Page 49 of Her Shifter Babe

Chapter 18.

Stacey.

MY WORLD HAD SHRUNK down to the sterile four white walls of my hospital room. The doctor informed me that I had no choice but to remain where I was until birth. My initial labor pains had stopped thanks to Tommy’s quick thinking, but they hadn’t ruled out putting me back into that stupid upside-down position if the contractions started again.

I felt broken and depressed, which I knew was terrible for the baby—all that cortisol—but I didn’t know how to pull myself out of the deep sense of melancholy that plagued me like a shadow on my soul.

My baby deserves a better mother than me. I’ve made such a total mess of everything.

There was only one thing I felt I could be grateful for at this point, and that was that I was safe-ish. Tommy was always around, or Wade or Tanner. David too, of course. In fact, I was pretty sure that David was around all the time, though he steered clear of my room unless invited. But everyone else commented on seeing him. He seemed determined to make up for the fright he’d given me and the hurtful things he’d said by being on constant vigil.

Outside of the boys, I had a constant string of guests reminding me that someone was always just a call away. It was always nice seeing Nancy and Lexie. The ‘human’ women in the family. Some days I felt like I was surrounded by wolfy men, and the girls made me feel a little more grounded amid this storm of human and paranormal insanity in which I’d landed myself.

On the fifth day of my hospital stay, I was beginning to relax a little more. Our baby girl had officially reached thirty-one weeks and continued to grow stronger by the hour. A knock sounded on my door I called out to answer it, assuming it was Mary, the woman who brought me my dinner tray. It was five-thirty so everyone else had gone home for dinner.

“Come in!”

But the set of hard steel gray eyes that stared back at me the moment he stepped through the door sent a chill of immediate panic down my spine.

“Jamie,” I whispered, frozen, the horror and fear of his presence kickstarting my heart into overdrive.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he admonished, shutting the door quietly behind him. “What are you doing here, wife? And with my baby too?”

I extended my arm in a flash and reached for my phone which lay within easy reach on the bedside table. I needed to send an SOS to the wolf family. They’d come. I knew it. They’d promised, every single one of them, to protect me.

But Jamie bolted forward, faster than me in my heavily pregnant state, and snatched the cell phone right out of my hand. “Oh no you don’t.” He slapped me on the hand like I was a mischievous child up to no good. It was almost darkly playful, but it stung from the impact and my skin went immediately red.

“What do you want?” I asked him, too afraid to ask him if he’d received the divorce papers. He obviously had. Or he wouldn’t be here.

He flicked back the bed covers without hesitation, as if that were still his right. “To take you home of course,” he said. “Get up.”

“I can’t,” I exclaimed, desperate and filled with anxiety over what this could mean for my baby, more than me. “I need to stay here. It’s the doctor’s orders!”

He grabbed my upper arm and gripped tightly. “Don’t be ridiculous, dear. Now, get up. You’re coming home with me.”

“Ow, you’re hurting me!” I cried, yanked physically out of bed by his iron grip and away from safety. My heart hammered in my chest and a brutal wave of wooziness slammed over me, triggered by the too fast movement. “Jamie... please.”

“No!” he snapped, glaring down at me. “You don’t get to beg me to be nice here, Stace. You did the wrong thing, not me. You took my baby away, and you’ll come home with me now.”

Panic hit me hard and fast the further from safety I was pulled. I had to find a way to make him reject me, to leave me. I had to wound his pride and there was only one way to do that.

Surely, the truth will save me.

“It’s not your baby!” I cried. “You have to realize that, Jamie. We hadn’t slept together in months before I left.”

He slapped me hard across the face with his spare hand, luckily his non-dominant or I would have been seeing stars.

I fell backward in pain, shocked by the unexpected blow. But he maintained an unforgiving hold on my arm, so I didn’t fall far. “You’re mine,” he hissed. “Which makes that baby fucking mine. Got it?”

I whimpered in pain but couldn’t find the will to respond, my head was reeling from the first physical attack he’d ever launched on me. He’d always been controlling, manipulative, and domineering, but he’d stopped short of physical violence. Apparently, it wasn’t beyond him, anymore.

“Get dressed. Now,” he snapped, his temper getting the better of him the longer I caused a delay on his plans.

“Okay,” I whispered, blinking rapidly against the pain in my face making my eye feel like it was going to explode in my skull. “My clothes are in the drawers.”

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