Authors: Fiona Knightingale
Chapter 7
Amy's family had flown down for the wedding, and today she was getting married. She hadn't been feeling good the last few days, and so she had peed on a little pink stick. She was waiting for the results of the test, and was nervous. She hadn't thought their first encounter would have resulted in a baby, she'd officially been on birth control until she'd agreed to marry him, and she'd stopped taking it a month ago. Her period was late, she assumed maybe it was just from coming off the birth control pills, but her breasts were tender, and she wasn't feeling normal.
Her cell phone dinged and she picked up the test and looked at it. Two bright pink lines stared at her.
She was pregnant. Well, if all went well, Sloan would fulfill his part of the contract. Amy wasn't sure how she felt. Knowing pregnancy had been a possibility and something he needed to have happen had been okay with her in theory, but seeing the reality of how fast it happened shocked her.
Was she actually ready? Was anyone ever actually ready?
"Amy, are you ready?" Her sister, Madison, banged on the door, "It's time for the wedding to start, you need to come out."
"I'll be out in a minute," Amy told her, hiding the test in her purse. She would show Sloan after the wedding. She walked to the door and unlocked it, she handed her purse to her sister and then blurted it out. "I'm pregnant."
Her sister stared at her in shock, and then hugged her tight. "This is good news, right?"
"Yes, I think so. I mean, we weren't preventing, and we wanted a baby at some point," Amy told her, her sister was the only one who knew the whole story about how she and Sloan met, and the inheritance requirements. "I love him Maddie, I didn't mean to fall in love, but he's... amazing. I love him so much."
"It's going to be okay, now go out there and get married. Tell him how you feel then tell him about the baby. If he wanted it, it's going to be okay, I promise." Madison hugged her sister one more time and then pushed her out the door to the waiting area so she could enter the church and walk down the aisle to marry Sloan, who was waiting for her on the other side of those big, double doors.
"I can do this," Amy muttered to herself, having a moment of fear and panic on making it official. In theory, marriage sounded wonderful, in reality, it was hard work.
"Yes, you can, now go!" Madison told her and smiled as Amy went to go meet Sloan in front of the pastor.
Sloan was waiting for Amy and when she reached him and hooked her arm through his, he leaned down to whisper to her. "You are beautiful, I'm glad we are doing this."
Amy nodded, and then before she could stop herself, whispered back, "I'm pregnant."
Sloan stared at her, and then surprised everyone, including the pastor who was mid sentence by hugging her tightly and disrupting the wedding plan.
"Okay, are you ready for me to continue?" The pastor asked Sloan after he'd stopped hugging her and Sloan apologized and nodded.
"We are gathered here today..." The pastor started to say, and then went on with a long ceremony until he reached the vows and asked the couple if they were ready to say their vows.
Sloan went first, "I Sloan, promise to marry you Amy, in sickness and health, for rich or poorer, until death do us part. I know we didn't meet in the most orthodox way, and I know we'll have trials ahead of us, but I promise to always have your back and hold your hand. I want to grow old with you, laugh with you, and make a million and one memories together."
Amy had a single tear slip down her cheek, and blamed the pregnancy hormones in her head. "I Amy, promise to marry you Sloan, in sickness and health, for rich or poorer, until death do us part. I'm here to support you, I'll be at your side and I may not always agree with every choice you make, but I will love you regardless. I won't give up on us, I'm willing to fight for us, to make this work even when it gets hard, and I won't look back with regrets or fear. I will always look to the future for another day with you, another memory to make and cherish. I look forward to raising children with you, and most of all, I just want to say I love you."
"You may kiss your bride!" The pastor announced, and the guests clapped as Amy and Sloan locked arms and they shared their first kiss as bride and groom.
Turning to face the crowd Sloan grinned and then leaned down to whisper, "You want to tell them you're pregnant or should I?"
"Don't tell them yet. Let's wait a while longer to make sure everything turns out okay," Amy poked him and whispered.
"Congrats on your pregnancy," Madison's husband told her, loud enough that other guests could hear and they turned questioning eyes to Sloan and Amy groaned.
"So much for not telling anyone?" Sloan laughed and asked Amy.
"My sister has a big mouth," Amy replied glaring at her sister who smiled and gave her a little finger tip wave.
"If it wasn't for your sister, we wouldn't have met. I have no regrets Amy," Sloan told her and kissed her passionately on the mouth. Amy smiled into his mouth and kissed him back with as much fire as he kissed her.
"Get a room you two!" Madison called laughing.
THE END
“Mate with her,” Tate growled at his father. The woman that he was talking about was Accalia. She was from pure blood just as Tate was and had been chosen to be Tate’s mate. “I loathe the woman,” Tate continued, “Have you ever spent any time with her at all? She is revolting.”
It would not have bothered Tate so much to mate with Accalia in the sense that humans mate. He would love to put her in her place and then never see her again, but the problem was that werewolves mate for life and Tate did not want to spend the rest of his life with that woman.
She was a beautiful woman, but not much of a werewolf as far as Tate was concerned. She had never been on a hunt and Tate was pretty sure that she had killed her last assistant. She had turned up missing just a few weeks after she started working for Accalia and even though Accalia did not want to get her pretty hands dirty she also had an anger problem.
Tate wondered if her new assistant Sheldandra would see the same fate as the last. Sheldandra was a beautiful dark skinned black woman that had all the right curves and was as sweet as could be. Tate had seen the way that Accalia treated Sheldandra and it was not the way a classy woman would treat her assistant. Accalia was one of those women who thought that just because they had money they could treat everyone else poorly.
