Page 34 of Betrayed By the Alpha Wolf

The earth was just a giant bowl of soup, and the sloshing waves were threatening to get me hurling up the nothing I’d had for breakfast. I tried to breathe through my nose, but I was starting to hyperventilate. Everything was too much, too fast.

“I still don’t understand. Grayson rejected me. How did the heat even go through? I…I…Oh fucking hell.”

I hung my head between my legs, trying to right myself. Heat was roaring through my body, and at the back of my mind, I heard that small voice again.

Because that’s how it has to be.

As the words washed over me, their diminutive energy so different than my wolf, it occurred to me that it couldn’t possibly be her speaking. The voice was something else. But what? Could it be…

“Wait, wait, wait.” I forced myself to sit up the moment a cool ice pack was placed on the back of my neck and sighed. “Can you tell me anything about the baby? Could you see their DNA?”

Willow shook her head as Forrest fanned me. The blistering heat in my veins backed off, and I heard it again.

Too soon.

“Unfortunately, it’s too early in the development for us to check. I don’t want to risk you miscarrying because I’m nosing around for a sample.”

How the fuck was this tiny voice able to tell what was going on outside of me? And how was it possible that I alreadyknewwhere it was coming from?

“I think they’re talking to me. In my head.”

Forrest and Willow stared at me blankly before the scientist finally spoke up. “Who’s talking to you?”

Grumbling, I moved the ice pack from the back of my neck to my chest.

“The baby.” I was met with more stares. “Ugh, I know how it sounds. I think it must have something to do with the V?lva thing.”

Willow sat back in a chair near one of the long tables just behind her. There was an array of books set up from all of us studying them, and Forrest took up a spot next to her.

“There’s nothing in the wolf legends that talks about a baby being able to communicate with its mother in utero.” She cocked her head as I frowned. “Still, there’s nothing in them about a V?lva being able to stop time, so…It’s possible.”

“We’ll do more research into it, and when the time comes, we can do some tests on the amniotic fluid to learn more about the baby.”

A tinge of nervousness hit me that was coming from both myself and somewhere else.

“I’m not sure the baby is thrilled about that idea.”

Chuckling to myself, I let myself hang forward in the seat again. This was all just too insane to be real. I was probably going to wake up, and this would all just be a very vivid dream.

But when I looked back up at Willow and Forrest, I was still just met with their sympathetic expressions.

Nope, not a dream.

“What in the absolute hell is my life? How exactly am I supposed to have a baby with a wolf who’s rejected me? Oh, and don’t think I’ve forgotten about that nugget. What’s going on with the heat and the mating thing?Haveyou learned anything about that?”

Willow turned to Forrest, gesturing to him like Vanna White from those reruns that Kit showed me. He cleared his throat, gathering up some of the books he’d been looking at and handing them to me.

“So, it’s complicated, but from what I can see in your blood tests and what you’ve described, it looks like this source of information fits the best.”

He pointed to a passage in the book, which had been left open to the correct place when he handed it over.

“Give me the gist of it, Forrest. I’m not in the mood to read.”

The healer offered me another comforting pat on the knee, and I rolled my eyes a little, giving him a smile.

“Well, it looks like rejection pains—the entire condition, really—can be temporary. There’s not much on it because there’s not much on mates. They’re supposed to be so rare, but I have a hunch that has more to do with our isolation from each other and other beings than their actual likelihood.”

“So, it’s another case of the isolation being responsible for bad fucking luck? We could find mates, breed more successfully, and what? Go into heat whenever the mood strikes if we were all together?”

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