she keep this from me?

“You’ve been here the entire time?” I rasp.

“I was subleasing a place in Aspen. I had to move out a couple weeks after we . . .” She swallows. “Coming here was always the plan. I didn’t know when I left that . . .” She reaches down to touch her stomach and looks away from me.

Fury and sadness are swirling in my gut, sending my wolf into a frenzy. The pain is too much for me to deal with right now with all these people around. I want to scream and put Chaston’s head through a wall, but I can’t unleash my monster here in the middle of a coffee shop.

“When did you find out?” I ask.

Ava swallows again but doesn’t look at me, which tells me she’s known for quite a while.

“And you didn’t think I deserved to know?”

“I didn’t think you would want me to keep it,” she bites in a low whisper.

“You — what?” I am seething at this point — so furious I can barely speak.

She shakes her head. “Why would you? We don’t even know each other.”

“Don’t know each other?” From the moment I met Ava, I felt as though I knew her, but I can’t exactly tell her that I’m a wolf shifter and she’s my fated mate.

“It was just one night,” she continues in a breezy tone. “There was no reason for me to upend your whole life.”

“Isn’t that for me to fucking decide?”

Ava winces, glancing around, and I realize that I shouted. People are staring, but I don’t give a fuck — not with all this hurt and rage pounding through my body.

My skin itches with the urge to shift. I have to get out of here.

Breathing hard, I turn on my heel and shove past a hipster dude with a long beard. I nearly send another guy flying through the window in my haste to escape the café.

By the time I find my car parked along the street, my whole body is thrumming with violent energy. The fact that Ava assumed I wouldn’t want to be involved in our child’s life is the worst kind of insult. It shows what she really thinks of me, and she doesn’t even know me.

That’s when it hits me — Ava doesn’t know me.

She might have done some digging and found out who my family is, but she doesn’t know anything about me. Even if she gets to know me and decides she doesn’t want me in her life, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s pregnant with my pup.

Mine.

A surge of protectiveness rises up inside me, followed by exhilaration.

I have a child — almost. He or she is growing in Ava’s womb — in the belly of the woman I love. My mate.

That thought sobers me instantly. I have a mate. A pup. A family. And I almost ruined everything.

Glancing back toward the coffeeshop, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of urgency. I can still salvage this. I have to.

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