Page 107 of Wind with a Chance of Wolfsbane

“I woke up in another state with Mina by my side,” Willa said, wiping her cheek, still looking toward the chains. “We tried to come back here but it never worked. Then, not that long after that all happened, we realized we were both pregnant.”

Jonathan took a deep breath, his heart breaking for his mate. She had to have felt so alone and overwhelmed by it all then.

Her bottom lip trembled. “I was scared of what might be growing inside of me. For nine months, I was convinced I couldn’t love whatever it was. That I couldn’t be a mother. Hell, I couldn’t even remember being with the baby’s father because I had no control over the darker side of myself. But by the time the baby came, I’d managed to gain control of my wolf.” She smiled faintly. “Then I gave birth, and the second the nurse put my daughter in my arms, and I looked down into her eyes—one brown and one green—I knew then and there that I loved her and that I’d do anything to keep her safe. It didn’t matter who her father was. I’d love her enough for both of us.”

“Willa,” he said softly, taking a step toward her.

She eased back and wiped her cheeks again before looking at him. “My daughter, Hannah, is seventeen and currently on a tour of Yale University with my sister and my niece. She and my niece are more like sisters than cousins since Mina and I raised them together. Hannah is so smart. All my worries and concerns about having her were unfounded.”

“She doesn’t have a wolf in her?” asked Jonathan.

Willa licked her lower lip as she wrung her hands in front of her. “She can shift into a wolf. She rarely does. She has a ton of control over that part of herself. She doesn’t have to change during full moons. And she’s never had an uncontrollable shift. She’s tenderhearted and loves to learn. She’s always reading. She’s going to go to school to study law. Not sure where she gets that urge from, but it’s always appealed to her.”

Jonathan bent his head, choking up quickly at the thought of having spent his entire life refusing to pass on his curse, terrified his offspring would end up like his brothers. Guilt struck him hard because the moment he’d heard Willa had a daughter, he’d prayed the child wasn’t his. When he looked up at Willa, he found her looking at the flowers near the wall of the cave. He swallowed hard. “Those are for you.”

Confused, she glanced at him. “What are?”

“The flowers,” he responded. “All of them.”

She snorted as she wiped her face again, her hands shaking. “Okay.”

He eased forward more. “I mean it. I’ve been bringing them as often as I could for eighteen years. I used to leave my address with them but moved over to leaving my phone number since work leaves me traveling so much.”

Willa stared at him in a state of disbelief.

His wolf peeked up from within, clearly sensing it might be safe to be near its mate once more. Jonathan let it rise more, knowing his upper body was increasing in size and that gray fur was sprouting on his chest and arms. He let his eyes swirl as well.

Surprise lit on her face. “Jonathan? You’re the… Ohymygod, you’re the gray wolf!”

“I am,” he returned, shaking his upper body as he returned to human form, wondering if she would panic.

She cupped her mouth for a moment and then smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth.

“Willa, at first, after the white light from that night cleared and I ran back in here to find you were gone, I thought I’d lost my mind. That I’d hallucinated you. That my mind had snapped, making me think I’d met my mate and claimed her. Then I realized it had happened. You were real, but I had no way of finding you or even any idea of how to start looking for you. You don’t smell the same when you’re in human form as you do when you’re partially shifted or fully shifted. I knew both of your scents, having met you in human form in Detroit and then again in the cave but in shifted form.”

“I don’t smell the same?” she asked, touching her throat.

“No, love,” he returned, taking another small step toward her. He wanted to hold her but needed to be sure she was ready for him and would accept him. “I did try to find you—both of you. I was worried about you and your sister. I had this unexplainable urge to make sure you were safe. And, well, um, keep in mind when I confess this that the night I met you in Detroit, I wasn’t thinking anything improper. I was just worried about you. About two weeks later, that worry also came with desire. I started dreaming about you in a sexual way.”

She gasped. “You mean after I turned eighteen?”

He tipped his head.

“I turned eighteen two weeks after we met in Detroit,” confessed Willa.

A half-laugh tore free from him. “That makes sense. Yes. After you turned eighteen. I stopped dating around after meeting you in Detroit, but I couldn’t understand why when I’d been something of a cad prior to that.”

She leveled a hard gaze at him.

He cringed. “Reformed cad now, love. Keep that in mind before you try to geld me.”

She nodded. “Continue.”

He grinned. “Then, four years later, I stumbled upon you here in this cave, but as I said, I didn’t know it was you—the girl from Detroit. You were partially shifted when I entered the cave, and so was I. Then, relatively quickly, we were both fully shifted.”

Willa’s jaw dropped open. “So my brief flashes of that time are right? We totally boned while in wolf form?”

He did his best to keep from laughing. “Yes.”

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