Every Blissful Moment (Hyena Heat Book 4) (12 page)

“I know.”  A tear slipped down her cheek, and he brushed it away with his thumb.

He kissed her forehead and stood, promising to return with the pregnancy test as quickly as possible.

It didn’t take long for him to find the right aisle in the drug store, but the wall of tests surprised him, and it took him a few minutes to locate the early detection tests.  He picked up two, which was what Angel’s note suggested, and paid for them.  When he got back to the bar, he found Memphis waiting for him at the back door.  “They’re up in Kross and Kayne’s apartment.  Bliss said she wouldn’t take the test in the bar’s bathroom.”

Link’s hand tightened on the bag.  “She might be carrying one of our cubs.”

“I know.”  Memphis grinned.

Turning from the bar, they walked to the back where a set of metal steps led to the second-story apartment Whisper had once shared with her adopted brothers.  Whisper and her mates were renting a home in Beyton, and once spring came they’d be building a home on the bar’s property.  Link didn’t mind coming to the bar every now and then, but he didn’t want to live near it.

He and Memphis climbed the stairs and entered the apartment.  Bliss was sitting on the couch with her besties and Rome was talking to Whisper’s mates – Nyte, Azrael, and Fade.

Bliss stood slowly and walked to Link.  Her hands grasped the handle next to his but didn’t pull the sack from his hand.  “This might change everything,” she whispered.

Memphis and Rome joined them and Memphis said, “It’s not a bad thing, love, is it?  Having a baby with your husbands who love you very much?”

“Maybe we would’ve waited longer,” Rome said, “but life is full of surprises and sometimes you have to roll with them.”

She gave a small smile, just the corner of her mouth curving up.  “Okay.  But don’t listen to me pee.”

Link couldn’t help but laugh.  He didn’t point out that she was in an apartment full of people who had great hearing thanks to their shifter genes.

He kissed her gently, and once she kissed Rome and Memphis, she disappeared down the hallway.  Nyte and his brothers joined Link and his brothers.

“I’m glad that things are better for Bliss now.  Whisper was really worried about her,” Nyte said.

Memphis said, “Thanks.  We appreciate Whisper’s help.”

Several minutes later, which actually felt like an eternity, Bliss walked down the hallway holding the box the test had come in.  The room grew quiet.  She paused before grinning and saying, “I’m pregnant!”

Link, Rome, and Memphis rushed to her side and Link lifted her against him in a tight hug.  “Are you happy, sweet thing?”

Her arms squeezed his neck, and she laughed.  “I am.  Are you?”

She lifted her head from his neck and her eyes were shining bright with unshed tears.  “I couldn’t be happier,” he said.

He put her feet on the floor and smiled as his brothers hugged her and reassured her that they were happy, too.  He’d been a little worried that she’d be upset if she was pregnant, but maybe not knowing had made her miserable.

He, truthfully, was the happiest he’d been since he met Bliss.  His sweet thing was having a baby – the first of many, he hoped – and they were together.  Whatever else came, he knew they could get through it together.

Chapter 9

Bliss had always thought baby clothes were adorable, but she’d never really thought about needing to buy them for her own children, at least not anytime soon.  She’d expected to be married to her mates for a few years before bringing children into the mix, but fate obviously had other ideas.

“Holy crap that’s cute,” Whisper said as she lifted a hanger with a frilly pink dress.

Angel, who was standing on Bliss’s other side, picked up a pair of blue canvas shoes.  “Is it fifty-fifty for a boy or girl?”

“No.  Memphis said that it’s more likely we’ll have a boy because shifters – at least the predatory ones like hyenas – tend to have more males than females.  Even though I can’t shift, my kids might be able to, so we might have a child at some point who’s a wolf and can actually shift.  But wolves, too, tend to have more males than females.”

Whisper hooked the hanger back onto the rack with a disappointed sigh.  “I want a baby girl, and now I’m bummed that I might not have one.”

