Page 56 of Broken-Hearted

She nods. “Like having a baby.” She abandons stirring, leaving the wooden spoon in the pot as she leans on the counter and crosses her arms. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to have one at all before.”

“Because you don’t like kids? Nathan told me about the wilderness retreat thing.”

Maybe a bunch of kids running wild in the forest killed any desire to have kids. It sounds like it could be a traumatic enough experience to do the job.

“He did?”

I nod.

“No, I like kids,” she softly denies. “But I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it. Responsibility scares me. It scares Jeremy as well, and that whole kids camping in the forest thing turned out to be a pretty big mistake. But this isourkid. There’s no saying, ‘we made a mistake, let's send the kid back to their parents.’ We’re stuck with it.” She winces. “You shouldn’t really call your kid it, should you?”

“So you didn’t tell your pack because you’re scared?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t told them because they’ll be excited and I’m still at the scared part. What if I never move past that to the excited stage? What if I’m scared the entire way through?”

The chocolate bubbles over and she yelps and grabs the pot before it can completely boil over. She pours chocolate into two white mugs she pulls from another open shelf, sprinkles mini marshmallows on top and flicks off the stove before carrying both mugs to the table.

She gives the stove a wipe down, something I commend her for because my lazy ass would’ve left that spill until it had gotten good and dried on, making an easy cleaning job a hard one. Then I’d hate cleaning even more than I do already.

“Thanks.”

“It was my mess,” she says as she takes the seat opposite.

We spend the next couple of seconds sipping hot chocolate. “This is so good. I have to try Luka’s if his is better.”

Her eyes turn dreamy. “You totally should. Ask him. He’ll make it whenever.”

I take another sip from my mug, studying Savannah as I ponder something. “You’re like my sister.”

She blinks. “I am?”

“Martha is a worrier,” I explain. “She always envisioned the worst thing that would happen. And then the one time she tried to see the good in someone…” I recall what happened in Minnesota. “Let’s just say it didn’t turn out great, so that only made her more anxious.”

Savannah’s expression is curious.

“It’s a long story.” I shake my head. When Martha met her mate Ty, she had just about every door closed possible. “She saw danger and threats everywhere we went because she was so worried about me. She stopped seeing the good things that could happen. Like meeting her mate. Like finding a place that felt like home.”

Savannah smiles. “Yeah, that sounds like what I’ve been doing. Focusing on the bad and closing my eyes to the good. It’s the same with the house.”

I tilt my head, curious. “What about the house?”

She wraps her hands around her mug, and her gaze is distant. “The worst thing that ever happened to me happened in the farmhouse and I swore I would never live in there again. It’s why I lived in this cabin.”

“But you’re not living in the cabin anymore.”

“No. Because all the best things in my life also happened in that house. It’s where I had my happiest memories until I let all the bad taint the good.”

I’ve heard about Dayne’s reputation for killing his family and the old alpha. Most shifters have. Everything I’ve heard and seen has proven that Nathan was telling the truth when he said those were rumors.

I guess everything went down in the house and Savannah was part of it.

“So now you live in the house?”

She nods. “It wasn’t easy at first, but it’s always been home, and it’s full of the people I love the most in the world. There’s nowhere else I’d want to be or to raise my child.”

She smiles suddenly.

“What?” I ask.

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