Page 12 of Bred By the Wolfman

I must find her. I must protect her, and the new cub growing inside her. She’s my everything, the pinnacle of my life. I was always meant to cross paths with her, to plant a cub in her, to make her mine.

Now I will keep them both safe from everything that might hurt them, if it’s the last thing I do.

six

DEE

I stare down at the test like an idiot for far, far too long.

Two pink lines. A lot is going to change for me soon—but then, when it’s all over, it will un-change, reverse, walk backwards until I’m back at the beginning again. Right in the same place, with some other monster’s baby.

A shudder rolls down my spine at the idea of doing what we did with anyone else. No, that’s reserved. It would never be like that, it couldn’t be like that.

At the same time, knowing that I’m carrying the wolfman’s kid? I feel almost... warm inside. I’m already imagining the two of us, combined into a single embryo, the new life we created steadily growing inside me.

I drop the test into a plastic baggie, and stare at it a while longer. That stranger is now in my body, a permanent testament to the wonderful, wild encounter we had in that sterile room.

I wish it could have been somewhere else, somewhere where we could have taken our time, maybe even looked at one another. What would it be like to have Bill in a bed, surrounded by his arms?

I’ll never know. And that’s probably for the best.

When I make the call to DreamTogether about the positive test, I’m brought in right away for a medical exam. After confirming with blood samples and ultrasound that I am, in fact, pregnant, the doctor walks me through the steps.

I’ll gestate for approximately ten months, somewhere between the human nine and the wolf-people’s eleven. The baby might be a little bigger than the average human baby, but in the data the doctor found, not by much. It shouldn’t be a difficult pregnancy or labor—not more than usual, anyway.

Fuck. Labor. I don’t know why that had seemed so far off when I signed my name on the dotted line, but now it’s looming in front of me like a towering tidal wave, ready to smash down in ten months’ time.

On that bench, in that white room with Bill, was the moment my life veered to one side. Whatever flame had sprouted between us when we met, it’s become a bonfire. Now Bill the wolfman is the only thing on my mind. A complete stranger to me, whose face I’ve never even seen, is now the person who occupies most of my waking hours. It’s stupid, really, to fantasize and obsess over someone I’ll never see again, someone who I really only know because we fucked a couple times.

I would be lying to myself, though, if I said that’s all it was. But it can never be anything else, anything more than our two momentary collisions at DreamTogether. The company made sure of that. I don’t know who he is, and he’ll never know who I am.

Those are the rules. And I can’t even drink to wash it away.

After the doctor’s appointment, when all my results have been confirmed, I slog back to my apartment feeling heavy. I knew I’d be doing this completely on my own, but facing it is different. At least I have Liesel. Maybe she’ll come over and watch a movie.

When I walk in the door, I find the state of my home even more depressing. What an ugly place. Sitting on that couch in the dark corner, pregnant and watching television, sounds like someone should be calling CPS on me.

So the first thing I do is stalk back out into the hall, knock on my super’s door, and give him my notice. I have the money to do it now, so I’m getting the fuck out of here.

Even if it’s not born yet, my kid deserves a good life, and so do I.

RUSS

McFlips. That’s where Amanda used to work, I’m sure of it. And she quit recently, too, which will help.

But there are a lot of McFlips in the human city of Aston, and it’ll take me a while to inquire personally at each of them.

I have nine, maybe ten months to figure it out. That’s plenty of time. Whether I can hold my shit together that long and not bulldoze DreamTogether just so I can contact her... that’s the question.

When my shift at the hospital is over for the night, I start at the first McFlips on the edge of town. It’s the seediest one, and I hope that this isn’t the place she worked.

It’s late, almost 1 a.m., but that could be a good thing. Perhaps she was on the night shift.

I have to endeavor not to slam the glass door of the fast food restaurant when I storm in. I’m dying to see her already, even though I only got the news about our cub last night. The human clerk at the counter glances up with wide eyes when I come in, as if he was just asleep, and he was certainly not expecting to see a wolfman when he woke up.

“Oh, good evening, and—” He yawns. “—welcome to McFlips. What can I do for you?”

I lean forward across the counter, very close to him, so close he has to tilt back. The guy’s mouth falls open.

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