Tate was not that way though, he was the prince of the pack and he did understand how important it was to keep the royal blood line pure but he wanted nothing to do with this woman. Accalia also treated the werewolves that were not pure as if they were not as good as she was as well.
There were several different types of werewolves, those that were born of two werewolves that were born of two werewolves and so on until the lineage could be traced back to the father. Then there were werewolves who had been born of a werewolf and a human. Then there were those who were changed by another werewolf. Accalia was the type of werewolf whose lineage went back thousands of years all the way to the beginning. There had never been a human brought into her family nor a half bred werewolf.
Tate could also trace his ancestry back thousands of years and he understood why his family wanted to keep it pure, but to him a werewolf was a werewolf just as a human was a human. He had seen the looks that were given when a werewolf tried to bring a human into the pack, when they asked for permission to change them. It was if they were degrading themselves, but what Accalia did was far worse than looks. She was as mean as she could be to the members of the pack that were not pure blood and then the way she treated humans was inexcusable.
They all had the choice to live in human form or to live in wolf form, part of the pack stayed in the woods while the other part lived in the city with people. Accalia and her family lived in the city. They were not cut out for life in the wilderness. Tate could not remember the last time that he had actually seen Accalia shift and didn’t even know what she looked like as a werewolf. The only thing that ever reminded others that she was a werewolf was the wild look that she got in her eyes when she was angry and the groan that came from deep within her stomach.
Tate could see the anger in his father’s eyes. In all of his life he had never been disrespectful to him. He had never questioned his authority, but today he refused to follow an order. Tate’s father had told him that it had already been arranged with Accalia’s family and that she had accepted the offer. Of course she accepted Tate thought to himself, she wouldn’t just have to say she was a princess anymore.
Tate turned and walked out of his father’s house, jumped into his car and headed down the road. Now would be the time that he would have loved to have been off in the forest where he would be able to shift, run and even hunt something down taking all of his anger out on it.
As Tate drove through the city he saw Accalia walking down the sidewalk with Sheldandra following as closely behind as she could. Accalia was a tall woman and slim while Sheldandra was just taller than five feet and was a very curvy woman. Accalia had a bad habit of calling her fat, eating in front of her and not allowing her to have breaks for her own meals.
Accalia always told Sheldandra that it was for her own good and that one day when she was thin she would thank her, but Tate had seen Sheldandra on the verge of tears because of the words that Accalia spoke.
As Tate watched the two women from afar he could tell that Accalia was talking down to Sheldandra. Accalia’s mouth was going non-stop and she was making the ugliest faces that Tate had ever seen, all while Sheldandra struggled to keep up, carried all of Accalia’s bags and looked as if she were on the verge of tears. It took everything that Tate had within him not to walk up to Accalia and tell her how much he did not like her. He wanted her to know that she would never be his mate.
As he watched Sheldandra he wished that his father had been generous enough to find for him a mate like her. Yes, she was human, but Tate did not care. To him she was beautiful. She had a nice round butt with thick thighs. Her breasts jiggled and bounced as she struggled to keep up with Accalia. Tate could think of nothing else but getting his hands onto her body as he sat watching her.
He had never found himself attracted to a human before and he did not know if it was pure lust or if it was because he did not like the way Accalia was treating the woman or if it was simply out of defiance for his father but he knew that there was a part of him that needed that human woman more than he could express.
He decided that he did not care what his father or anyone else had to say Sheldandra would be his and then she could have all the revenge that she wanted on Accalia. As the thought passed through his mind, he smiled. He didn’t care what it was that was attracting him to Sheldandra but he could not help but to smile at the idea of Sheldandra bossing Accalia around. Maybe he would hire her to be Sheldandra’s assistant. He knew that Sheldandra did not have a mean bone in her body and that she would never treat Accalia the way that she had been treated.
He had met Sheldandra on several different occasions when his family and Accalia’s family got together or when he was out socializing. He was amazed that no matter where Accalia was she had to have Sheldandra with her. She had forced her to rent the apartment that was next to her own, Sheldandra accompanied her wherever she went shopping, getting her hair and nails done and even out to the club. Tate had often wondered if Sheldandra was in fact the only ‘friend’ that Accalia had.
He had never seen Accalia out with human or werewolf females. He assumed it was because they would not put up with the way that Accalia insisted on treating them, but often wondered exactly what she could do that would make everyone stay away from her.
He had watched her often as they grew up together and she had always been this way. When she would miss treat others while her parents were around they would laugh it off and say something like “cubs will be cubs.” It was always the same thing, never taking any responsibility for their daughter's actions.
Now, Tate was going to make sure that she knew it was her actions that was going to cost her the title of princess. Tate decided that he was going to follow the two women until he could get Sheldandra alone, he wanted to talk to her, but wanted to make sure that Accalia was not around. He was a smart man and understood how angry his family as well as Accalia’s would be when they found out that he wanted to mate Sheldandra. He did not want them to find out until it was done and there was nothing more they could do about it.
It took a while, but Accalia finally went to her own apartment and allow Sheldandra to go to hers. It was not before Sheldandra carried all of Accalia’s bags into her apartment and put everything away. Then she cleaned up Accalia’s apartment before starting her dinner for her. It occurred the Tate that Accalia already saw herself as royalty and that Sheldandra was nothing more than a servant to her.
Tate wondered how Sheldandra would react if she knew that Accalia was a werewolf. He wondered how she would react when she found out that he was a werewolf. He had all the anxiety that anyone else would ever feel. He knew he was an attractive man and he knew that Sheldandra was attracted to him, but there was always the fear of rejection. It was even worse now that he knew his entire future depended on what this one woman would say.