21. Easton

Chapter twenty-one

Easton

H olden Degarmo was nothing if not pragmatic. He always told me the best way to earn someone's trust was to admit to unimportant things that put me in a bad light. It's a habit I've fallen into over the years without even realizing it. At some point, it stopped being a calculated move and just became part of how I operate.

But there's something about Emily that forces me to examine all of my motives. I am a fucking asshole for doing this, but I figure if I can't tell Emily the truth about being my mate, I can come clean about the circumstances of our meeting. Besides, she's going to run into Mikey soon enough.

We walk through the gardens out toward the small pool dad had built for us when we were kids, in silence, as my brain tries to work through everything I need to be doing. She holds my hand, her head on swivel taking it all in. "This is amazing. These plants must have been here forever."

Feeling like an idiot for dragging her through the one part of the house that would interest her the most, I slow down and show her the rose beds. "My great, great, great grandmother had the original roses planted here, and it's always been tradition to keep them up."

"There are wild roses that could make it that long, but these must be replanted a little more often. Your gardener is doing a great job."

"I'll introduce you to him soon. He'd appreciate hearing it from a colleague."

She smiles.

"Emily, there's something I've got to tell you." All the things I'm keeping from her go through my mind as she turns to look at me, her eyes searching my face.

Your brother sold you.

The father of your child is in my basement.

You're my mate.

I'm a coward and go with the easiest. "The day we met. I came to your shop for business."

She sits down on the brick half wall that lines the rose bed. "Business?"

I sit next to her and sigh. "Now that I'm Alpha, I've been taking a break from my normal business and am trying to catch up on dad's. I've been going through all of his paperwork, deals, debts–all of it. Your brother was one of his debtors. He borrowed over half a million dollars to prop up a flower shop he owned."

"He does not own a flower shop," Emily starts. "I've never seen any of that money–"

I put my hands on her shoulders. "Emily, I'm not accusing you, I promise. I just didn't want to keep anything from you."

Asshole , Samuel's voice accuses in my head, calling me out, but I ignore it. "I sent my right hand, Mikey, there the day before, to check out the place and shake down your brother."

"Tall, blonde werewolf?"

I nod. "Yeah, his mate is pregnant, so it made him nervous to show up at a job and find a pregnant woman there instead of the man he was looking for." Guilt gnaws at me, but I ignore it. The sanitized version is all I can bear to tell her. I can't imagine she'd stay here another minute if she knew what we'd been prepared to do. "I hope you can forgive me for not telling you sooner."

She looks at me curiously. "Have you found him yet?"

"Your brother?"

I shake my head. She doesn't let go of my hand, but her eyes drop to the path our feet rest on. "I hope for his sake you don't find him."

"Emily–"

She holds up a hand. "It's okay. I mean, it's not, but these are the rules. You dance, you've got to pay the fiddler. He wants to play games he has no business playing. I don't like him, but I don't wish him ill."

She looks down at our joined hands. "Can you do me a favor? If–when the time comes, can you keep it to yourself?"

The request takes me aback for a moment. "Are you sure?"

She nods and laughs a small, bitter laugh. "Easton, I would put money on your family, being just one of many he's managed to 'borrow' from. I'd honestly be surprised if someone else doesn't get to him first."

"I'm sorry." It's lame, but honestly, there aren't enough words to express the feeling of dread that comes over me as we sit watching the setting sun.

She lets out a long breath. "Me too."

***

Emily is quiet for the rest of the evening, her brain obviously working on the ins and outs of my current confession. She's so quiet, I expect her to send me away for the night. Instead, she brushes her teeth, strips down to nothing, and gets into bed in front of me.

"You don't have to go to bed this early if you're not tired. But lately everything is exhausting for me. I won't be able to stay awake much longer."

I sit down on the edge of the bed and take her hand. "Are you sure you don't mind me staying?"

"Easton, I'm not mad at you. I know who you are." She closes her eyes. "I'm just sad. I can't give this kid one relative. My parents are dead. It's uncle might as well be. It's daddy is a piece of shit. I mean it will always have Angie…fuck."

She jumps out of bed, waddles to the sitting area, and turns on her phone. "Fuck. Twenty-seven missed calls. She's going to have the cops out looking for me."

"Who?"

"Angie. My best friend. Fuck. I'm going to go sit in the bathroom and call her so she doesn't think I'm dead. Will you be here when I get out?"

She walks around completely naked as she talks, her perfect breasts catching my attention, distracting me from any thoughts.

