Page 47 of The Bodyguard and the Alpha
If the mate was pregnant. My nails dug into my palms, trying to make myself focus.
A bond between a Shifter and his mate would not be dissolved if the mate was pregnant.
It wasn’t a solution. If worst came to worst, it was only a temporary reprieve, a suspension of the death Order until after the baby was born, but it was something.
If we couldn’t get out of hot water any other way, it would give us nine months to work out a solution. Not that I would wait that long.
I hunched over, wrapping my arms around my legs, dropping my head to my knees as I sorted through my chaotic thoughts. Could I do this? Should I do this? Did I want a baby?
The last question was the easiest to answer. It was a resounding hell yes. I wanted a baby… Bastien’s baby, with a frightening intensity.
And I could do it, I could definitely do it. It wouldn’t be hard to disrupt the little plastic implant.
But should I do it? And should I tell him?
Since he’d given me his mate bite, we hadn’t said anything about children. In all the time I’d known him, it wasn’t a topic that had come up between us. It wasn’t like his bodyguard could just say, “Hey, how do you feel about kids?”
I could ask him. But what if he said no? If he didn’t want children? Or didn’t want children with me? While his Beast side insisted that I was his mate, now that I’d read the book, I couldn’t believe that his human half would have chosen to mate with me. Even if he’d been interested on an instinctive level, his rational half had made no move.
When he returned to sanity, when he bonded with his human half, he would understand the danger that faced him. And if his human half didn’t want me, he certainly wouldn’t want me to get pregnant. The sane, rational, thing for him to do would be to renounce the bond the moment he came to his senses.
Maybe if he did it quickly enough, there would be no investigation. It would be the sane thing to do. To save his own skin. I couldn’t blame him. In fact, if he really didn’t want me, I’dtell him to do it. To break the bond. The thought made bile churn in my stomach.
I screwed my eyes shut, refusing to let tears come. It would tear me open inside to let him go, but the bond wasn’t worth his life. And unless I convinced him to merge with his human half, it was all moot anyway. I had no hope of getting the Beast to renounce the bond.
A headache began to throb behind my eyes, making it even harder to work through the options. If he wouldn’t renounce me, his life was in danger if the truth came out. I’d lie to protect him, that was a given. But I might not have that choice. In an official investigation I could be forced to tell the truth. Cold sweat formed between my shoulder blades. If that happened and I was forced to tell the full truth? The outcome would be a death sentence for Bastien.
In that worst-case scenario, a pregnancy would give us time we wouldn’t otherwise have. Time that I planned to use wisely. No way my mate was going to get executed on my watch. It was bad enough that he had been kidnapped and hurt under my care. And that was before he’d given me his bite. I didn’t know how I would survive if he died.
Gah. What should I do? I could wait and talk to him about it when he woke. But in the last few minutes that I’d been sitting here my pre-cog had started to ping.
Danger was coming.
I had to do it. I was out of time.
Getting my mind clear enough to cast the spell was hard. But the spell itself was easy. A little zap of power. A sting in my arm. It was done.
I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do when I exited the bathroom. I stumbled to a stop when I saw Bastien standing in front of me in nothing but his boxers. His eyes roved up and down my body, heating my blood.
Mate.
Like always, the word scrambled my brain. I had spent so many years wanting him to call me his mate. But it wasn’t really true. It wouldn’t last.
Hurt stabbed into my chest like a knife. I held it close, keeping it to myself. He’d bitten me. I wasn’t hurt because he’d bitten me. I was hurt because he’d lost control. He hadn’t meant to do it. If it had been intentional, if he had truly wanted me, he would have Declared his Intent, the way the book outlined. Bastien had years during which he could have said something to me. Anything to indicate that he wanted me as his mate.
But there’d been nothing.
“We need to talk,” I managed eventually, walking around the edge of the room, keeping my distance from the bed, my eyes on him. You never turn your back on a predator.
My pre-cog pinged again. Faster this time. Shit. I was getting a very bad feeling that this was related to our bond and Bastien’s failure to declare that I was his mate.
Talk later. You are sad now. I will fuck you until you are not sad.
The image he sent me was so hot, I had to hold in a shudder of desire. His large body covering mine, my legs over his shoulders, his cock buried deep inside me. Holding me down. Dominating me. Owning me.
I straightened my spine. Lifted my chin. “We’ll talk now.” Holding up the book, I watched as his eyes widened, thennarrowed in sudden understanding. “We’re in a world of trouble because of your impulsive decision and we need to work out how to fix it. Before we run out of time. Even now I can feel the danger closing in.”
Fix it?Bastien’s mental voice was dark with anger.
