Page 57 of Fated to the Warrior Wolf

“Petal?” he asked, stroking his thumb over the back of my hand.

“She seems too tiny to be a whole flower,” I said with a shrug.

“I like it.” He smiled for a second, then grew more serious. “But, Leigh, I can take care of everything you and Petal could possibly need. I’ve got money. Let me take care of you.”

“I havenointerest in being a kept woman.” I meant it as a joke, but he looked offended.

Shit.Am I ever going to stop putting my foot in my mouth?

“You can do anything you want, once the baby comes. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. I get that it’s not my right. But… I was terrified. Look at what it did to Brielle trying to get you back. Leigh, I thought you were going to die or lose the baby. You were so still. I can’t… I just can’t see you like that again. Not if we can prevent it.”

Damn. I was a major bitch. “I didn’t know that I would faint. I swear to the Goddess, I would never do anything to hurt the baby.”

“I didn’t think you would, but also, I care aboutyou,not just Petal.” He squeezed my fingers. “When Shay said she needed me, I didn’t ask about the baby. I felt like shit when Olivia toldme the baby was fine, because it wasn’t until she said it that I evenrememberedthe baby. I was scared something had happened to you. You know that, right?” I thought about the question.

DidI know that? Or did I think that Petal was the only reason he stuck around?

If I was honest with myself, it was the latter. He and I weren’t in a good place before Petal made her presence known. And now we’d come so far, but did I trust it? Could I let myself?

Iwantedto trust it. I pulled him down closer to me, dragged in a deep lungful of his scent, grounding myself there against his neck.

“Okay.” I whispered the words, scared to say them any louder. “But you should know that I’m not well off. I’m not comfortable with asking you to support us after the baby comes, but… I also don’t want to endanger her or push Brielle too far.”

All the tension seemed to whoosh out of him at once. “Thank you. But don’t worry about the money, seriously. I’ll get you your own credit card, and you can have mine until it comes in. Anything you or the baby want, you don’t even have to ask.”

Tears prickled my eyes. Not because of the money. Money didn’t seem to matter at all to the men of Pack Blackwater. But he wanted to take care of me, and I’d been alone for so long. I had my friends, of course. They were my sisters. But this was different.

He was choosing me, knowing that I was flawed. Knowing that I had baggage, and scars, and… he was picking me anyway. That meant a lot more than being picked because I had a nice ass in a bar. A hell of a lot more.

“Would you two like a few more minutes? There’s no rush at all,” Olivia said. She was so kind.

“No, please, come in!” I pulled back from Gael’s neck andswiped at my cheeks. “I think we’ll both be anxious until we see Petal in all her floaty glory.”

Olivia laughed and gave us both a warm smile. “I understand. Pregnancy is a beautiful time, but sometimes it’s scary. Hopefully, this will set your mind at ease.” She pulled a bottle of gel out of a warmer as I lay back on the exam table. I kept Gael’s hand tight in mine, not letting him go now that I had him.

She squirted the gel on, and I held my breath as the probe started to glide over my skin, black-and-white blurs appearing on the big screen. But within a minute, she stopped, and a sound like a galloping horse came over the speakers.

“There she is,” Olivia said, a little choked up. “She’s measuring about nine to ten weeks, and her heartbeat is perfect.”

I sobbed with relief as anxiety I hadn’t let myself feel broke in one big rush. Gael wrapped me back up in his arms, and I went gladly, belly goo and all. She was safe. She was ours, and we were all going to be okay.

TWENTY-NINE

Gael

Two days later

Ten weeks.The baby—Petal, I corrected myself with a smile at Leigh’s cute nickname for the baby—was nearly ten weeks along. Leigh had only promised me five months, and we’d had no movement with the council. The frustration was growing with each day that passed, my desire to force things to go our way completely unfulfilled, and we were almost halfway through my time.

My wolf was restless, and I should have probably gone for a run. But I hadn’t, not since Leigh had passed out. I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, and if fifteen minutes of stretching had caused her to faint, I wasn’t going to ask her to take the stairs down to ground level so that we could even get out to nature. And then after that, we’d finally be able to run.

We never had—a fact my wolf was grumbly about—but he understood. He would never push for anything that endangered her or made her or our pup unsafe.

I couldn’t let myself think about that, though. I wasreviewing the security measures for the tribunal, and every single thing had to be perfect. I wanted a bow on security before we retrieved Varga, and that was happening tonight.

Kane and I were spearheading the mission, because, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Varga had ignored his formal summons. Other alphas of neighboring packs had started to arrive in the small village closest to the castle, including the top five of Pack Caelestis. Kane was meeting with them now, formally accepting his father’s role as new Alpha of their pack and accepting their pledges. Three other Alphas from around the world had already proven their loyalty, bending the knee without hesitation. The Chinese and Japanese Alphas had flown in on private jets overnight, pledged, and left again before sunrise.

It was a smart move on Kane’s part to take the time to meet with as many packs as possible now, given we had no idea what other tricks Varga might have up his sleeve. Our intelligence reports placed him at a private chalet in the Transylvanian Alps, not at his pack seat in Hungary. Which was either a good thing—he might be less heavily armed if we took him unaware—or a very bad one. He could be hunkered down, armed to the teeth and ready to trap us. The fact that he wasinRomania was suspicious in and of itself.

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