Chapter 20

twenty

RUSS

I hated watching that man touch Dee. On a basic, intellectual level, I knew I had nothing to worry about. But on that other level, the one I’m trying desperately to banish, I wanted to eat him. Not to mention that he was sloppy with the wand, which made it far more uncomfortable than necessary for Dee.

But I’ll get to see her again in two weeks. At least while sitting in the room with my mate and cub, alone for a few minutes... my instincts grew quieter, and I felt a brief, momentary peace.

Except that as the days to the next appointment drag on, the need rises up inside me again. This isn’t enough, but it’s all I’m going to get.

My life becomes a cycle of worrying about Dee living at her apartment alone, going to the gym, going to work, eating somewhere in between, worrying about Dee, and then going to sleep. I repeat the cycle every day, wishing I just knew where she was, what she was doing, whether or not she was eating right.

I know she was lying to the doctor, and that she hasn’t been taking care of herself. I didn’t watch her all that time for nothing. The only thing she eats before 11 a.m. is cereal, and then after that she makes tea, before walking her dog and then settling in for an evening of salad and chicken fingers, or sometimes she orders pizza.

She orders pizza a lot more often than she probably should.

To sate my growing restlessness, I go hunting again, and now I’ve gone twice as often in one month as I have in the last three years. It curbs the need enough that I can clear my head and wait patiently until the following Friday, when it’s time for Dee’s next checkup.

I take care with my appearance, hoping it doesn’t look like I tried too hard, then drive in so I arrive two minutes before our scheduled time.

Dee is polite again, and I wonder if this is my destiny. To be an acquaintance to my mate, my cub’s mother. I wonder what I can possibly do to show her that I’m right for her.

It is a marvel, even a second time, to see our cub up on the ultrasound screen. There she is. My chest swells as I look at her, and then down at Dee. She’s also too busy staring at the screen to notice me watching her, observing her, studying all the lovely planes of her face. Her breasts are slowly growing, which I can only tell because I haven’t seen her for two weeks.

My heart aches thinking of the wet nurse waiting to step in as soon as the cub is born. What will my life be like, raising this little one by myself? That had been my plan all along, and I had loved the idea of it—loved it enough that I saved and saved so I could afford the package at DreamTogether.

And now... the thought of Dee walking out of our lives makes the clamp around my heart constrict so tight, I think my lungs might burst.

“She’s beautiful,” I say. Dee nods in agreement, but doesn’t speak. When I look down at her, her eyes are shimmering. Then she looks away from the screen and covers up her chest with her arms, and she’s quiet for the rest of our time with the doctor.

After the appointment, I pause outside the DreamTogether office building, just like last time. I can’t let her leave without finding out what she was thinking about.

“Are you all right?” I’m the one who asks this time.

“What do you mean? I’m fine.” She winces. “He’s sure not gentle with that thing, though.”

“He fucking sucks at it,” I say.

A laugh bursts out of her. She wipes at one of her eyes, and it’s clear she was on the verge of tears.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Really. You seemed upset in there.”

Dee furrows her brow. “Nothing’s wrong,” she says, her voice a tad defensive. “Just pregnancy hormones.”

“Hormones or not, your feelings still matter,” I say. “I just want to make sure that you’re all right, Dee. Is Robbie...” His name comes out of my mouth like a curse, because I don’t even want to acknowledge that someone else is tending to her needs. “...is he taking good care of you?”

And like that, her eyes well up with tears again, and this time they all burst free.

“No!” she cries, rubbing her eyes and trying to whisk them away .

“No?” I feel my lips curl to expose all of my fangs. “Has he done something to you? I’ll?—”

“I dumped him, okay?” she says through what have quickly become sobs. “So no. Robbie is not taking care of me .”

I blanch. She left the human man? “Why?” I ask rather stupidly. I should be over the moon, but I want to know why she’s crying when she’s the one who dumped him.

“Because I fucked you, that’s why!” She collapses against her car, using the hood to hold herself up. Someone stares at us as they walk from the parking lot up to the front door of the building. That’s how she sees it. And, I suppose, fucking is what we did out in the woods that day.

“It wasn’t right to stay in a relationship with him after screwing him over like that,” she says between sniffles.

I want to be pleased that Robbie is now done and over with, but I can tell that it hurts Dee immensely.

“Would you...” I begin slowly. “Would you like an iced coffee?” We’re reaching the tail end of summer now, but it’s still quite hot out today. “I can just listen. I know that without him, you’re home alone a lot.”

She frowns at this reminder that I watched her when I shouldn’t have, but I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen.

“Yeah,” she admits through her tears, sniffling. “I am. Even with Boomer around, it’s not the same.”

I nod in understanding. I’ve lived alone for a long time, but I’m always socializing with the other staff at the hospital. Now Dee is home alone all day when her friends are at work, and they can’t meet with her every single night of the week. She went out of her way to adopt Boomer. There’s something in her life she wants, but doesn’t have yet.

“We’ll just talk, okay?” I say, opening the passenger door of my car for her. As if on autopilot, the weeping Dee steps in, then I close it behind her .

I drive us both carefully over to the same coffee spot as the last two times we met. She laughs through her tears as we pull in.

“You really like this place. We were in a totally different part of town and now you’ll have to take me back to get my car.”

I shrug. “Worth it for the croissants here.”

