31. Emily

Chapter thirty-one

Emily

S o far, my first hour of being Mrs. Degarmo is going well. I got married against my will, was ambushed by a car bomb, and then my water broke in the foyer of the Degarmo mansion, all within the span of about forty-five minutes.

As soon as we shut the door of my suite, Tracey helps me out of the black ball gown. She throws it in the tub to be dealt with later and pulls out a big muu-muu to pull over my head. My back is achy, but I doubt I'm close to actual labor. "You need to walk," Tracey fusses.

"I'm leaking all over the floor," I complain, slightly embarrassed.

"Worse things have been on that floor," she says with a dismissive wave of the hand. So I walk, trying to stay on the same path and keep the mess down to the minimum. There is gunfire from three sides of the house, but our side is surprisingly quiet.

Even with the commotion all around, I can hear something that sends a chill down my spine–the sound of chewing. Maybe it's the wolf Easton says is in me, but I hear it long before Tracey's human ears can catch it. It's the sound of hundreds of tiny teeth gnawing through wood.

"Tracey," I reach a hand out for her shoulder as I divert off my path, "can you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she says and then pauses. It grows louder, more frantic, until I can pinpoint its location. Without thinking, I start to move toward the French doors. "Stay away from there," Tracey hisses, but I can't help but move toward the sound, my curiosity as bad as a cat's.

"Tracey, over here."

Where the outer wall meets the glass door, the noise grows louder. I watch and listen for a moment as realization dawns on me. "Tracey…they're trying to get in!"

A nose peaks through a small hole in the bottom of the door and I put a hand to my mouth to keep from screaming. "Tracey, they're trying to take out the whole door frame."

Tracey moves in front of me, pulling out her gun and shooting the first rat to try to come through. "Back up!"

Blood splatters everywhere, but it doesn't phase the rats, another just moves up to take its place.

She aims again and fires as several rats push through the hole created by the first few rats at the front.

I jump on the bed and press my back to the wall as Tracey goes to the door and screams, "I don't care if we have an entire army outside…someone better come in here and get these motherfucking rats out of this room right now."

She fires another shot. For someone losing her shit, she's an amazing shot. She takes out three more coming through the hole in the time it takes for the room to fill with Easton and his men.

"They've almost gnawed through the entire door frame!" I yell, as men come into the room. I expect an entire room of guns to get pulled out like some crazy zombie apocalypse movie, but some silent signal passes among the men. Only a few pull out weapons, while the rest begin to strip down in front of me and Tracey as if we're not there. Even Easton is quickly completely naked.

We are totally in a life and death situation. I'm in labor, and I'm now locked down for life, but I cannot help but gawk at the beautiful bodies I have been unknowingly surrounded by this entire time. I mean Darius and Jacob are pretty hot in button up suits and ties, but to see them without a stitch of clothing on now that I'm married and we're all near death seems incredibly unfair but on par with the universe and my luck in general.

Every naked man is a shifter of some kind. Hard abs and thick thighs quickly meld into the bodies of beautiful wild animals. Most are wolves, but there are a few large cats and even a beautiful horse among the pack. The non shifters ignore it all. They keep their guns trained on the rats attempting to enter the room, picking them off as they make it through the small hole created by their dead friend.

Someone's radio goes off in the chaos. "I'm approaching Emily's back door with the cats. Don't shoot!" yells a voice over the radio.

The human men among the group switch out guns for knives and blades of all types as the French doors start to shake and rattle. The door comes loose and then falls with a crash, glass and wood splinters spraying the area. A deluge of rats comes pouring in, ignoring the glass that cuts through their tiny paws and bellies. Smears of blood everywhere, but they don't seem to care. They merely climb over the dead and injured bodies of their comrades.

Immediately, the shifters lunge for the rats. Some of the rats shift into humans as they make it into the room, but Easton's human men are as good with their blades as they are with the guns.

For a moment, I'm completely awestruck watching a rat morph into a full grown man. The idea that something so small can shift into a full-sized human seems impossible. I cannot tear my eyes away as it happens several times across the large room. However, as the fight drags on and the pungent odor of blood fills the room, it quickly becomes a battle to keep my breakfast down.

