Page 140 of The Reluctant Alpha

I handed Bayer a dish towel to cover himself as he stripped, which Mom thought was funny.

The shift happened in seconds—bones reshaped, and then an enormous brown bear stood in my mother's living room, his amber eyes watching her with careful intelligence. He was magnificent, and even though I'd seen it before, my breath still caught.

Mom didn't scream. She didn't faint. She gripped the arms of her chair until her knuckles went white, her eyes went the size of dinner plates, and she whispered, "Holy Mother of God."

Then she stood up, walked over to the bear that was my mate, and because she was Stella Jacobson and she'd never met a living creature she didn't want to nurture, she reached up and placed her hand on his massive head.

"Well," she said, her voice only shaking a little. "You certainly are something."

Bayer made a low rumbling sound that I recognized as his bear's version of a purr. Mom's eyes widened further, and then, impossibly, she laughed.

Bayer shifted back—and grabbed his jeans—and Mom sat back down heavily, one hand pressed to her heart.

"Triplets?" she said faintly.

"Triplets," I confirmed, lifting my shirt just enough to show the slight curve that had started to appear. "Bear cubs. Your grandchildren."

"Oh, Danny," she breathed. "Oh, my baby."

I lost it then. Completely and totally lost it, crying into my mother's shoulder while she held me and stroked my hair and murmured all the things she'd always murmured when I was small and scared—it's okay, sweetheart, Mommy's here, everything's going to be all right.

Bayer stood a few feet away, giving us space, but when I reached for him blindly, he was there in an instant, his arm coming around both of us. Mom looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a fierce expression I recognized from every time one of her kids had been threatened.

"You take care of them," she said, and it wasn't a request. "All four of them."

"With everything I have," Bayer said, and the raw sincerity in his voice made Mom nod once, firmly, like a deal had been struck.

We sat together for a long time after that, Mom asking questions—some practical, some bewildered, some that made me laugh despite my tears. Can they shift in the womb? Will they have fur? Do I need to baby-proof differently for bear cubs?

"Mom," I said eventually, when the tears had dried and we'd moved to the kitchen, where she'd reheated the cinnamon rolls and insisted on feeding Bayer approximately seven of them. "There's something important I need to ask you."

She looked at me over her coffee cup, her eyes still a little puffy but clear and sharp. "Go ahead."

"Everything I've told you—about the shifters, about Bayer, about the cubs—you can't tell anyone. Not Shane, not Logan, not Marianne. No one. Even about the honey cake festival,” I added completely randomly.

Her expression shifted, the warmth giving way to something more guarded.

"It's not just our secret, Mom. There are whole communities of people—families, children—whose safety depends on humans not knowing they exist. If the wrong person found out..." I trailed off, thinking of Christopher, of what had almost happened. "People could get hurt. People I love."

Mom set down her coffee cup and looked at me with the same expression she'd worn when I was six and had asked her why Dad worked so much. Patient, a little sad, completely honest.

"You're asking me to lie to your brothers and sister."

"I'm asking you to protect your grandchildren," I said quietly. "And the people who've become part of my family."

She was silent for a long moment, her fingers tracing the rim of her cup. Then she looked at Bayer. "Is Danny safe with you? Truly safe?"

Bayer met her gaze without flinching. "I would die before I let anything happen to him or our cubs."

Something passed between them—some unspoken parental negotiation that I wasn't entirely privy to. Then Mom nodded slowly.

"I won't say a word," she said. "Not to anyone. But I want to see my grandchildren, Danny. Carol’s isn’t that far away. Regularly. I don't care if they come out with fur and claws—they're mine too."

"They're yours too," I agreed, my voice thick. "Always."

"And you—" She pointed at Bayer with the kind of authority that made even a six-foot-something bear alpha sit up straighter. "You bring my son to Sunday dinner at least once a month even though I’m moving. I don't care what supernatural emergencies are happening. A boy needs his mother's cooking."

"Yes, ma'am—Stella," Bayer corrected himself quickly, and I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the way the most powerful bear shifter I knew looked genuinely intimidated by a five-foot-four woman in a flour-dusted apron.