Page 66 of The Strongest Wolf

I don’t make a sound.

Only my trembling shoulders would reveal I was crying if anyone surprised me. But this is the Blackshaw pack, not the Stones, so I don’t have to worry about anyone bursting in and dragging me out by my hair to beat the shit out of me in some cruel pack game.

Here I’m safe. No one will hurt me here.

But this doesn’tfeellike home. Eden is here, Kier too, and it isn’t like I don’t like the Blackshaws. I do.

It doesn’t feel like this is where I’m supposed to be. Not without Galen.

But maybe he’ll come back.

Hope and despair mingle until I don’t know which I feel most strongly—hope that Galen will be back soon, or despair that my fears have chased him away for good.

They stay with me, battling for dominance when I leave the shower twenty minutes later, and then as I force myself to choke down some cereal when my stomach growls at me, reminding me I haven’t eaten.

Hours later, when I’m curled up on the couch and hugging a cushion against my chest, my gaze fixed vacantly on the TV, the thought still lingers in my mind.

What if you’ve chased him away for good?

The soft knock on the cabin door doesn’t surprise me. Before I lift my head from the couch and put aside the cushion, my nose tells me who it is: Eden.

I cross over to the door and swing it open. She’s dressed much as I am, in comfy-looking sweats. Eden doesn’t say a word, and neither do I. She just steps forward, wraps her arms around me, and pulls me against her.

And then tears are sliding down my cheeks as I hug her back. “What have I done, Eden?” I choke. “What if he doesn’t come back?”

16

GALEN

After handing over my credit card to the sales assistant, a thought strikes with the force of an uppercut to the jaw.

What if she’s pregnant?

We never spoke about the possibility of it happening, but we rarely went a night without making love. And that last time, I pushed myself deep inside her and held myself there as if I wanted a new life to take root and grow.

I never thought about birth control just as most shifters wouldn’t. Sierra’s pregnancy would be more likely to happen if we’d been mated, but that doesn’t mean accidental pregnancies can’t or don’t happen. It’s just rarer that they occur between unmated couples.

Should I have thought about it long before now? Probably. But having kids never entered the equation before Sierra. Not even when I was with Melody. We were little more than kids, so why would we think of having a family?

You’re not a kid now, and neither is Sierra.

What kind of father would I be? One who smiles proudly even when I’m repeatedly woken in the middle of the night by a baby’s scream louder than a pneumatic drill? Or like my father, a man so tightfisted with his praise that I can’t recall a day in my life when I did something worthy of a clap on the back?

No, I wouldn’t be like Dad.

I wouldn’t look at my daughter and think that just because she’s a woman, she has nothing to contribute to the pack, the same way Dad viewed all women. And I wouldn’t put the need of the pack before my child, the way he and Mom ripped me and Melody apart for their own selfish reasons. I would want my child to be happy. No matter what that happiness looked like.

That’sthe kind of father I would be.

Isthat what I want to happen?

My wolf is silent.

Is that what you want? For Sierra to be pregnant with my child?

In my mind, the image of a wolf familiar to me as my own face takes shape. I know because that wolf is me. He isn’t alone. Running alongside him is a small female wolf with fur a rich brown threaded with caramel highlights.

But besides her is—

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