Page 52 of Raven

"Do you have that kind of money?"

"Not lying around. It's fine. I'll figure something out. If I get desperate, Malcolm said I could sign up for the Sentinels and do a two-year stint. The first year alone is more than enough to cover it. Once I'm signed up with Malcolm, no one can touch me, not even humans. I'll get an advance and pay them off, and then when I'm done, I'll be clean."

I felt her again—a rip against my ability, so harsh I had to take a step back. I'm not sure if she saw me flinch, but I managed to protect myself and throw up an extra shield.

"I could lend you the money," she said quickly.

"No. I'm not taking your money. It's for college."

She came up to me then, closer. Close enough that I looked down at her. I knew my eyes were still shifted, I could tell.

"Raven ..."

I bowed my head a little. I needed to gain control. I was like a firework standing close to a heat source. "Please, can we talk about the baby?" I was barely holding on and she had to have felt it from me. This wasn't even an extra ability thing. It was shifters, mates, potentials. We all had connections with each other and what we felt, and our animals danced.

"Let me give you the money. It's half my mess. If you don't want to take the money, you can pay back half of it." She looked at me with such sincerity and I felt it from her too, that I almost backed down.

I didn't want to. This wasn't her mess. No matter what she said. "I'll think about it. Let me see what I can come up with myself."

She studied me for a moment and then nodded. "If you can't figure it out on your own, come to me and I'll give you the money, loan it, whatever makes you comfortable. You have to promise me that. I couldn't live with myself if you got carted off to some human prison."

"I promise. Malcolm's offer isn't a bad one. But please, can we--"

She cut me off again. Not with words this time, but with her lips. She pushed up, pressing her mouth to mine, pressing her hand into my chest right over my heart and it beat for her. My hand instantly went around her back, pulling her into me, my mouth pressing hard against hers.

"Tia ..." I breathed.

"Sorry."

"No." I shook my head. I didn't need her to be sorry.

"I'm a few days late. I'm never late. I snuck a test out of the cabinet in the bathroom. Arsehole one has a stash of them." Arsehole one and two is what we'd named them. Ashley and Sabina were their names, but they were arseholes. Did everything they could to make Tia's life hell. Giving them names just made us feel better. "I know they're meant for humans, but I thought, why not. So I peed on it, and two blue lines came up."

A large part of me wanted to smile, hell, I wanted to fucking grin, but the seventeen-year-old part of me, he wanted to ask what the holy fuck did we do now? Because I didn't know what this meant for us, and in truth, right at that moment, I was just a kid. A kid in an almost man's body and I had no idea about the world, even if I felt like I knew it all. "Are you keeping it?"

She didn't move away from me and maybe that made it worse, with the apprehension coming off her. I had to holdmyself still and keep my mouth closed and let her answer. "I want to," she said. "But I don't know if it is possible."

"It is if we want to. We could go to society, get them to okay a mating? We do it now, they won't know about the baby. We can wing it, fake the dates." I didn't know where these ideas were coming from, and I could only imagine what my mother would be like, but then, I was almost eighteen. She couldn't do a thing but be mad at me and this was too important.

"What about your life? College, work?"

I moved closer to her than I felt like I could and she didn't back away. "You would be my life. You are my life."

"If you sign up with Malcolm, when you’re away for two years we won't see you."

"If we're mated that won't matter. Me being a Sentinel gives us status. Because I sign up with the Sentinels and I get to move to the compound and if you're my mate, when I finish my stint of service, if I stay and if I graduate, you can come with me. But there's no way I won't graduate. We'll be set up for life. We'd have a life."

"But you'd not be around. For two years, you'd be gone. There's no leave. Our child, your child ... they'd have no father for the first two years." Her eyes searched mine. "You told me yourself, growing up without a father was the worst thing in your life. Could we do this to our own?"

"That's because he isn't here now and I don't know him. The baby won't know I'm missing. It'll be young. I can slip back in, form those bonds." In my head it was right. And no, I didn't want to be away from my child. "If I'm a Sentinel, you'd be protected, you both would. Society would push you both up the ranks."

"If this is the best way then why do you sound like you're trying to convince yourself too?"

I had to bite my lip. "I'm just a student with a bar job right now. I have nothing to offer, nothing I can do to protect us, butwe have this chance." The truth is if I told my mother and she turned me out, I'd have nothing. Not that I imagined she’d do that. "This is the answer to everything even if neither of us want it. It gets my debt with the humans paid off, it sets us up for life, it's just two years of our lives."

"And what if you don't come back? Being a Sentinel isn't a game, Raven. You're not out on a picnic or a hike. You're fighting a war, you're defending our society." She stepped into me then and she wrapped her arms around my waist, pressed her head to my chest. I held her against me, wrapping my arms equally around her. Her heart beat against mine. "I don't think I'll make it if I lost you, baby or not. I love you."

My panther reached for her, silver fur flickering. I wanted to wrap around her and hold her so close. "I can promise you, you’ll never lose me."

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