When we get our drinks, we sit outside, and at last Dee’s crying has abated. Her face is an adorable flushed pink, though her eyes are still red. I wait for her to speak first, so I don’t crowd her.

“Russ,” she says finally after a few minutes of silence. “What do you really want?”

I turn and blink at her. The words that almost come out of my mouth are, you . But I don’t want to come on so strong.

“What do you mean by ‘want’?” I ask. “I want a more peaceful world. I want food to cost less. I want more people to be healthy.”

She shakes her head. “For yourself. Why did you do DreamTogether in the first place?”

Oh. I stare at her for a moment, trying to remember what I came into this hoping to achieve, because what I’ve found in the meantime is so far beyond what I imagined.

“A family,” I say finally. “I’ve seen so many people find joy in it. I’ve probably wanted a cub of my own since I was... well, a cub myself. I want a child to play games with, to watch them grow, to teach them sports and help them go into the world on their own and spread their wings. And to know that I was a part of it.”

Dee is watching me, not speaking, as I finish. Her lips are slightly parted, and her brows are drawn together in sympathy .

“That’s the whole reason?” she asks. “Nothing like carrying on your family name or whatever?”

I furrow my brow in confusion. “What? No.” I sigh and lean my head on my hand, elbow propped on the table. “My parents were... fine. I came out all right. But that’s not why. I want to be there for all the firsts. I can’t wait to teach her how to hunt, and see the first time she tastes fresh prey. I want to be there when she gets her first good grades, and when she gets her first pet. I want to teach her to swim.” Dee arches an eyebrow. “Swimming is an important skill,” I say, holding up one clawed finger. “You never know when you might fall in a river.”

She laughs at this, and it feels so good to make her laugh after watching her cry. “I never thought to be prepared for surprise rivers.”

Her hand is lying out on the table, and I want so badly just to scoop it up in mine. Instead, I touch just the pad of my finger to her palm, dwarfing it, and her eyes dart up to mine.

“What did you want?” I ask her. “When you did DreamTogether?”

It doesn’t look like she expected this question, and I wonder if even she knows the answer to it.

“A job,” she says, her tone carefully neutral. “That’s all.”

More and more, I think this is what she’s been telling herself all along, and now she believes it. I want to ask her if she felt anything today while we looked at the ultrasound of our cub together, but I know that would be crossing a line.

“And what do you want now?” I ask, pushing just a little harder. I know her. I understand her, I believe. She longs for connection, just as I do, and that was certainly why we bonded so quickly and so easily. She’s a caretaking type, like I am, and that much is apparent just in how she loves Boomer.

And I think trying to put up a wall between us, between herself and our cub, is taxing Dee to her limit.

“I don’t know,” she finally says, lowering her eyes. “I really don’t. I just... I know that I’m sad all the time, Russ.”

The way she says my name, but in such a melancholy voice, makes me want to put my arms around her and drag her into my lap. I want to take her back to my house and tuck her in a blanket with hot cocoa and a movie, then snuggle her until she falls asleep.

“Were you sad when you were with Robbie?” I ask, trying to use my gentlest voice.

She shakes her head. “It was more like... before, I could hide the sad underneath where Robbie was. Now there’s nowhere for it to go.”

“And Boomer isn’t enough?”

“He’s wonderful,” Dee says, and the tears are coming back. “But no, he’s not enough.” She sniffles. “I thought this job would be great, Russ. I thought it would be exactly what I needed.” The tears are streaming faster now, and people are looking at us, but I couldn’t care less about them even if the world was ending. I lean closer to Dee and gently stroke her back. “Instead, I feel more alone than ever. Except for this one.” She slides her hand off the table, and onto her belly. I bite my lip because I want nothing more than to encompass her hand in mine.

“Are you worried that when it’s over, you’ll be alone again?” I ask.

She nods her head as she cries. I can’t help it anymore, and I reach around her to gather her up in my arms. She doesn’t resist at all, and starts crying harder into the fur of my chest .

“You don’t have to be alone,” I tell her quietly, so no one can overhear. I rock her gently from side to side. “It’s okay to want more. To ask for more.”

Dee hiccups. “But I don’t want the same thing you want, Russ. I would never make a good mom. And I’m really not a good choice for a ‘mate,’ either.”

I pull back and peer down my nose at her, perplexed. “What? Of course you are. You’re...” Don’t come on too strong , I try to tell myself. Though I don’t know if I have a choice but to say what I feel right now. “You’re perfect, Dee. You’re everything that I...” I trail off. I’ve spent my whole life wanting her, almost four decades of it. And it was fully worth the wait.

“That you, what?” she asks, and I can’t lie to those huge, blue eyes.

“You’re all I could have hoped for, everything I could have dreamed of,” I finally tell her. “You’re funny and sassy, and you love so deeply. I see how you care about Boomer, how he means the world to you. You treasure things closely.”

I let one of my hands settle on hers where it rests atop her belly, and splay my fingers. “You would make an amazing mom.”

She sniffs a few more times, but her tears have slowed.

“I don’t know you,” she says after a time. “I don’t know the real Russ at all. So what am I supposed to say to that?”

I can’t help but smile. She thinks this is such a bad thing.

“Then why don’t we get to know each other?” I ask, letting her go now that she’s calmer.

“Oh.” It’s like the thought never occurred to Dee. “Yeah. I guess... I guess I would like that.”