Page 64 of Shifting Years
It's been years, and Henry hadn't tried anything. The protection ran out after five years, and I bought a gun a week before it did. Images of my Angel finding it while playing had me sell it back to a gun shop, miles outside town.
No shifter would ever harm a child, but had I denied my daughter her father simply because I despised the man who helped create her?
There could have been another father, but Todd was dead. Itfeltlike a lie when I read the telegram, but he went to war and never returned. There were rumors of a mistake, but follow-ups confirmed his KIA status. So I searched, sensing a lie with every cold paper trail. If he wasn't dead, then where was he?
***
Spring turned into summer with heat and injustice turning people angry. Over two hundred thousand protesters marched and screamed through San Francisco protesting Anita Bryant's remarks and the murder of another gay man. In another timeline, I would have been there, but I had a little girl to look after.
Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin performed concerts, and I made a mental note to see them in the eighties when Angel was older. New York stayed dark with a multi-day power outage and violent looting. I kept the television off, so the burning cars and gunshots didn't give my little girl nightmares.
What kind of world am I bringing you into?
Wavering thoughts and a violent world brought a long knife for protection. For days, it had stayed, taped behind the bed's headboard, waiting for a monster who never came.
Gradually, time went by with a lonely little girl who wanted sisters of her own. I did the best I could with playdates with the boy pups and watchedThe Electric Companywith her.Star Trekmade it into reruns, and there were moral lessons in the episodes, but that was television and not reality.
Should I give her a brother or sister?
I could mate again, but if I did, I'd be the one to financially provide. The days of relying on an Alpha were over like dreams of running a restaurant with Todd. So for practice and training, I made money selling homemade blueberry pies. Average desserts were good enough for humans but to shifters with advanced senses? The canned blueberry sludge wouldn't do.
Todd would have chastised me for being out in the forest alone, but I had to live and go out for my sanity and mydaughter's wellbeing. Dozens of trips out before did nothing, and I always smelled ahead. I was safe.
Not today.
Leaves rustled overhead—a whisper of warning too late. Henry dropped from an overhanging limb, and in an instant, I was slammed against the ground. What blueberries didn't crush under my skin decorated the summer grass. Dark, shark-like eyes I had tried to forget stared down.
He slapped my face slightly, looked up, and then around. Nothing happened so he hit me harder. "Oh, yeah. That's nice. It'srealgood."
His calloused hand squeezed my throat. "What did you do, Mike? Every time I look at her, I think of something else orusedto. People would talk about your child, and I couldn't remember her when they did."
The spell helped, but magic doesn't give you everything. I got years of safety, but Henry knew something was off and it picked at him like a scab until it burst open with pus.
His grip loosened, but his dark eyes gleamed with a twisted kind of satisfaction. "She's mine, isn't she?"
"No," I coughed.
He sniffed my temporary garbage scent. "Filthy, lying whore. You denied a man his daughter?"
"A monster." My pounding heart raced, loud enough for us to hear as I stood. "I'll make sure she never knows."
"She'smine. You had no right!"
On some level, I could agree. I know how I'd feel if someone tookmyAngel away. Any consideration disappeared as he unbuckled his pants. I stepped away, but a supernaturally hard slap threw me back while my vision dimmed with grey shadows.
"Fine," he sneered. "I'll put another pup in you. And another. And another."
Todd was right. The man was monstrous, but myrealAlpha—the one who lived in my heart—was a fighter. He was everything I wasn't and wouldn't lay on the ground with tears going down his face.
Henry didn't pull off my jeans but ripped them apart with shifter strength and then my top. To my shame, my dick was semi-hard, and slick grew from behind. My brain screamed 'monster,' but my body betrayed me, responding to his Alpha scent.
He sneered. "I knew it. The whore Omega can't get enough, but don't worry. I'll give it to you and knock you up again. Why? Because I'm a real Alpha, not some ghost stupid enough to get drafted. He should have hired a doctor. He had the money."
Whispering Hills was off the grid and, thanks to an old spell, notreallythought about much. Todd was found because someone told the military about his exact location. Henry, who sent my Alpha to die, hid behind a doctor's note. With his money, he could find one who'd write down anything.
"That ghost is more of a man than you'll ever be. He was right, you are a worm."
"When I stick myworm, well, more like a big snake, inside you, tell me who's bigger."