Bliss shook her head.  “Memphis didn’t say I’d never have a girl, he just said it’s more likely I’ll have a boy.  With hyenas you’re looking at a minimum of three kids no matter what, anyway, and if one happens to be a girl then you have to have four.”

Angel put the shoes down and picked up a mini baseball cap.  “Um, why?”

“Because of the clan,” Whisper answered.  “A clan has three males, so there’s an unspoken rule for each clan that they provide one new clan for the next generation.”

Angel hummed.  “Are you thinking of names yet, or is it too early?”

“All the kids in the Gable family are named after cities, except for Heaven.  She said that she was named Heaven because her mom had a difficult pregnancy and said it was heaven to have a girl so she didn’t have to have two more boys to make a complete clan,” Bliss said.

“That’s just weird, I mean, what if you only wanted to have one baby?”  Angel asked.

Bliss shrugged. “Before I met the guys, I might have felt that same way, but now I
want
to have kids.  The guys are so close, even though they’re very different.  It would be sad to only have one male child and to kind of condemn him to a place where he can’t really be part of the
baro
because he doesn’t have brothers to share a mate with.”

Angel sniffed but said nothing.

“Okay, so they said you should buy something for the baby and I’m freaking starving, so pick out an outfit and let’s go to that steak place,” Whisper said.  She held up another pink dress, this one with flowers embroidered into the hem.  “I’m still leaning toward a girl for you.  I know what the statistics are, but I’m holding out for a niece.”

Bliss chuckled.  Whisper and Bliss had always considered themselves sisters, and they were certainly close enough.  They’d been best friends since they were young.  In reality they were in-laws; Bliss’s mates were Whisper’s biological brothers.

“Whatever this kid turns out to be, he or she will have two awesome aunts.”  Bliss smiled at her besties and reached for a pair of footy pajamas with dinosaurs on them.  “I’m going to go with ‘boy’ for now.  In a few months we’ll know for sure.”

She turned and smiled at Rome, who was their official chauffer.  He moved across the aisle and took the outfit from her, bending to kiss her cheek.  “It’s perfect,” he said in a low voice.

Rome led them to the checkout and paid for the cute pajamas, then drove the four of them to a restaurant for lunch.  After they ordered their lunch, she listened to her besties discuss baby names.  She still found it a little strange to think that she was pregnant.  It hadn’t been in her plans for her immediate future, but once she’d dealt with her anger at the owls for the effects of their psychedelic drug, she’d been able to be happy.  She still missed her parents.  She’d always imagined her mom and dad being her first phone call to share the good news, but that wasn’t in the cards.

“So I don’t know what she’s going to do, but time is running out,” Angel said, drawing Bliss from her musings on her pregnancy.

“Time is running out for who?”  Bliss asked.

Whisper and Angel exchanged a glance and Bliss arched a brow.  Whisper said, “You’re not supposed to know this, but Dad said that Brierley had to find a job and a place to live by the full moon or he was going to escort her out of town.”

Bliss’s mouth fell open.  “What?  He told me she was welcome here.”

“Only if she can support herself.”  Angel said.  “I asked him if I could give her room and board in exchange for keeping my house clean, but he said that wasn’t a real job and wouldn’t be acceptable.”

Bliss’s stomach knotted.  She looked at Rome, who was seated at the next table with a cup of coffee, reading something on his phone.  He glanced at her and shrugged.  “Mack’s the alpha, he can decide who lives in his town and who doesn’t.  She might be sweet, but she’s an outsider with no income, no home, and no ties to the pack.”

Angel nodded.  “I asked if she could work at the bar and help clean, but he said he actually has too many people working there right now and can’t afford to pay another.”

Whisper sighed.  “That’s true.  A lot of the older wolves clean the bar when it’s closed, and he wouldn’t take away a wolf’s job to give it to an owl, no matter how sweet she is.”

Bliss rubbed her temple with her fingertips, feeling a headache bloom.  “So just like that, she’s out on the full moon?  That’s so soon.”

