Ellis: Emerson Wolves ― Paranormal Wolf Shifter Romance (14 page)

As they watched the woods come alive, even this late in the night, he stroked her back with his fingers, giving her warmth with his own body. She felt his love even when he closed his eyes again.

“What did you mean when you said you’re not like me?” He laughed. “I mean other than the obvious.”

“I don’t go into heat.” His fingers stilled in their path down her back. “I can get pregnant whenever we want. I don’t have to wait for the moon cycle like other shifters do.”

“You mean you could be pregnant now?” She told him that she could be. “Like right now? You could be…we could be having a child, right now?”

“Well, not right now, but soon if you want.” He nodded at her when she looked down at him again. “Do you want a child now, Ellis? We have no house, your job is in transition, and I don’t have a pot to pee in. Do you want to have a child now?”

He rolled her to her back and looked at her. She wondered what he saw there, searching her face so intently. When he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her gently and softly, he lifted his head and told her he loved her.

“To have a child with you would be the greatest dream I could have fulfilled.” She nodded, and before she could tell him that was what she wanted, he continued. “I don’t care if we have to raise our child in the barn on the property until the house is done. We could live with Sloan and Hunter until our baby goes to college. To see you round with our baby, get to see it suckle at your breast as you feed it, would make me the happiest man on earth. No, the happiest man in the universe.”

“Then we should work on it now.”

Ellis nodded and moved inside of her. His lovemaking was different this time. There was no sense of urgency; he took his time, bringing her to peak twice before he filled her again with his seed. This time when he held her, it was more like a cradle to her, his body wrapped around hers. Even as she dozed, napping lightly after coming so many times, she felt something she’d never in her life felt…security in the knowledge that when she woke he’d still be there and that he’d still love her.

Waking when the moon was over head, she yawned twice and woke Ellis. It was cold now that the moon was bright in the sky, and she hurried to find the bag that she’d left out here earlier today. They giggled like small children when they put their clothes on backwards, and laughed when they realized she’d forgotten to pack herself some shoes.

“I was in a hurry, all right? I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing.” He offered to give her a piggy-back ride. “No. You take my clothing and I’ll fly back to the house. We can’t go back to the auction anyway.”

He told her to be careful and that he loved her. Stripping down again, she was in the sky in a matter of seconds. Dawn loved to fly this way.

Dawn was waiting on the deck that was outside their room when Ellis opened the doors. She let her bird go and ran naked to the bed and jumped under the covers. Ellis joined her a few minutes later after securing the door and turning out all the lights. He held her much like he had in the woods, but she was warmer now to enjoy the love of it and not the necessity.

“Do you really want to have a baby right away?” Dawn told him that she did. “I do, too. As soon as we can. But if you don’t mind, I’d also like to open our home to others. Maybe adopt, like Luke and Jack are.”

“I’d very much like to do that.” He nodded and held her tightly. “Ellis, how many children are we talking? You don’t mean to adopt all those kids that they ran pictures of tonight, do you?”

The pictures of the children they were helping had been put up on a large screen television that ran all night. Jack had been against putting the photos of the children with their bruises and broken bodies, and Addie had agreed. The pictures were of the children that had been helped last year, all the goodness that had come from their donations.

Some showed them riding their first bike. There were several pictures of children at their first Christmas tree, their first restaurant, their first a lot of things. Most of the children, Addie had told her, were from broken homes, where there wasn’t enough money and tempers were high. Plenty of children hadn’t made it onto the role of pictures. A lot of them had died due to injuries from the people that were supposed to care for them, to give their lives for their wellbeing. A lot more had died from neglect.

“Five.” She asked him five total or just five of the children. “Five of each. We should have five children of our own, and adopt five more to give them a family with us.”

“You want ten children?” He nodded and smiled down at her. “All right, but the first one that pukes is all yours.”

Three hours later they were woken from their beds to catch a flight to their home, and what she hoped would be the makings of a business opportunity of their own. Then they still had to deal with her relatives.

Chapter 14

Basil wandered around the yard that had once been his and Neva’s. Now it was just a few piles of stone and a hole in the ground. He could still see where there had been cars parked for so long that the grass beneath them had long since died. The trees that had sheltered them had been shoved out of the way for the heavy equipment. And then there was the porch that he and Neva had sat on in the warmer months, looking at the wild animals that would come out to eat. Basil sat down on one of the larger pieces of equipment that had yet to be loaded onto the flatbeds that sat waiting for them.

He began talking to her, Neva. He knew that she was gone from him, but he still needed to talk to her about things. On the walk back to this place, he’d told her that he was going to die and be with her. Told her even how he was going to do it. But he didn’t have the heart to do it once he got there.

“I really was going to lay under them big wheels. I know now that it would never have worked. They’d have seen me and then taken me off to jail. I don’t think I’d do good in jail. There are too many bad people in there.” Basil tried to shy away from the bad person he’d been by leaving his Neva, but it came to the front of his head then, and he thought about it again.

