Page 31 of The Beast's Baby
She couldn’t believe she’d demanded to see her father. Apparently, neither could Cora. The woman was seated on an armchair in the very same peach cobbler, hunger inducing quarters that a mere three hours earlier, Isobel and Jay had so bravely left behind. Cora wasn’t bobbing a leg with impatience or twisting the rings she wore on three of five fingers on each hand. She wasn’t clenching her jaws or exhibiting even the smallest sign that she was incensed, and yet it was written all over her.
It was in the way she was staring at Isobel.
It was in the way she was pointedly ignoring Jay’s presence.
“Wanting to see my father was a spur of the moment request,” Isobel attempted to explain.
The silence that had reigned in the room ever since Cora entered, sat down, and demanded to know exactly why Isobel thought they could somehow bring her father to see her when her father had died in an accident when she was still a baby had been deafening up until Isobel spoke.
It threatened to settle again when Cora at first made no reply, but then she said, “Spur of the moment? Wanting to see yourdeadfather?”
“No,” Isobel said slowly. “To see my real father.”
Isobel didn’t dare look at Jay, who was seated next to her on the couch. They weren’t touching, but she was grateful that they’d been allowed to stay together. However, if she so much as hinted at him having anything to do with the request she was making she had every reason to believe they’d be separated. She wasn’t even entirely sure why they hadn’t been already.
Cora smiled then. There was the dragon in her when she did. Isobel nearly expected her eyes to glow red, but they didn’t.
“And who, might I ask, is your real father?” Cora inquired.
“Milton Maynard,” Isobel replied, suddenly eager to see what reaction she might get.
Would Cora reveal herself? Would she look shocked enough to give away the truth? Was it possible that Isobel had been given away as a baby? Were the people whom she had thought of as her ‘parents’ really her aunt and uncle at all, or had she been handed over to a pair of random wolves to be raised as their own by her real parents without her having any blood ties to them whatsoever?
Cora merely frowned at the name Isobel had so boldly presented her with.
“I’m sorry, you think Milton Maynard is your father?” she asked.
“I have reason to believe he is,” Isobel elaborated, but Cora’s frown remained, and she made no effort to respond further. “I was told…” Isobel began to elaborate, knowing there was no way she would implicate Jay, searching for the right phrasing. “I mean, I heard someone talking and… they said that…”
She trailed off.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Cora said, leaning forward to make sure she had both of their attention. “You’re going to fuck each other again. Yes, I can smell it in the mixture of your scents on one another’s skin that you definitely fucked. This time you’ll do it under controlled circumstances, in that bed in there, and you will then be taken for all sorts of tests. Not you,” she added to Jay. “But you,” she said, attention back on Isobel. “You,” she continued, turning back to Jay, “will be taken to your very own cell to await the decision of what exactly we’re supposed to do with you.”
“I know I’m different,” Isobel stopped her when she was about to get to her feet, seemingly done laying down the law. “I know I am, because I wasn’t bitten, I was born like this. If you want me to do this for you, willingly and without putting up even the teensiest bit of a fuss, you’ll let Jay stay here with me.”
Cora stared at her, amusement crossing her gaze for the first time. “Why the hell would you want him to stay with you?” she asked. “You’re not in love, are you?” The amusement vanished as she suddenly looked queasy at the mere idea. “Oh, Lord, you’re not. Are you?”
“No, we’re not in fucking love,” Isobel bit back, glaring at the dragon lady with as much venom as she could muster. “I just don’t want to be alone anymore. I was starting to climb the walls before. Just, please, let him stay here. If he’s going in a cell anyway then what’s the difference? Saves you the space.”
Cora hesitated, gaze drifting from one to the other, then she scoffed and walked up to the door. She didn’t reply, but Isobel wondered if that scoff hadn’t been some sort of yes. As though Cora couldn’t believe the request, but it was outrageous enough to make some semblance of sense.
“Are you sure we should do this without even the teensiest bit of a fuss?” he asked.
He’d been subdued ever since they got off the helicopter.
She looked at him then. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he murmured, not looking at her. “And if I can’t—”
“You can,” she said. “It’s for science.”
He cracked a smile then, glancing over at her. “I don’t know if that’s enough anymore,” he admitted. “I don’t think it’s right. To do it this way. They have no right.”
“I know,” she said, and she felt something grow light within her at his words. Something that had been weighing her down until that moment. As though she had been battling with the residual conviction that the only pull that he had on her was to do with the heat of her wolf. Now that he was using words that told her he really was a good man underneath it all, that pull took on new depths.
For weeks she’d been battling with her convictions, her suspicions that this was what was hiding underneath that rigidly professional mask of his. The one he wore so well. She’d wanted to find out exactly who and what resided underneath it because it had felt like an act. A perfected act, but an act nonetheless. She had wondered who or what had made him put it on in the first place. Who had hurt him?
And when he wouldn’t talk to her, when, for all those weeks they had spent together, he wouldn’t even acknowledge her, she had begun to make up stories in her head about who he could be. So that it would be easier for her to deal with the steady rejection. The disinterest. And now here he was, saying all those things and doing all those deeds that she had felt in her gut that he was capable of. Though her head had fought so hard to convince her otherwise.
