Bear My Baby (Shifter Squad Six 1) (9 page)

“Monroe,” Cassie said, and Monroe immediately echoed it, rolling the r and smiling bright.

“That’s right, little man. That’s you,” Connor said, his voice immensely soft every time he talked to him. “I can safely assume he’s mine, yeah? One of my other brothers hasn’t stalked you down and asked you to marry him between Chicago and now, right?” he asked, chuckling slightly.

He had no doubt Monroe was his. And even if he would have then the bear knew exactly. This was his flesh and blood sitting in his lap. His firstborn son. The crowning moment of any Alpha shifter’s life and he’d missed it. Guilt pooled in his stomach and once again he had to wonder how the hell his instincts had been so right and he’d ignored them so completely. He had
known
that he needed to find Cassie. That she would need him. That he would have to be at her side.

And he had failed. It tore a chunk out of him like no grenade or land mine ever could.

“He’s yours,” Cassie admitted, a tremor in her voice.

Connor looked up, seeing tears sparkling in her eyes. She was shaking a little, and when she noticed him looking at her, she quickly wiped those tears away with the back of her hand. That broke whatever last piece of his heart that had been intact before, crumbling it right into dust.

“I should have been here,” he said, guilt dripping off of every syllable.

Monroe put his hands around Connor’s neck quickly and gave him that happy, little kid hug that is supposed to fix everything. Connor couldn’t help but grin. Then, Monroe sat down on his wide lap and easily slid off, practically clinging from his knee as he scooted to the ground and then waddled off quickly in search of a toy. The kid had some strength on him! Though that wasn’t any surprise, of course, he caught himself thinking with pride. It was
his
kid after all.

“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known,” Cassie objected, though her voice was weak.

Connor heaved himself up and sat down next to Cassie, gathering her in his arms and pulling her close. For the first time, she resisted him, staying rigid against his warm touch. His ears hummed, his mind working frantically looking for a way to fix this. But how could he fix a relationship that had never really begun? Who was he to her, anyway?

Some guy who’d used her when she was vulnerable. Some guy who pushed her up against the wall at a seedy bar and finger-fucked her. Some guy who didn’t know a damn thing about her.

And yet, he wanted to do anything in his power to make her feel good again. To make Monroe have the future he deserved—with a father, not some shapeless memory from the past who had shown up once, never to be seen again. His insides were in knots and his mind was storming a mile a second, trying to keep up with all the threads running through his head.

“I should have,” he said, rubbing her arm, though she remained just as impassive, her sad eyes keeping track of the baby.

“It was a fling. A moment of weakness. I needed someone to distract me and you were there. It was one night. One night that didn’t mean anything,” she said, obviously struggling to keep the emotion out of her voice.

Connor scoffed, shaking his head. He couldn’t buy her claiming that it hadn’t meant a thing to her. No way. Maybe without Monroe it would have been a hot night to remember and only that, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. He wouldn’t believe that.

“It was one night, I agree. But it meant something to me,” he started, looking at Cassie and catching the way her lower lip trembled when he spoke those words. “You meant something to me, Cassie. I told you I looked for you, and I wasn’t lying. I tried to find you, but we keep survivors under lock and key. No one can know where you are or who you are now, and that included me. But don’t for a second believe that I didn’t care, or that I forgot about you. You weren’t just some hot night.”

He pressed every word, trying to make her understand, to make her see that he was being truthful. But the sadness remained steadfast in her eyes and she felt distant, like she was a lot farther from him now than when he hadn’t even known where she was.

“I want to be part of his life, Cassie,” he said after a long pause, while both of them watched Monroe stack some blocks in the middle of the carpet.

His tongue was sticking out and his brow was furrowed in concentration, like he was in the middle of the greatest architectural feat known to man. He looked up triumphantly as he set the last block, grinning at both Cassie and Connor expectantly.

“Well done, baby. Can you build something else?” Cassie asked, her voice cracking and falling.