I close my eyes and press my back to the wall. I'm stuck here now as little fights break out everywhere–the floor covered in rat parts and blood. One of the rats manages to shift quickly enough to open the door and the deluge increases. Rats run on top of each other to try to get in. It makes no sense really…who are these shifters and why are they willing to take on a suicide mission?

The horse shifter is the true hero of the room. He's able to stomp on several rats at a time, but there's only so much any of them can do as the blood begins to make the floor slick. The rats continue to push Easton's men back. They get closer and closer to me by the minute. I have no idea what the plan is then. I jumped up here without even a stick. I prepare to start kicking if I have to, just as a contraction–a strong one this time–pulses through my back, forcing me to grab the bedframe to catch my breath.

"I need a gun or something!" I scream out, my voice sounding frantic even to me.

A man in blood splattered pants lifts his suit jacket and manages to toss one at my feet. I pick it up as the war rages on. In the distance, through the windows, I can see movement. I pray it's the cats, as the rats are quickly becoming too much for everyone in the room to handle.

Man and beast slowly retreat toward my bed as my breath begins to grow labored. I'm starting to hyperventilate.

Another contraction pulses slowly through my back.

Fuck, I forgot to time them.

The rats and men and shifters inch closer to my perch.

I scan the horizon. Relief fills me as the cats finally come into view. They seem to pick up the pace as soon as they see the rats. A dark wolf races alongside them, but there's still a minute or two before they'll break the fence line and meet the back end of the little rat army.

As the alpha, Easton's easiest to spot among all the wolves in the room. He's the tallest and the broadest–the rats seem to know that too and he deals with the largest deluge of tiny fighters of all the shifters in the room.

Seconds tick away, but years seem to pass. The cats make it to the farthest edge of the rat horde, but there's still a lot of enemy in between us and them. The rats in the middle begin to shift back into human form and start to go after the cats. Inside, the rats become more and more bold.

A contraction spasms in my back and I grab hold of the bed frame as tightly as I can, trying to breathe through the pain. It's then that I notice rats streaming into the hall.

"They're in the hall!"

A few men look that way, but most are still wrapped up with the never-ending rats in front of them. The cats are making headway outside, but rats are still everywhere.

I'm mid-contraction when the bedroom door opens and a man steps in. He's beat up and in boxers, but I recognize him right away.

Ivan steps into the room with eyes only for Easton. He enters the room, raises a weapon, and aims as I pick up my own gun from the bed.

"Easton!" I scream and the tall, dark wolf turns to stare down Ivan. It's enough of a distraction. Ivan's eyes flicker for a moment to me as I pull the trigger on my weapon, but of course, it doesn't fire. I'd miss anyway…my nerves are shot and my body shakes with another contraction. This one is so hard, so painful, that my eyes are already closed when a gun goes off somewhere in the room.

Terrified to open my eyes, I lay on my side and curl up, hoping the rats will finish us off soon. I lay there waiting, but nothing comes.

Suddenly, there is silence.

Then two things happen at once.

Tracey yells, "Got him!" gleefully and loud enough that everyone stops to watch Ivan fall in place, and a rough, wet tongue licks the entirety of my left cheek in one swoop. Cautiously, I turn in the direction of the tongue. A bloody wolf's muzzle is pushing at my shoulder.

You can't give up. This isn't even the worst situation I've ever been in.

"Easton?" I say aloud. "What the hell?"

I'm pretty sure I warned you that my life isn't normal.

I'm tempted to ask him how he's gotten inside my head. Nothing he's said so far has been vocalized, but then a contraction hits me again, pulling me back into the world of pain and away from being able to even contemplate what's going on around us. I close my eyes and try to breathe, try to count.

Fuck, I felt that , his voice says inside my head.

I breathe out slowly until the pain recedes. When I open my eyes, Easton is standing above me, shifted, and completely buck naked.

"How are you going to fight rats like that?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "I'm not. The cats got them." He helps me sit up and then picks me up in his arms.

All around us is chaos. Tracey's making faces as she steps through the mess on her heels. Blood spattered men–both naked and clothed—are standing around, wiping the gunk off themselves and their weapons. Cats are everywhere. Most of them are perched in the highest places they could reach, cleaning off paws and flanks. The only rats or rat shifters left lay dead on the floor.

