Page 43 of Sold Bullied Mate

“Give him a shot, okay?” Ash’s eyes are kind, softened, something I haven’t seen from her yet. I nod, and she showsherself off the deck, back through the hallway. I hear her walking down the stairs, then catch the eventual closing of the front door.

I’m just about to stand, to force myself back into the sewing room or to focus on cooking, when I get the strangest feeling at the edges of my vision. When I try to look out at the landscape, it’s blurry, just a haze of red that doesn’t quite form the same shapes as it did before.

A premonition.

Sitting back in my chair, I suck in a deep breath, close my eyes. Pinpoint the energy, feel the shape of it—it’s crisp, new, yet uncertain. From the future, then.

I sink inside my body, wait for it to come to me, being patient like Beth said. It could be hours or minutes that go by, but I stay still, and eventually, I hear it.

Wailing.

A sort of breathy, sucking cry. It only takes me two seconds to realize it’s a baby crying, and my chest squeezes at the sound of it, desperate and alone, sad. I bite my tongue, try to stay focused, and relax so the premonition doesn’t fizzle away.

And then, for the first time in my life, I hear my own voice in my head. My voice from the future, shushing the baby, whispering softly to it.

“Shh, love, everything is going to be okay,” I hear myself say, voice ragged and tired.

Then, a feminine voice, maybe Ash, “She’s beautiful. You did such a good job, Kira.”

Shock rolls through me, and I accidentally cut off the premonition. It fizzles out, replaced with a thudding, sudden headache.

I don’t have to examine what it means. It’s the future, and I’m pregnant. Ash is there. I glance down at my belly, head spinning at the thought.

It’s the future, but I don’t know how far ahead it is—it could be years, for all I know. But something inside of me, maybe intuition, or maybe a sense from the spirits around me, tells me that this premonition is coming to me from nine months in the future.

Which means I realize, while sitting alone in his house, that I’m pregnant with Dorian’s baby.

Chapter 27 - Dorian

It’s still dark outside when I arrive at the northern border, breathless and with the headlights off. I know these roads like the back of my hand, and in case there’s anyone else out here, we don’t need them seeing the lights and gathering more information on us.

Emin, Kellen, and two of the patrol guys are in a little bunker when I walk up. I remember these from when I used to join patrols as a teenager—they’re small mounds that you hardly notice until you get close to them. Nearly impossible to see, but a place for shifters to hide out and keep an eye on things. Some shifters stay in these, others actually walk just inside the territory lines, shifted and keeping a nose up for enemy scents.

When I stop just outside the mound and wait, a small section of it shifts to the side, and Emin pokes his head out, looking up at me with bright, excited eyes.

“Dorian,” he says, and for a second it’s almost like we’re kids again, and he’s discovered a cool path through the woods we can take next time we hunt. Instead, he shifts to the side, allowing me to shimmy my body into the space, and I realize this is nothing like when we were kids.

Against the back wall of the small bunker is a cheap fold-up lawn chair, and sitting in it is a man I’ve never seen before, his wrists tied together behind his back, his ankles looped carefully to the legs of the chair.

A shifter from our pack sits on either side of the chair, still in their wolf forms, dripping saliva from their mouths, their sharp eyes darting, growls low in their throats.

“Caught him this morning,” Emin says, breathless, raking a hand through his hair, and I recognize the scent of this stranger, even though I’ve never seen him before.

A Grayhide.

On the phone, Kellen said they’d captured someone trying to make it over our territory lines, but he didn’t specify exactly which pack it was. Now, a low growl forms in my throat, too, but I push it down, trying to focus on the moment, on this man, shifter, in front of me.

He’s gagged, and he doesn’t look afraid. If anything, he looks exhausted. Resigned to his fate. His hair is short, looking like it’s been recently buzzed. His eyes are gray and flat, a scar stretching over his left cheek faint, but still shining a silvery line in the low light of the bunker.

Well-defined and sharp-eyed. Likely some sort of reconnaissance for the Grayhides.

And surely just barely over eighteen years old.

But why? Why send someone over here to get information from our pack when Jarred likely already has several plants in here already? Trying to get a wolf over enemy lines is practically a death wish, and he had to have known that when sending this shifter in our direction.

Unless our defenses were completely down, we never would have let something like this slip through. No matter how stealthy, how well-trained, he never would have made it through our lines.

I stand still in front of the man, watching as he raises his gaze to mine. His jaw is strong, his stare somehow unwavering, even in his position. Even bound and gagged, he gives off the air of someone who wouldn’t back down to anyone.

---