Angel and Whisper looked at her sadly.  Bliss felt like she’d saved Brierley from the hell of the nest only to shove her into the unknown without protection.

“She’s been going on job interviews all week, but she’s not having any luck.  She was home-schooled in the nest, but she doesn’t have much in the way of technological skills.  She knows about cell phones and computers, but she has limited knowledge of how to use them.  Even the most basic jobs now need a general understanding of computers, and she’s lacking,” Angel said.

They stopped talking for a few minutes when their food arrived.  Bliss’s stomach growled loudly as she inhaled the amazing scent of grilled steak.  Cutting the steak quickly, she ate a big bite and groaned at the taste.

Whisper chuckled.  “That was a very sexy sound for eating.”

Bliss flushed.  “Shut up.”

Angel picked up her hamburger and whispered in a sultry tone, “Oh hamburger, you’re so awesome I could eat you up.”  Then she took a big bite and made an exaggerated sound of pleasure.

Bliss’s cheeks flamed with heat, and she wanted to hide under the table.  “Shut.  Up.”

Whisper and Angel began to laugh and Bliss couldn’t help but join in. She looked at her mate.  He smiled at her, but his eyes were filled with heat, and she felt a familiar spike of desire shoot through her.

“Later,” she mouthed at him; his smile broadened and his eyes darkened.

“Anyway,” Angel said, dabbing at the tears in her eyes with her napkin, “Brierley has a lot of skills but nothing that really translates into the real world.  She has no identification.  She was born in the nest, and was never given a birth certificate.  She doesn’t think she even has a social security number.”

Rome said, “I know someone who can help with that.”

 Bliss stared at him.  “How?”

“How do I know someone like that or how will they help?”

“Both.”

“We can talk at home.”  He said.

She shrugged and turned back to her friends.  “Okay, so if we fix that part, then what?”

Whisper took a long drink of sweet tea and put the glass down.  “I was thinking about the
gathering
.”

“What about it?”

“Ally and her husbands have a big campground to run.  They have three clans of hyenas living in their
baro
– their sons and then six cousins who make up two more clans.  They run the campground as a
baro
, but it’s my understanding that some of the young males work outside of the campground and they’re always hiring locals to help.”

“Help with what?”  Bliss asked.

“Cleaning, repairs, that kind of thing.  They run week-long camps for school kids, like the trip we took when we were in sixth grade,” Whisper said.

In sixth grade, Bliss and Whisper’s class had taken a camping trip for four days, and the kids learned a lot about the woods, science, and how to survive outside.  Some of their classmates had taken to the wilderness better than others.  Whisper had done well, but Bliss still couldn’t light a campfire with gasoline and a box of matches.

“Do you think they might hire Brierley?”  Angel asked.  Angel was the only one of the three who hadn’t been able to go to the
gathering
.

“I don’t know.  If she had identification, maybe.  It’s worth calling.  I could see if the guys would go with me to take her up there,” Whisper said.

“No, I should be the one to go,” Angel said.  “I don’t want her to go to a strange place alone.”

Bliss smiled.  “You’re really becoming attached to Brierley.”

“She’s like a sister.  I can’t explain it, but I feel like I was meant to help her.  If we can get her ID and get her an interview with the campground, I’d be happy to take her there.  It would be nice to get away for a while anyway.  I haven’t been on a vacation since last spring when we went to Brigantine Beach every day and gambled in the Atlantic City casinos every night.”

“That was fun,” Whisper said.  “Even if I did lose a hundred dollars playing slots.”

“How does anyone lose that much money on nickel slots?”  Bliss shook her head.

Whisper grinned.  “It’s addictive.”

“Okay, so it’s settled.  Rome will call whoever he knows who can help Brierley, Whisper will call Ally, and Angel will get ready to take a vacation at the campground,” Bliss said.

“What are you going to do?”  Whisper asked.

Bliss wiggled her brows.  “Thank my mate for having such good connections.”

“Oh barf,” Angel said.