Page 57 of The Wolf's Bullied Pregnant Mate
“Wow,” I muttered.
He only grinned. “What do we need to be awake for, anyway? You’ve got other plans?”
I laughed softly. I lay back against the pillow, gazing at him. His eyes were bright, fixed on me.
I brushed my hand over his tattoos.
“Which name is which?” I asked.
“Mine is the one on the left,” he told me, brushing my hand down the closely shaved hair on the left side of his head. His thick hair was flat, hanging over his forehead, and the back faded into a neatly shaved underlayer. “Zane is on the right.”
“You must miss him,” I murmured.
He nodded. “We were—well, we were brothers, but even if we hadn’t been, I’d have still found him, I think. We were bonded. Sort of unintentionally, we left my older brother out.I think he sort of became the man of the house following my father’s death, and we didn’t know whether to look up to him as a dominant presence in our lives or an older brother who’d still mess around outside.”
“Were you all shifters?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Zane and I had already shifted for the first time when my dad died, but we didn’t know a lot about it. Lucas, my older brother, taught us how to hunt and exist as shifters. My mom chipped in her knowledge where she could. She said she was surprised she managed to have three strong male shifter children, with her being human.” He shrugged. “I grew up a certain way after my father’s death. I turned to darker things to enjoy. Heavier music, tattoos to express myself, piercings. Zane was, like, my polar opposite in some ways. But we got these piercings together.” He pointed at his lip. “He got below his bottom lip done.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “On our way home, Zane was saying how our mom would kill us. But she didn’t. She only shrugged; told us we were nearly eighteen anyway. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stop us. After Zane’s death, I sort of veered even more into that aesthetic. I found… I don’t know, expression in it. Honestly, I felt cool.” He grinned at me, a self-deprecating thing. “People stared. Sometimes, I wanted them to, I guess. I wanted them to see who I was—that I wasn’t just a guy who lost his twin. It wasme. I like art. Why not have it on my body, you know?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, entranced as I listened to him open up. I had the feeling with the way he switched between stilted sentences and then a full flow of words that he didn’t always open up but craved it.
He held up his hand. “Would you get tattoos?”
“I’ve always wanted to,” I said. “I’d love something down my spine. I know it’s cliché, but something like the phases of the moon. It's an element that deepens a witch’s power.”
“And shifters are associated with the moon, too,” he said. He froze, then, and looked at me, almost spooked as if he thought he was connecting us too much. Saying that our kinds had something in common.
I only smiled. “You’re right.”
Zephyr shifted position as he looked at me, his face propped up on his palm. “You’re beautiful.”
I blinked at the sudden compliment. I didn’t feel it. While my nap had restored me, I still felt dried out and groggy. My stomach was empty, and I was hungry, but I was scared to eat for now. I winced.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“Feeling like this? I have a hard time believing it.”
Zephyr ran a hand down the side of my face. Something flickered in his deep expression that I couldn’t understand but yearned to. I reached out to wrap my fingers around his wrist and kissed his fingertips. I expected him to make the moment more intimate than affectionate, but he didn’t, and I realized he had stayed in some gentler moments with me like this sometimes.
I was glad. I didn’t feel sexy in that moment. I felt strangely vulnerable, even as I was protected in Zephyr’s embrace.
Our silence was broken by a ping on his phone.
Alex’s name flashed up:I’m giving you an hour to get up, get to a store, stock up, and return to your hideout. Don’t go to the villa or to Adalyn’s place. Go right backto your safe place, okay? If you see a demon, don’t interact with it. Be inconspicuous and alert me when you’re back.
Zephyr read the text and nodded. “We’ve done these things before. It’s like in and out as fast as we can.”
I nodded. “We have an hour?”
“To get up, to a store, and back.”
“And if we don’t?”
“It’s not about if we don’t but more about our safety.”
I nodded. “Well, we should get ready, then.”
