Page 5 of Pack Baby for the Bratva
How was I?
I was eight and a half months pregnant. Alone, unless you counted a tiny dog with a slipper fetish. Luckily, he was otherwise cheap to feed. I was running a coffee shop in a city where I knew nobody, under a name that wasn’t quite mine, with a scent I’d buried so deep under sprays that even I sometimes forgot what I really smelled like. My bank account was dwindling away, and I had a cot catalog open on my laptop.
But I did have a black credit card that had been burning a hole through the lining of my coat pocket for nine months.
"I'm grand," I said. My Irish accent came through thick. The word "grand" covers everything from "mildly content" to "actively on fire." It was the most versatile word in the English language and possibly the most dishonest. Obviously, depending on one’s tone.
"Maeve, I need to tell you something."
I closed my eyes.
Presley now had the tone. Though hers was gentle, and almost too careful, in an I’m-about-to-drop-something-heavy-and-I-need-you-to-listen tone.
I knew it well. She’d used it when she told me my brothers had found her in London and asked my whereabouts. She’d used it when I admitted I’d been claimed by an alpha who hated me, and I needed to have my bond dissolved.
"Don’t you think you should find the baby’s father?" she asked.
My hand went to my stomach. "Pres."
"Call the bar in Prague. They might go there all the time."
"Which means they might have lots of babies being born. I’m fine."
“Or perhaps they’re looking for you.”
The image of Gregor, six foot four of silent Russian muscle in a gray suit, standing in Edinburgh Waverley looking at the arrivals board, almost made me laugh. Almost. Because I left my life in Ireland to get away from mafia men, and the moment I knew Artem, Ivan, and Gregor were Russian Bratva, I had to flee.
"It was a few nights that I needed in Prague, Pres. That’s all."
“But you can’t get pregnant outside of a heat, Maeve. Not unless—”
“They’re not my mates, Presley. I must have been in heat and didn’t know about it.”
“You’d know.”
I thought the pain was phantom, and the need for them to share me, was too. I knew the slick running down my leg was real but I never believed it was them. Not until I saw the two pink lines did I realize it was a true heat.
“Then maybe it was the bond severing. Perhaps it made my body weird.”
Silence on the other end.
Presley thinks I’m lying to myself, but she loves me too much to say so.
"You could come to London," Presley said, voice low. "You know my pack would protect you from whatever you’re running from. We can help you. You don’t have to do this alone."
"I'm not alone. I have Fergus."
Fergus chose that moment to growl at the wind as it rattled against the single pane of glass that kept this room warm.
"Fergus is a miniature Yorkshire Terrier, Maeve."
"And he’s very brave."
“You said he barked at a bin lorry yesterday,” Presley said.
“He’s suspicious about everything.”
“It was collecting the rubbish.”
