Page 11 of The Alpha's Sin
No one has ever spoken like this to me before. Not even my Grandpa, when he was still alive and certainly not Dirk. Yet this man who barely knows me is volunteering to take me and my unborn baby on. His kindness makes me weep even harder.
“Hey, now. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be all right.” He stands up and puts his arms around me. I press my face to his chest and breathe him in—why does his leather and spice and fur scent make me feel so safe? I also like it when he calls me “kitten” and “sweetheart.” Dirk always just called me “babe” which is such a casual nickname and not really very sweet at all when you think about it.
While Logan is comforting me, the Doctor walks back in. He explains that it can be dangerous to X-ray pregnant women. He’s fairly certain my head is okay—the X-ray was just hospital protocol.
“You don’t seem to have a concussion—your pupils are dilating and contracting normally. I think you’ll be all right. As for the dizziness, it was probably caused by the pregnancy. Have you had a lot of morning sickness? Difficulty keeping things down?” he asks me.
I nod hesitantly. I hope Logan won’t be mad—I’ve been hiding how often I puke in the mornings from him. But he only takes my hand and squeezes it gently. He’s still pretending to be my husband instead of my brother-in-law but I’m not about to complain. He makes me feel a lot safer than my real husband ever did.
“You need to find an OB-GYN and start on prenatal vitamins and have an ultrasound,” the Doctor says. “Early nutrition and prenatal care is important for a healthy pregnancy.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll make an appointment as soon as we leave here and I’ll make sure they get her in as soon as possible,” Logan answers for me.
I shoot him a surprised look—does he already have a doctor in mind? Maybe he does. He sounds so confident, which is nice because I have no idea what I’m doing. I just now figured out I want to keep this baby. Everything else feels up in the air.
We agree not to do the X-rays and Logan is instructed to keep a close eye on his “wife,” which he agrees to. Then, in a relatively short amount of time, I get released and Logan says to me,
“Come on, sweetheart—let’s go home.”
6
LOGAN
Poppy is quiet on the way home. I think she’s still in shock, poor little kitten. I have to admit, I’m kind of shocked myself. A baby—she’s going to have a baby!
I should have known. I thought her smell had changed since the wedding—she smells fertile. It’s an attractive scent for any male Were—especially an Alpha like me. But I put the scent change down to her being emotional after Dirk left her. Emotions and hormones can change a female’s scent wildly from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour.
The knowledge that she’s pregnant makes me feel even more protective of her. In the Were world, a pregnant female is a considered a precious and delicate person—someone worthy of fighting or dying for. That’s because Were females don’t get pregnant as easily as human females. Some even say our race is slowly dying out because we don’t have enough children.
So I’m glad she wants to keep the pup—whether it’s a boy or a girl, it’s going to be mostly Were. Poppy herself is at least half Were—I can smell that on her—but I get the sense she was raised in the human world. I wonder how much Dirk told her about Were society.
Surely he Shifted for her and showed her his Wolf. That’s a normal and expected part of courtship in the Were world—you don’t ask a woman to be your mate without showing her your Wolf. Being a Beta, his is an unimpressive brown Wolf barely bigger than a large dog, so it shouldn’t have been too frightening for Poppy to see.
At any rate, since she’s half Were herself and carrying a Were baby or “pup” as we call unborn children, she needs to be seen by a Were doctor. The human hospital we went to in order to get her head checked out just won’t cut it. Were babies need special prenatal care and women who are pregnant with Were pups have special needs as well.
I swear to myself I’m going to take good care of Poppy and the baby—I’ll get her the best care and be with her every step of the way. I’m still angry at my brother. How could Dirk do this to her? Why would he go out of his way to get her pregnant when he was clearly planning on leaving her? I’m ashamed to be related to him and I swear if I could get my hands on him, I’d make him sorry he was ever born!
So far, however, my search for my brother is going nowhere. I’ve tried tracking him every way I know how—I even hired a private investigator, which isn’t cheap. But it’s like he dropped off the face of the Earth—he’s just gone. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s probably in another country by now, spending Poppy’s money on liquor and whores. He must have been planning this for months—probably as soon as he found out how much her grandmother’s house was worth. The little shit.
But as angry as I am with Dirk, I can’t help feeling a tiny bit grateful in a weird way. Having Poppy in my house and in my life has been a game changer. I don’t think I realized how lonely I was until she came. She’s a bright, sunny little thing—or she is when she’s not feeling frightened or threatened. I’ve been working hard to make her feel safe—to let her know she can be herself around me. I want to see her happy and glowing, like she was on the day of her wedding. Before Dirk pulled the rug out from under her.
I realize it’s going to be a while before she can feel that way again, but in the meantime, I just really like her company. She’s beautiful and sweet and kind. She’s also fiercely intelligent. She told me that she wanted to go to nursing school and that she was actually accepted to the school of her choice…only Dirk, that asshole, convinced her to move up here with him instead. He really ruined her whole future—or tried to. I’m determined not to let him.
As soon as we get home, I make sure she’s comfortable in her bedroom, though honestly, I wish I could put her in mine. I’d feel better if I could keep an eye on her tonight. Only, how do I ask her if she’d sleep in the same bed as me? It would sound creepy and weird. I don’t want her to feel like I’m coming on to her—I want her to feel perfectly safe with me.
Anyway, even though I find Poppy extremely beautiful, she’s off limits. By Were law, her being my sister-in-law is the same as being my sister. Meaning any kind of intimacy between us would be considered incest, even though we’re not blood related. I’m a Lone Wolf so I don’t participate much in my local pack, but that doesn’t mean I want to break one of the Unbreakable Laws. I can’t do that.
No matter how protective and possessive I feel, Poppy is forbidden fruit.
Not that I should be thinking this way. I push the wrong ideas out of my mind as I dial the number for the local Were clinic. They provide prenatal care for pregnant Were females and pups. I’m going to get Poppy an appointment and be sure she and the baby she’s carrying are healthy.
I’m responsible for them now—both of them. And I’m going to make sure they’re safe and cared for.
7
POPPY
“Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Hayes,” the doctor says, smiling as she enters the room. “I’m Dr. Elizabeth Hawkins but you can just call me Dr. Elizabeth.”