She was fighting against what her mind told her and what her heart wanted, he was sure of that. For the life of him, he didn’t know how to make her understand that he wasn’t pretending. That all she thought he didn’t want, he really needed. That he needed
her
. And Monroe. The thought of going a single day without them now that he knew what he’d been missing could have driven him to the brink of madness.

“Honey, look at me,” he said, gently turning her chin to face him. “I want to be a part of his life. You can’t deny me that.”

As soon as he’d said it, he knew he’d said the wrong damn thing. Her eyes went wide and that mama bear that lived in the heart of every mother came tearing out, instinctively lashing out at anything and anyone that dared threatened her baby. In this case, it was Connor implying that he had any control over what she did with her baby boy.

“I can’t
deny
you that!? Fuck you, Connor. We spent one goddamn night together,” she hissed, keeping her voice low, her cheeks burning with anger. “You killed at least two people that night, maybe more. How am I supposed to know you weren’t the one who fucking stabbed Jonah, huh? You grab me from my home and take me to a fucking cabin in the middle of the fucking woods! And then you won’t even tell me what’s going to happen next, but you have no qualms about screwing my brains out, huh?”

She ripped herself away from him, standing up. Monroe paid them no attention, babbling a little song to himself and rearranging his blocks. Small mercies.

“I sat in a tiny little cell for a
month
. For a month, a new person came in every day and tried to get me to confess to something I knew nothing about. They asked me how I knew Jonah a million times. And a million and one times I told them the same thing.

“That I was his assistant. That he was a sweet guy. That he called me in the dead of night, begging me to help him. And that I didn’t know a single thing other than the fact that this caring, nice man died in my arms, gagging on his own blood and telling me that I had to be safe.”

She looked like she wanted to pace back and forth, but she didn’t. Instead, she shook with rage, almost vibrating on the spot. Any other time, her bout of anger could have been cute for Connor, especially while she was dressed in a big, fluffy robe, but right now he was in no joking mood. He clamped his hands together in front of him and resigned himself to listen. To concentrate on his breathing and not say another thing before she was done.

She needed to let it out and he needed to know.

I fucking hope I can fix this,
he thought bitterly.

He wasn’t sure he could. But one look at the blue-eyed boy playing on the carpet told him that he would do anything,
anything
to make things right.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cassie

Cassie couldn’t believe she had the capacity to be
this
angry. She felt like her body was creating so much energy by being pissed that she could run electricity in San Francisco for a few days. It was pure, unfiltered rage bubbling up, everything she’d kept boxed up somewhere in the back of her mind and not allowed herself to vent before.

And now she was doing it at Connor. And she couldn’t stop.

Shit
.

That particular thought had been very prevalent lately.

“And finally, when they apparently decided that they couldn’t get anything useful out of me, they dumped me off in California, gave me a new name and ten thousand dollars and told me to go ‘make it.’ That I was free to go and no one would follow me, or so they thought. And that was it. My whole life taken from me, my identity wiped, and my family and friends left to think I’d gone crazy and joined some cult somewhere, or worse!”

She threw her hands up in exasperation, running them through her hair. Cassie knew perfectly well that none of this was really on Connor. He’d been doing his job and had let the moment take him away like she had, but right now, it was too much. Him thinking he had any
right
over her baby while he hadn’t even been in the picture was just… maddening. Like he usually was.

To her own ears, she sounded like she was whining. Like she was some victim, hapless and helpless. In a way, she knew she was, but it wasn’t only that. Cassie had been strong. All through the pregnancy, the haphazard birth that she hadn’t expected quite so soon, the demanding nature of having a baby who was ready to do everything far earlier than he was supposed to.

She’d been alone for all of that, cut off from her safety net and constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting someone to come running to her and stab her in the chest or shoot her in the back, much like they’d done with Jonah.

It was a terrifying way to live. It was even worse to raise a child in a situation like that. So now, faced with the opportunity to let it all out, and not just that but the carnal need to do that, she couldn’t stop.

