Page 31 of Fractured Fang: Omega

Thedrivehomewaspure bliss. Well, almost pure bliss. Too much driving two days in a row had carsickness starting to sneak up on me, and I hated it. But even with the carsickness growing, I couldn’t remember being this happy—ever.

I sat next to Macs, holding his hand over the center console, while Levi sat in the back seat, happily watching the scenery go by. He had a tablet he was playing games on.

About halfway home, my mood started to shift. Where once was a joy like I had never known, now there were nervous butterflies. And the closer we got to home, the more my anxiety spiked until it seemed that everyone in the car had noticed.

Levi patted the center console, and I turned to look at him.

“You okay?” he said, knowing I didn’t have the best angle to see his signs.

I smiled, though I didn’t quite feel it, and nodded.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Macs said loudly and slowly. He wanted Levi’s aids to pick up his words, and based on the way Levi nodded and went back to his video games, it had worked.

“Yeah?” I put my hand on his thigh. “Do you have a lot of experience coming home to your parents saying, ‘surprise, I’m mated and possibly pregnant. Oh, and also, here’s a child I now have custody of?’” So far, I hadn’t shown any real pregnancy signs beside the slight change in scent, but we both knew the drill. Once his knot had expanded inside of me that very first time, it was only a matter of when I would discover I was pregnant, not if.

And now that we were marked? I might as well just go and buy the paternity pants already. And a not small part of me couldn’t wait.

“It is going to be a lot for them to process,” he agreed. “But they love you; they just suck at showing you.” And they really did suck at it. “My pack loves you. We accept you. We want you there.”

I groaned. “I know all of that, Macs. I know it’s all going to work out. I just don’t want to hash it all out with them.” Or for Levi to ever feel the brunt of it. It was one thing for them to be disappointed in me, but it was quite another for them to do so in front of my kid. I was going to have to set some stringent boundaries when I got back, and they would have to accept them.

“We have some pretty good plans for how things are going to go.” Macs held more confidence in them than I did.

My phone buzzed, and I looked down at it to read the message.

“Who’s that?” Macs asked.

“Marcus, from Steelwick. They have a few people who want their portraits done. They were wondering if they could schedule some time with me to do a consult.”

Macs’s lips twitched into a smile.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You told me so.” And he’d been right. The best part was that commissions equaled money, and money brought into the pack equaled productivity in a way that even my father would have to see. It wasn’t a one-off like the mural. This was a way to bring a steady cash flow into the pack. Or at least it had the potential to become that.

“I wasn’t going to say it.” He smirked as if he wasn’t so sure of that himself. And even if he did do the ‘I told you so’ thing, it wouldn’t be meant in an unkind way, just more of a ‘See, I got you, mate’ way, and I appreciated knowing that that was true.

“You don’t have to say it,” I said. “I can see it on your face.”

Within a few minutes, we pulled into the drive that took us down the lane to our home. My home now. Our home. All three of us.

Macs grimaced as we pulled into the clearing, and his eyes caught sight of the house.

“Still a shock?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s getting better.” This had been his family home. As hard as losing the place to the flames had been for everyone else, it was an entirely different level of difficulty for Macs.

I pointed to the mural on the pavilion as we passed, and he smiled.

“If it helps, we can always build a house that looks like that for me, you, our future pups, and Levi.” I placed my hand on my belly really wanting the pup or pups to be already on their way. And who knew, maybe they were. It was probably not the worst idea to see Franklin about that.

Macs grinned. “Maybe we can just add on to our cabin.”

“That too,” I said. “I know a good architect.”

My parents didn’t even give us a moment to breathe. They seemed to be right there as we opened the car door and got out.

“You took a little while longer than we thought,” Phillip said.

I groaned. Not “Hi, how were you? How was your trip? Did Steelwick like their painting?” but “you took longer.” It set me on edge, and I needed to keep calm for the shit show that was about to start. Perhaps we should have called ahead; we could have warned Wilder. But also, we said we might not be back until today, so it wasn’t exactly surprising and phones did go both ways.

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