“I should have stayed with you. I know that now. I might have gone to jail, but then I wouldn’t have left you all by your lonesome there when you needed me most. You were right there with me all the times I needed you, and I failed you when you needed me.” He cried for a little bit, knowing what his momma would have said to him about grown men crying. But he missed his wife and knew that he was a bad person.

“I’ve been thinking on some things. I’m going to find that girl, Dawn. She might not like me finding her after all this time, but I’m not going to give it up. She don’t owe me nothing like I been thinking all this time, but I want her to know that I think she should be helping me out with your funeral.” He looked beyond what had been his yard to the woods beyond. “You think you’d like to be buried back there? Near that creek bed you and I used to go to when we was more able? I’d like that myself. Knowing that we got us some shade when we need it, and to hear them there crickets that we can hear in August.”

He made his way to the creek now, knowing that it was gonna be all froze up still like it always was. Basil thought about the few times they’d been without power for one reason or another. Usually they’d not paid the bill, but they’d used the creek water to bathe in and to keep their stuff cold. Milk had tasted so much better coming out of the water when they’d done it that they’d decided to keep it cold like that all the time. But they hadn’t. They’d both been too old and too lazy to make the trip back and forth to do it. But it was good when they had it.

He sat next to the water, surprised to see it flowing so well. There weren’t any fishes in it yet—the water really was too cold, he supposed—but as he sat here, thinking about where he’d like to be buried, a couple of their deer came out of the woods for a drink.

When they were startled away by something only they heard, he talked to Neva again. “I got no way of bringing you out here, my love. Not one penny to my name. That check that that there lawyer said I could have is with you. You had it on you when you passed, and I never thought to get it. I suppose some guy in that ambulance is having himself a good time on it by now.”

He heard the car come into the drive and realized it wasn’t from his home, but that of his neighbors, the ones that he was sure were harboring Dawn. Not that he wanted her harmed no more, but he did need her help. Getting up, his body stiff and sore from all the walking he’d done, he made his way to where there was a building going up and men and women wandering around the property working. Basil stood there for several minutes, just watching the way they seemed to have some music playing in their heads and only they could hear it.

The woman and man that he saw coming out of the big barn made him hide behind a tree. He knew them; they were the couple that was living here the first time he’d been looking back here. And now they were the ones that were working on this place, too.

He watched them and thought of his own wife. He had no idea if they were married or not, but they were in love. The man couldn’t stop touching her, and she kept right on letting him. Basil hated public shows of affection, and he and Neva had always said that sort of stuff was better done behind closed doors. Nobody needed to see you kissing someone. When the man went into the barn, the woman went to the big red truck he’d just noticed. When she took an armload of shopping bags into the barn, he went to see what else was in it.

Clothing mostly, along with some food. He took a loaf of bread from one of the bags, and a bag of lunchmeat, then found a place to hide and eat. He was just making him a sandwich when the man, bigger looking now that he was closer to him, took in more things. Basil ate three sandwiches before he made his way back to the truck.

He’d never thought about needing a gun before, not in all the years that he’d been living out here in the middle of nowhere. But the gun, just a handgun, was lying on the truck bed like it was begging him to take it. Grabbing a few more items as well as the gun, he made his way back to the woods just as the woman came out. He sat down to see what he had when she left him again.

There were apples in one of the bags. Not usually something that he ate, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d filled his belly and ate two of them as he searched the rest of the stuff. The gun was in his pants pocket for now.

He had managed to snag him another Baggie of meat…this one he thought was turkey. There was some cheese, too, but he avoided it. Cheese gave him gas, and Neva had made him promise to never eat it again. Basil thought it was a good idea, even though for now he was out of doors. There were some snack crackers that he put back in the bag, as well as a bag of something he’d never eaten before called bagels. They were bread that tasted all right, but were a little tough for him. He ate one of them as the couple moved into the barn again.

Basil had no idea what he was going to do with his bounty, but sat with it all around him. When the woman came out of the barn again and moved to where the workers were at the house, he moved along the tree line to watch her. She was sure pretty, and he thought maybe she was younger than he’d first thought. But Basil had never been good as guessing anyone’s age.

Neva told him one time that he’d never make it as a barker in a circus. He’d be giving away all the profits when he had to start off as the guy who guessed your age. Even having a five-year span to get it right, he’d still get it wrong.

When she stopped moving and turned in his direction, Basil was sure she’d seen him and stilled. But she only looked around before making her way to the truck. Basil decided to ask her what she knew of Dawn and where he might find her.

