Page 6 of A Surprise Baby for the Wolf Shifter

It was a paranoia of mine. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t opposed to that happening in the future, but way, way into the future. This wasn’t the time for big life changes.

I finally arrived at my calendar and flipped to the previous month. My finger stabbed the date of the first day of my last period, and I started counting as my finger slid along the smooth surface. My cycles were on the dot. Twenty-eight days exactly. Without fail.

As I counted, I realized I had surpassed that. And by a lot. Like fifteen days alot.

Three. Freaking. Weeks.

I stared at the calendar and tried to breathe and figure out what to do with that information. I was three weeks late. I was never late.

My breaths stilled as my heart pounded in my chest.

No. It couldn’t be.

My period was exceptionally overdue.

I recounted, again and again, almost as though I could change the fact if I counted the days enough. But my results didn’t change. Reality was sinking in, but I still refused to accept what was obvious.

Maybe I forgot to mark the calendar on the last one?

No. That wasn’t it. I distinctly remember my last one.

Ugh.

That meant I had one other option to disprove my worst fear. I immediately tossed on some clothes and shoes, fighting through the gut-wrenching nausea every second of the way, and then rushed to the corner store. The second I pulled into a parking spot, I pushed my way through the doors and made a beeline to the contraception aisle and picked up a couple of the cheap pregnancy tests. I also grabbed a couple of bottles of Pepto, just in case.

The weight of all the eyes of the people in the store looking at the crazed woman rushing through the lanes of shelves frantically searching for a couple of random things weighed on my shoulders, pinching my muscles and adding to my misery. Or maybe they weren’t staring at me. Regardless, I shook off the sensation and took the items to the clerk, and she stared at me with questions rushing through her gaze as she rang up my order.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

I tried to the person in line behind me who took a large step backward and nodded. “Yup.”

“Anything else?” she asked. I pretended not to notice the look of concern and disbelief on her face.

“Nope. Just these,” I added and bounced in place.

I couldn’t afford to dilly-dally. The likelihood of my tossing my innards again was high and the last thing I wanted was to vomit in public.

She gave me my total. It was a number I didn’t register as I immediately inserted my card and went through the steps of paying for what I picked up. Once I had the receipt in hand, I rushed out the door and back home.

The second I walked through my front door, I took one of the tests… and then I waited.

Three minutes seemed like a lifetime watching the test develop. One line was normal, according to the box instructions, and was the typical symbol of the test working. But as the seconds ticked by, another line started to form and the reality of everything was starting to hit.

I was pregnant… according to the test.

But I still couldn’t believe what filled my gaze. I shook my head as I stared at the positive pregnancy test. I seriously considered chucking the thing into the trashcan. I was in denial. Big time. I couldn’t be pregnant.

“How the hell did this happen?” I asked myself and struggled to figure it out, rehashing everything from that night and the simple fact that we had used protection.

I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t make any reasonable explanation stick. And I wasn’t sure what worried me the most. The fact that I was pregnant, or the fact I couldn’t figure out how when so many steps were taken.

Regardless of the how, though that was crucially important to me, my life was about to change in ways I couldn’t even imagine, and I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

2

WEYLAN

Once again, I couldn’t sleep. I took to staring at the ceiling as the minutes agonizingly ticked by slower than the last. The normal methods to getting some z’s weren’t working.

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