The sudden change makes me feel wobbly, as if the world has shifted out from under me. "What happened?"

"I dunno. They started to fall back as soon as Ivan was dead."

"But why?" I ask. "Is he the rat whisperer?"

Easton just shrugs. "We've got men outside running the last of them off." He starts to carry me to the open door.

"That's it? This is how it ends?"

He smiles. "It's not the movies. This is how fights always end in real life. Someone runs away or dies and it's just over."

"Hey, where are we going?"

"To the hospital."

"Not naked and bloody, you aren't. Go take a shower. I'll still be in labor when you get out."

He opens his mouth to retort, but I put a hand over it. "Think carefully before you say what you're about to say, Easton Degarmo. Remember what happened the last time you told me you are the Alpha in charge of everything?"

He stares at me for a long moment and then kisses my hand.

Fair enough, love.

"I'm not your love," I can't help but grump back.

"You were going to kill Ivan for me," he says with a grin.

"Of course I was. Who wouldn't kill that asshole?"

"Lots of people."

"It doesn't mean anything," I insist.

"It means you care."

"In a general ‘I care about humanity' sort of way," I say.

A contraction starts in my back again, and he stops, pulling me close to his body. "I got you, love," he whispers against my ear.

"You can stop calling me that," I grump as the pain recedes.

"Why would I do that? If I say it enough, maybe one day you'll believe me."

"Maybe," I tell him. He kicks open the door to his bedroom and sets me gently on the edge of his bed. He puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me softly on the lips, holding me as the next contraction works its way down my back.

"I'll take your maybe," he whispers and kisses me on the forehead before walking off. "I'll be quick, I promise."

He keeps his promise to be quick, which turns out to be a good thing.

Exactly two hours later, Grayson Degarmo honors us with his presence, kicking and screaming as loud as his tiny lungs will allow. He has my green eyes, curly dark hair, and thankfully, according to the tests–wolf DNA.

"He kinda looks like me," Easton says to me later that evening.

I roll my eyes. "All babies look like potatoes."

Easton covers Grayson's ears. "Don't say that in front of our son. Your mom didn't mean it," he says to the baby, touching his cheek before moving away.

I'm tempted to throw something at him, but there's nothing handy. He introduces himself as dad to every nurse and doctor that comes into the room, changes diapers, and even sleeps on the uncomfortable couch, so I don't have to stay alone overnight.

"So you're serious about this whole dad thing?" I say aloud, slightly weirded out as he takes the paperwork for Grayson's birth certificate and starts to fill it out.

"Deadly. Did you think I wasn't?" he asks.

"You lied about everything, Easton," I say softly. I don't want to bring it up again, but it needs to be said aloud, to be acknowledged.

"And I was stupid for doing that. I will spend forever trying to make it up to you. I would do anything to convince you that's not the real me."

"Anything?" I repeat, unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. "Like change every diaper for this kid and the next? My contract says I'm on the hook for a biological heir, after all."

"Every diaper? I–I thought more along the line of trips or jewelry or…" he starts.

"But those are easy. Diapers…diapers are always there, waiting and full, every two hours." I tell him cheerfully.

"Every two hours?" He looks up from the paperwork and finally notices the smile on my face.

"You're hilarious, you know."

"And you're an asshole, but I still l-" I stop myself short from saying the last word. The big word. The word that carries so much weight, it is too heavy to throw around.

"I'm sorry. What was that? You still what now?" he grins.

I hold out a hand to him. He puts his pen down and takes it, letting me pull him close to the bed. "I still like the way your ass looks in those sweatpants," I whisper in his ear.

He laughs. "I'll take it. Marriages have been built on far less."

I thread my fingers through his. I don't know how I feel about him or any of this or what any of what's happened in the past week means for our future. But at the moment, I have a man who did everything he could to save my life AGAIN, who let me practically break his hand through every contraction, and who's now calling my baby his son. If I'm going to be weak for someone, maybe it's okay to be weak, every once in a while, for him.

I kiss the top of his hand like he's done for me a million times in the short time I've known him. "Thank you, Easton, for everything."

He shrugs and kisses me on the forehead. "What else are husbands for?"