Page 42 of Lone Wolf
“We have a month yet.” I leaned in and kissed him. “I can make tea if you want to relax.”
“I’m okay,” he assured me. “I’ve been living on my own for ten years now. I won’t over boil it.”
I laughed, though it wasn’t terribly funny. But it was sweet, and kind of sad. “Well, I’m going to finish organizing here,” I told him. “There’s no need to have this out all over the place right now. Time enough when the puppy’s here.”
He followed me over to the table, eyes wide. “Is this all for the pup?”
I nodded. “I spent a lot of time getting things ready in between…” I paused—better not to remind him of the huge gap in our relationship. “We had a group that would get together in the mornings and trade patterns or handwork. Some of these are gifts, too.” I started refolding the blankets that I’d laid out on the table. “Always better to have more than less.” My fingers traced the patterns embroidered or quilted onto the fabric. Not knowing that my future path would take me entirely out of the enclave, I'd used pack patterns and symbols on pretty near all of them. “Is this going to be a problem? I mean, we’re pretending to be human, right?”
He put an arm around my waist. “Maybe. Maybe not. Youarefrom Nevada. We can just say that you had a liking for wolves.” When I didn’t answer him, he added, “I can ask Oscar. We can probably save some of them. Keepsakes, right?”
I nodded and began folding again.
He picked up a little jacket made of denim. “They’re so small. Will the baby really only be that big?”
“They better be. I’m not birthing a teenager here.”
As I’d hoped, he laughed and put the jacket down again. "I have to leave tonight," he reminded me gently.
“I know“ I put down the sheet I'd just picked up and spun to face him. “I’ll be fine. But I don’t see why they can’t give you a couple of days. Even in the houses we always scheduled a mating moon for the newlyweds.”
He shook his head and I saw real regret in his eyes. "It's the job. And there are things I can do that none of the others can."
I hadn't truly considered that, but it made sense. Well, I'd made this leap off my comfortable path into the brush for his sake, I wasn't going to make it harder for him now. "I'll miss you," I told him and gave him a kiss. "How long will you be gone?"
He shrugged. "Three, four days. I don't know for sure." He put his hands on my shoulders and stared intently into my eyes. "Someone will check in on you every couple of days. Don't leave the apartment, okay? Not even at night. If you need something, one of the team will get it for you. There’ll be at least one of them upstairs all the time." He dug into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet to hand me a credit card. "Here, take this. You know how to use one, right?"
I eyed it doubtfully. "I'm sure I can figure it out." We either shopped with pack money in the enclave store, which was pretty well stocked, or just went in to Vegas and paid cash if we didn’t see anything in the enclave we liked.
Damian grinned at me. "I may regret this." He threw an arm over my shoulder and walked me over to the couch in the living room. "Watch and learn, pup."
I punched him and then smiled, because he obviously couldn't punch me back. "Be good, alpha. I'm washing your clothes, remember?"
"I know how to use a washing machine," he replied, then got his phone out and opened up an app on one of the back pages. "What size do you wear?"
I curled up against his side and hugged him while he introduced me to the many ways the human world was even stranger than I’d thought it was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It wasn't a life like anything I’d ever planned for, but except for the hours spent trapped in the apartment by myself, it wasn’t really any different than it would have been if I’d been a stay-at-home type of omega.
Damian came to stay as often as he could. We started looking at houses online and I quickly grew obsessed with the relative merits of granite countertops versus spending that money on a fancier bathroom, while Damian egged me on and laughed at the reams of notes I was taking.
For the first two weeks, I jumped him every time he came through the door and we spent most of our waking time working through my repertoire of skills from Silver, until I knew exactly what I needed to do in any situation to bring him to his knees before me.
As the end of my pregnancy grew nearer, though, our bedroom antics had to slow down. I developed a pinch of some sort in my back that would drop me to the floor. Shortly after that, my body discovered the joy of naps. Anywhere. At any time. Basically, whenever I stayed still for more than two minutes.
I hoped it wasn't trying to tell me something.
One evening, on the third delightful night in a row that we'd managed to scrape together, there was a knock on the door. I tensed, but Damian patted my shoulder and shook his head. "Oscar said he'd probably drop in. Sorry, I should have mentioned it."
I sighed. We'd been wonderfully Oscar-free for the past three weeks—I should have guessed it wouldn't last. "I'm not moving," I said. I was stretched out on the couch with my head in Damian's lap while I showed him the houses I'd found and we'd squabbled about which ones we wanted to go see first once the baby was here.
"I have to go let him in. I hit the maglock."
"Ugh." I lifted my head and let him get up, cursing his forethought. While he crossed the room to let my nemesis inside, I stared at the ceiling and debated whether I needed to get up with an offer of tea.Damn.It was only polite, so I swung my legs off the couch and started the long, awkward process of getting me and my massive belly vertical again.
"I thought you weren't moving," Damian said with a tongue-click of disapproval.