But things took a bad turn when she saw him. Basil was sure she was gonna scream her head off, but she only stared at him. It wasn’t until the man came out of the barn that he lunged at the girl to try and keep her from yelling her fool head off. Pulling her body in front of his, Basil reached for the gun and pressed it into her head. The man stopped, but he didn’t look like he was going to stay stopped for very long.

~~~

Dawn was terrified. The man behind her had given her so much grief as a child and young woman that she wanted to scream and run. But she felt the gun bite into her head and she remained still.

“Let her go.” She looked at Ellis as his wolf moved over his skin. “You either let her go or I’m going to kill you when you do.”

“I need to find her. Just find her. It’s all gone, all of it, and I just want to find her.” She asked him who. “Dawn. I need to find her. I need…it’s all gone. Everything I loved is all gone. My Neva and my house. Who takes a person’s house and crunches it all up like that? Not nice people. Not nice at all.”

Honey, I need you to look at me
. She looked at Ellis but listened to the man holding her.
When I tell you to, I want you to just try and get away from him
.

No. Ellis, don’t touch him
. He looked ready to argue with her, but she cut him off.
Listen to him. Listen to what he’s saying
.

“I can’t even bury her. There ain’t no money, and that ambulance driver, he done took it all from me. He’s having a grand time while my Neva is gone. I never should have left her. It was a bad, bad thing to do. I should have stayed and let them shoot me, but I ran away like a little boy who’s wet his pants. I should have stayed. I should have stayed with her.”

Ellis seemed to calm then. And when the others, most of them wolves like him, came from the construction site to help, he stopped them as well. Dawn let out a slow breath, hoping what she was about to do wouldn’t backfire.

“It’s me, Uncle Basil. It’s me, Dawn. You have me.” He told her she wasn’t nice, and Dawn watched Ellis as Basil waved the gun around. “Uncle Basil, it really is me. It’s Dawn Whitfield. Well, it’s Dawn Emerson, but I’m your niece.”

“She run off. We weren’t nice to her, no sir, but she had no cause to run off from us.” He looked at Ellis before talking again. “That man over there, he told you to say this, didn’t he? He’s going to take you outta my arms and kill me. I’ll welcome it, I’ll tell you. I will. I could go where they’ve put my Neva. I’d have liked to be at the creek with her, but I just don’t have no money.”

“I made funeral arrangements for her this morning when we got back. I had them bury her in the cemetery out by Darcy Road. My mom is buried there, too.” He told her that he wanted her by the creek. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, Uncle Basil. There are laws prohibiting that.”

She had no idea if that was true or not, but he seemed to consider it. “I don’t have nobody left. I lost my poor Neva, and I was a bad person to leave her there to be dead all by herself.”

Dawn thought about telling him that she was his niece again and his relative, but didn’t. They weren’t close and more than likely never would be. He was mourning the loss of his wife right now, and would more than likely revert back to the man he’d been a long time ago.

“Uncle Basil, I—”

“Stop calling me that. The brat wasn’t pretty. She barely was tolerable looking, and nothing all that much of a person either. She was dropped off to us and we did our best by her only ‘cause of the money. Nothing more. I hated her mother, and I didn’t like her brat either. You’re not her. Stop calling me your uncle.”

It hurt, his words and the fact that he really believed them. Not that he said she was pretty, but the fact that he’d thought of her as nothing.

“You had a picture of your mother on the side of your bed. I broke the glass in it once and you tied me to the radiator in the kitchen for a week with nothing more than a blanket and a can to pee in. It mattered little to you that I got burned there, that the steam coming up off the thing scalded me every time it turned on. On Aunt Neva’s side of the bed was a picture of you. Only it wasn’t really you, was it? It was your father. You told her it was you so that you could have a picture of both your parents in your room all the time. Not just your mom.” She looked at Ellis as she continued, trying to ignore the rest of the people there who were listening to her horrible childhood.

“When I was eleven, I asked you for a Christmas tree. You told me that only good children got those and that I was far from that. So the entire next year I worked on being a good girl. I never tried to run away, and I made all your favorite meals. I even lied to the teachers, telling them that you had been hurt and couldn’t work, and that was why I hadn’t paid my dues.” She felt the tears roll down her face. “When it came time to put up the tree, to do anything related to Christmas, you remember what you did? You slapped me, knocking me against the fire grate and bloodying my head. Then you stood over me, screaming at me about how ungrateful I was. What a disappointment I had been to you, and even then you told me that when the money ran out, you’d bury me in the back yard rather than keep feeding me when I was worthless to you.”

“You were forever wanting things that were stuff you didn’t need. We deserved that money, not you. Putting food in your mouth was all that I could stomach when you lived with us. Then what did you do? You up and left us. Just run off like we didn’t do nothing for you.”

Dawn was crying, her heart broken and her mind sore from the abuse. When Uncle Basil talked about all the things he’d had to put up with, all the things he and her aunt had had to make sacrifices for to keep her in their home, she stared at Ellis, wondering what he thought of her now.

“Then you go and crunch up our home. What the heck did you go and do that for? We done never did a single thing to you to make you wanna be that mean to us.” She turned then, jerking from his grip and shifting at the same time. Her wolf tossed him back on his back, and she put her mouth over his throat. Dawn might have bitten had Ellis not spoken to her.

You kill him and it will be for nothing.
She growled.
He’s a prick, I’ll give him that. And a monster, but killing him will not make it all go away. You’re bigger than him, and he’s just not worth it.

He said the same thing of me.
She felt Ellis run his fingers over her fur and then down her snout. She felt tears then; her wolf was just as hurt as she was.
He should be dead.

Yes. He more than likely should be. But he’s also mentally unstable. I think perhaps he might have been all along, but the death of his wife took him over the edge. Dawn, I’ll ask you to do the same thing you asked me to do. Listen to him.