"Easton?" she says, stepping closer. "Easton, my eyes are up here," she teases. I can't help but lean down and put my nose to her neck.

"Yes, I'll be here if you don't mind me staying."

"Please do," she says as she wanders off to the bathroom to make her phone call.

I strip down to nothing, ever hopeful, and slip under the covers to wait for her to return. The other confessions on my list will have to happen soon. I can't keep them to myself forever, but at least now I can rest knowing we survived the first one.

She appears twenty minutes later, chewing on her lip. She plugs the phone back in and comes back to the bed, sliding to my side.

"How did it go?"

She curls up against my chest and smiles faintly. "She's demanding to meet you as soon as possible."

"Lunch tomorrow?"

"That'd be wonderful. It'll keep her from texting me a million times until I produce you."

"Did she have the police out looking for you?"

She huffs a laugh, "No. I share my location with her, so she knew where I was. She did a little bit of detective work to confirm you lived here. She just wanted the debrief."

"What did you tell her?"

"You want to know everything?"

I brush the hair from her face, twining the loose strands behind her ear. "Everything you feel comfortable sharing."

"I told her I was having a great time, and that you and I had decided to be exclusive. I left out the more violent parts of our morning. I don't want to give her an anxiety attack."

"What about the less violent parts of our day?"

She smiles. "I might have given her a brief rundown of the more pleasant parts of the day."

I bury my head into her neck and press my nose to the artery there where the blood runs close to the surface of her skin. She runs her hand down my side slowly until she has my cock in her hand. She begins to slowly stroke it, almost as if she's playing with it, exploring it. She runs her thumbs up and down my shaft until she gets to where my knot is starting to swell.

"Easton?" she asks quietly.

"Mmmhmm."

"Can I ask an embarrassing question? It might be a bit of a boner killer."

I snort. "I'm holding a beautiful naked woman. I don't think anything could kill—"

"It's about the baby's daddy."

I open my eyes and pull back. She continues to play with my cock, stroking it absently as she would a hand or some other more public appendage. "Sure."

"Do only wolves have knots?"

I shake my head. "I'm not an expert, but a lot of shifters do, actually. I'm sure other creatures do, too. Why?"

She releases my cock and runs her hand over her belly with a sigh. "My relationship with Gremlin Baby's dad wasn't exactly the healthiest. He liked to keep me in the dark about a lot of things."

My stomach drops, but I say nothing. "He ran in some pretty shady circles, would disappear for days on business, and–"

I sit quietly and wait for her to finish, the knot of guilt in my stomach growing by the second. "It was stupid. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe it was a control thing. But if he could lie to me about something, he would. I felt like I was always playing chess with him, but he was making up the rules as we went."

She pauses for a moment and looks down at my cock. "He had a knot. It was not like yours. It was… small ."

She puts an emphasis on the word 'small' and despite how horrible I feel, I can't help but snort a laugh. She looks up at me and grins. "I'm not just saying that to stroke your ego. I asked him about it once, but he said it was just extra skin he was born with, but now that I've seen a wolf knot, it was definitely a knot. Do you think…"

Our eyes meet. "Do you think my baby could be a shifter of some sort? How does that work?"

If Andreev is a shifter of some sort, that would go toward explaining a lot. "It's possible. I'm not sure how it works for other shifters. With wolves, the shifter DNA seems to overrule everything else. Very rarely is a baby born of one human parent and one wolf that is unable to shift. I could track him down and find out for you."

She shakes her head. "No. I'm sure a DNA test will tell us once the baby's here."

She turns her back to me and pulls my arm over her so it rests just under her breasts. "OH GOD," she cries out suddenly, turning back over and putting a hand on my cheek. "I just had another thought–can you shift immediately? Will I give birth to a little animal? What if he's a shrimp shifter, or a turkey shifter, or–" her eyes grow wide, "a worm shifter?"

This makes me laugh out loud, which earns me a sharp pinch on my ass. She rolls her eyes as I struggle to catch my breath.

Finally, I calm down enough to speak. "I don't think those types of shifters exist. What does it look like on the ultrasound?"

"A regular baby."

"Shifting–for better or worse–doesn't start until puberty. You'll have a very human baby here in a few weeks."

"I'm sorry for the dumb questions. Like I said, he wasn't very forthcoming. It's very different from how things are with you. I feel like I always get an honest response from you, no matter how weird or dumb my question is."

I pull her to my chest so she can't see my face, Samuel's voice in my ear once again.

ASSHOLE.