Page 41 of Baby and the Beast

“Gone?” Cyrus echoed.

Cyrus shrugged. “I was sick of hearing them and explained quite nicely they either packed or I would solve their lying problem by removing their throats.”

Kyle pulled him closer. “We are bonded, Cyrus. Why do you think we both feel better now I’m holding you and have no intention of ever letting you go? I felt it the moment you left. It was like someone had torn out half my soul." His voice roughened with emotion. "Don't you feel it too? This connection between us?"

Cyrus nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. He did feel it—that invisible thread that seemed to tie them together, the way his heart raced whenever Kyle was near, the way he felt complete only when they were together.

"Then come home with me," Kyle whispered. "Come home and help me raise our family. All of them. The ones we have and the ones we'll adopt. Come home and be my mate, my partner, my equal in all things."

"The pack won't accept—"

"The pack will accept what I tell them to accept," Kyle said firmly. "And what I'm telling them is that you are my chosen mate, the alpha-mate of the Knoxville pack, and anyone who has a problem with that can find themselves a new pack."

Cyrus felt his heart swell with love and gratitude. "You'd really do that? Risk everything for me?"

Kyle's smile was soft and full of love. "Sweetheart, there isn’t a single wolf that doesn’t want you back.”

Really?

He was wanted?

Needed?

“So these pups…” Kyle waggled his eyebrows, and Cyrus, so happy he could burst, proceeded to show his alpha just how much he loved him, no matter how many pups he ever wanted to bring home.

Baby and the Beast

Desperate, pregnant, and alone, Nash is running out of time.Hunted by his own father—the brutal Den Alpha who would slaughter his baby to keep their bloodline "pure"—Nash risks everything to find the elusive Shifter Rescue sanctuary before the winter storms seal off the mountains for good. Nash realizes he’s finally run out of time when he goes into labor, and stumbles into an empty cave just as the snowstorm hits.

Casimir has turned his back on humanity and retreated to the mountains, and while shutting his hunter's cave for the approaching winter discovers a young pregnant male who promptly collapses in Casimir’s arms. Realizing to his horror Nash is in labor, Casimir has no choice but to become involved with the shifter world he hoped never to have contact with again, only to discover tracker wolves are hunting them both, and closing in fast.

As a deadly snowstorm rolls in and hunters close in fast, Casimir knows time is running out.He must getNash and the baby to Shifter Rescue—no matter the cost. But the deeper they trek into the frozen wild, the harder it becomes to ignore the bond forming between them… and the way Nash makes his long-dead heart beat again.

But then he also knows that the only way of keeping them safe is to leave them there.

Because some monsters don't deserve a second chance.

Baby and the Beast

Chapter One

Nash stood at the entrance to the cave and couldn’t decide whether he wanted to cry or just give up. Maybe he was too exhausted to cry. Too exhausted to fight. He knew—absolutely knew—he couldn’t go any further. The labor pains that had started as a backache yesterday had increased in severity all day. He also knew he was going to have to admit he was lost and do something before it was too late.

If it wasn’t already.

His scenting ability wasn’t as good in his human form, and now thanks to the little monster growing in his belly, he couldn’t shift at all. He huffed out an exhausted laugh. It wasn’t a monster. But he’d given it a nickname because it made it easier to cope with the fact that instead of being burrowed in his den, surrounded by his mom, brothers, and sisters, he’d spent the last four months tramping from his home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to North Carolina.

Because I’m desperate.

Nash knew it was his only chance. He put a hand on his distended belly, which he could feel under the six layers of clothes he had on.

It was his little monster’s only chance. A chance that was lessening by the minute.

The first six weeks or so had been easy. As his animal, he could stay mostly unnoticed, but once his kit grew, simple shifter physiology intervened. His fox form was probably the same size as a human baby, and pregnancy turned off the shifter gene to protect it. He understood why. Nash hissed in a breath as a cramp seemed to clutch at his middle. That was stronger, and he tried to breathe through his burgeoning panic.

He didn’t know if he was fifty or even a hundred miles from the Shifter Rescue Pack. He needed to get to the place he’d heard so many rumors about—the one where supposedly any breed could go to be kept safe. In this weather, fifty miles was as good as five hundred. But he’d had no choice. He couldn’t have stayed where he was.

Definitely not somewhere his own den father would want to slaughter his kit as soon as it was born, simply to keep their bloodlines pure.

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