Page 85 of Bitter Heat
Kerry glanced Caleb’s way. “Even if the babe’s not his?”
“Of course.” Caleb rocked in the chair. A creak lifted from the boards on the porch. “Will you keep him?”
“The baby or Janus?”
Caleb laughed. “I meant the baby, but I’m happy to talk about the keeping of Janus if you prefer.”
“I don’t know. About the baby. I don’t think I’ll love it.” He frowned. “My alpha is a bad person. I don’t know if I can stand to see his face in this baby’s features.”
Caleb rocked back and forth with an open expression. Kerry saw no judgment there, so he went on, “My in-laws will love him. They’ll spoil him. Give him everything he needs. And if he’s an alpha, he’ll be the heir.”
“I see.”
“But I think it’ll still be hard,” Kerry said. “I suspect that when I see him, hold him, nurse him…I might feel something. I don’t think Iwantto feel it, whatever it is.”
Caleb nodded but said nothing.
“Do you feel something? When you hold Bekhem?”
“I do. Yes. But I wanted him. And I love his father very much. Well, in my way of loving, which is perhaps different than yours. But he’s the best man I know. So…it isn’t quite the same.” He gave Kerry a sympathetic smile. Not pitying, which would have been so easy and even deserved, but sympathy was so much less condescending. It was at that moment that Kerry decided to like the man despite it all.
“I always wanted to be a pater,” Kerry confessed. “Growing up, I would hold dolls and imagine they were mine. I didn’t understand back then that I’d need an alpha to help me make one. But once I got old enough, and Pater explained the facts to me, I was keen on that, too. I wanted to be someone’s omega. The lover of someone good and strong.”
“Janus is good and strong.”
“Is he? He said he wasn’t good to you.”
Caleb smiled. “No, he was awful to me. And worse to Xan. But he’s good deep down, and he’s shown that, hasn’t he? I believe you’ll make him even better.”
“He should find an omega who can be—”
“Shh. We don’t talk about shoulds when it comes to love. You love him. He loves you. There’s no ‘should’ about it.”
“I don’t know—”
“I do. We have to work to make our best life out of the broken pieces of ourselves and the world around us, and that’s all we can ever do.”
“And if that life we make is against the rules?”
“Even better.” Caleb grinned sharply.
Kerry’s heart rose in his chest with something like hope for the first time in a terribly long time. “Do you believe that?”
“I live it.” Then he rose from the rocker, bent low to kiss Kerry on the cheek, and said, “The birth will be easy and the babe healthy. You’ll be strong. Wolf-god make it so.”
Kerry accepted the blessing as Caleb intended it, grateful to have made a friend.
Kerry’s mistake wasn’tthat he forgot to send the Monhundys letters, because he had sent them faithfully every other day, even during the Oat-Flowers-laced confusion following the near miscarriage.
No. This time his mistake was in sending too much information. Oat Flowers and a touch of liquor at night to aid sleep might also have aided in his pen being too free with his in-laws. And the result this time was not a note. But rather the Monhundys themselves, and Dr. Rose, standing on the Monk’s House front porch with enough bags to make their plan to stay evident.
Pater alerted Kerry to this fact by stomping up the stairs, speaking loudly, with the Monhundys in tow. “He’s right up here in bed where he belongs. Yes, yes. Of course, he can get up and down. No, he’s fine enough. Just takin’ it easy, and—hey! No need to push past me!”
Kerry sat up in the bed, having returned for a nap after breakfast, and blinked wildly. He wore a white nightshirt and soft, drawstring pajama bottoms, and his hair had to look a mess. His room felt empty without Kiwi, but it was in otherwise good condition. Which was good since the door to his room burst open, and Monte and Lukas, followed by Pater, and then, more politely, Dr. Rose, all rushed in.
Kerry stared at them with wide eyes and an open mouth. He didn’t even bother hiding his shock or dismay. This was so unprecedented an action on the Monhundys’ part that he didn’t know what to do or think. At least Janus had already left for his work with Dr. Crescent, but he’d be back, and then everything would fall apart. Unless he could convince the Monhundys to leave, and he suspected that wasn’t likely. Not with the determined expression on Monte’s face, and the sharp way Lukas took in the room as a whole.
“What are you doing here?” he finally managed to get out, failing to ward off Monte’s kisses all about his face and head. Lukas, for his part, hung back and looked at him with narrow, suspicious eyes. “You never come up here.”