“Do you know how long a pregnancy lasts when you’re pregnant with a shifter baby?” she asked, imagining that it wouldn’t be long until steam started rising from her nostrils.

“About five months,” he said, sitting back and resting against the backrest of the sofa.

He looked beaten, like she’d personally taken a baseball bat and pummeled him until he stopped putting up a fight. Her shoulders drooped a little, seeing his discomfort and sadness, but her mouth kept going.

“Five months! Right! And you know what that means? I’ll tell you. In five months, you get to experience the joy of pregnancy at twice the speed and three times the intensity! Morning sickness? Try twice as bad. Ballooning up suddenly? Oh hell, that’s nothing compared to what happens when you have a shifter baby inside of you! And they kick! They kick like hell. He’s going to be a soccer player, I’m damn sure of it, because otherwise he had no reason to be pummeling my bladder like that!”

Her voice was barely over a whisper and her tone was neutral, trying to conceal all of it from Monroe. It only made it weirder for both her and Connor. And what was worst of all was that she didn’t even really want to be saying all of those things. They just poured out of her like some constant stream of thought she couldn’t stop or control.

Cassie loved her baby. And as much as the whole thing at Jonah’s home and the roof and the armored vehicles made her queasy, she didn’t regret what she did with Connor that night. How could she? It had given her Monroe. But the words just kept coming.

“And the kicker was, I didn’t even know my baby was a shifter, let alone what kind he was. Though I guess I got the hint when I popped him out when I was not due for another four months and he looked like he’d been breastfeeding for a month already. I didn’t know a goddamn thing. I had no idea how to raise him right. How to raise a werebear cub,” she said, her voice turning into sobs.

Putting both hands over her eyes, she sunk into the recliner Connor had been sitting on before, a dry sob wracking her shoulders and chest. First one, then another, and before she knew it she was crying like never before. Every sob shook her body and it took a while for her to realize that Connor had gotten up and grabbed her, moving her on his lap and holding her tightly against his chest.

“Shh, honey. It’ll be all right,” he said, whispering calming words in her ears that she wasn’t sure made it better or worse.

His heartbeat was ringing in her ears, but the tears wouldn’t stop. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when those soundless, gasping wheezes stopped and she slowly calmed down, feeling drained and empty. But she did know that Connor was still there, cradling her against him, pawing her hair with his big, calloused hand. It felt good being so close to him like that, to feel his warmth running through her, encouraging her to think that she wasn’t completely alone.

But, of course, ultimately she was. And no wishful thinking could change that.

He squeezed her tightly and it felt good, but she didn’t allow herself to depend on that. She couldn’t learn to expect that kind of companionship, that kind of support. If she did, it would drown her whole.

“I’ll do whatever you think is best, Cass,” he said, his voice breaking.

She was just about to say something—what she wasn’t sure—when a rapid knock sounded on her door and then a blonde flurry of activity barged in, talking loudly before she had even made it through the doorway.

“Oh girl, you have got to tell me everything that happened last night! You just disap— Oh. Why, hello,” Adelaide said, stopping in the middle of the living room.

A tiny groan gurgled up and Cassie barely swallowed it, though she was sure Connor heard it.

“Hey,” he said lightly as Cassie slipped off his lap and stood up.

She was still trembling a little, but seeing Adelaide there brought her conviction back.

“I think you need to leave, Connor,” she said.

He stood up as well and she realized once more how damn big he was. He loomed over her, his face twisted in pain. She was cradling her hands around her shoulders, trying to avoid his gaze, but it pulled her in like a magnet.

“Am I interrupting something?” Adelaide asked, frowning a bit.

He put his hands on her shoulders, ignoring her friend. Cassie’s heart skipped a beat as he leaned in, thinking he would kiss her again. But he opted for a peck on the forehead and then dipping lower to whisper in her ear.

“Whatever you need, honey. I’ll be here. Don’t write me off just yet.”